Hello July | 2026

Hello, friends! How is July going for you so far? It has been quite hot here in New Hampshire, but things have cooled off ever so slightly. My opening picture is my first 6 months of temperature tracking. I wasn’t sure how it would work out but I’m starting to like how the page has transitioned from the dark blues and purples of the cooler weather, to the to the grassy greens of the moderate temps, and now the warmer pinks and oranges as we’ve heated up. It took a long time for this pattern to develop (6 months, obviously) and I’m pleased as punch with it.

So yes, it’s been hot. But it’s been hot all over the northern hemisphere so I know most of you are experiencing the same thing and probably worse. And things are still a little haywire here at home so this won’t be the chatty post I was hoping to pull together. But I have five more books to share with you since last week’s update and I really don’t want to get behind So let’s catch up!

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The Women of Troy by Pat Barker
(Amazon | Bookshop)

“At last, we were all settled. Amina and Helle nodded to show they were ready. “Nothing sad,” I said. The girls began calling out their favourites—and many of them were happy, even jolly, songs; but as soon as the singing started, they all sounded sad. Perhaps all songs do when they’re sung in exile. Soon, many of the girls were in tears.”

The Women of Troy begins inside the Trojan Horse, crowded with Greek soldiers finally able to breach the walls of Troy. Led by the son of Achilles, Pyrrhus, to avenge his father’s death. Pyrrhus and his soldiers capture their Trojan “treasure,” including Briseis, Achilles’s concubine from the first book in this series. They wait for the wind to blow them back across the sea but it never arrives. While waiting, the fighting reignites and the women are trapped in the middle of it all.

Like the first in this series, we see how important women of the camp are while being treated in the most egregious ways. It was a quite a look of what life was probably like for the captured women of the time.

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Second Place by Rachel Cusk
(Amazon | Bookshop)

“If only something could tell us in advance which parts of life to pay attention to!”

This was a fascinating little novel and my first by Rachel Cusk. The protagonist, M, is a writer who invites a famous artist to stay at her second place, a small house on the property owned by M and her husband. When he finally shows up, he unexpectedly has a younger woman from a wealthy family with him. This whole debacle ends up being a huge mistake and this book, written in the form of a letter, describes it in such a humorous yet serious way. There were so many little lines that I replayed to listen to again — I really enjoyed my time with this and am looking forward to exploring more novels by Cusk, but this time on paper so that it’s easier to annotate.

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Hunger and Thirst by Claire Fuller
(Amazon | Bookshop)

“All everyone wants to know about is the murder and what we did with the body: armchair detectives, tabloid journalists, the curious and the ghoulish, speculating on what happened. After the documentary was broadcast, even a few art critics and reviewers circled back to the events that occurred in the late 1980s at the Underwood. The house was bulldozed years ago, but as I sit half-asleep and upright on my chair or sprawled out in a dream state, I see again the textured glass in the front door, find myself creeping down the L-shaped hallway or staring through the kitchen window to the garden, where the sofa squats in the long grass.”

The opening paragraph of Hunger and Thirst sets up the novel perfectly. Ursula was a teenager on her own in the late 1980s when she befriends Sue and Vince at the art school where she works in the mailroom. Her living situation is awful and she jumps at the opportunity when Vince offers her a room in an empty house he’s found. It’s an eerie place, left in a suspended state ever since the previous occupants died nearly a decade prior. Things go sideways rather quickly as Ursula descends into what seems to be a horrific mental breakdown. This novel is creepy and dark – so perfectly Fuller-esque. One of my favorites of the year so far!

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Medusa by Jessie Burton
(Amazon | Bookshop)

“It’s the hardest thing in the world to explain yourself, to tell your story clearly. We are all of us such complicated creatures, whether we have snakes for hair or not. Who we are, and why we are like that I do not think there is a soul this side of Mount Olympus who can effortlessly explain the twists and turns their life has taken, why they might prefer a fig cake over a honey one, why they fell in love with that man rather than his friend, why they cry at night, or cry at beauty, or cry for no reason at all. But still. It’s all we can do.”

This Medusa retelling starts in her cave with Perseus washing up on shore. They become friends, with Medusa carefully keeping herself hidden behind rocks while they get to know each other. After several days of talking, of Perseus begging her to come out so that he can see her, he gets it slip that he’s there to kill The Medusa. She’s shocked to hear herself being spoke of that way, not knowing how far and wide her story had spread. This story doesn’t have the same ending as the classic myth so I don’t want to say too much more. But it was a pretty good addition to my mythology summer, especially given that I haven’t read much about Medusa yet.

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Dèy by Edwidge Danticat
(Amazon | Bookshop)

” ‘We don’t always choose where we call home,’ she says to the walls. ‘Sometimes it’s others who decide.’ “

This novels starts in the middle of a mass shooting at a mall in Florida just days before the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in February 2018. Magnolia, a young mother, is there to buy her daughter a cellphone for her birthday. The shock and trauma of being so close to such a tragedy is difficult for Magnolia to process and once it’s over, she begins the surreal process of leaving the mall and simply carrying on with her life — without telling anyone she was even there.

Magnolia and her husband, Harrison, both come from Haitian families with complicated backgrounds. We learn about their lives in Haiti and their efforts to find sanctuary in the US, while desperately wanting to return to their beautiful island. Through Magnolia, we see how difficult it is to leave the island only to come to a country that is, in many ways, just as dangerous. Danticat made the island come alive with her vivid descriptions. And most impressively, the familial bonds between her characters were moving and beautiful. We could all benefit from experiencing the family life described within these pages.

Dèy in Haitian Kreyòl means a period of collective bereavement – and so much of the Haitian diaspora is in deep mourning from leaving their homes and finding no sanctuary from violence in the US. Magnolia shows the reader how we all experience dèy in the United States by watching the news and experiencing tragedies nearly every day, while still being expected to go on with our lives as they were before.

This book feels especially timely here in the US, given the attention the Haitian community received during the 2024 presidential election and the more recent Supreme Court decision effectively ending their protected status. The history of Haiti is fascinating and heartbreaking, and novels like this remind us that we have so much to learn about the world we live in!

Thank you to Netgalley and Knopf Publishing for an advanced copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Dèy will be available for purchase on August 25, 2026.

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Okay, that’s all I have today. How have things been for you? Are you doing okay in the heat?

I hope you’re able to take it easy and find some time for the things you love. Take good care!