What I Read: June 2025

Audiobook giveaway + summer's so-far highlights.

Since June was Audiobook Appreciate Month (who knew?!?) LibroFM gave me three audiobooks to giveaway to my favorite readers on the internet: you guys!

Since I am an elder millennial, I am invoking a big internet throwback and choosing recipients via Rafflecopter (oh those blogging giveaways!). So, head over to this link, follow the (hopefully easy) instructions using the honor system, and I’ll let the universe select three random people on July 7th that I will email to choose a free audiobook that I will then send to them via LibroFM’s gift feature. Enter here!

Other news one month into summer:

• We went on our first BIG vacation as a family of four. We took the train to Washington state, then a bus, then a ferry, and then another bus and landed at the remote Lutheran retreat center of Holden Village. The journey was fantastic… other than we came down with colds on Day One and kind of felt like garbage for a bit while we were there. Maybe next year is our year? Photo of Lake Chelan at Stehekin in Washington state.

• We came home from vacation to a garden that had exploded and the woods that surround us filled with blackcaps. Most mornings, you will find me wading through weeds to pick berries or deciding what on earth to do with an overload of arugula, chard, and lettuce. If you are local, come see me + take some of it off my hands!

• I’m making probably too many Iced Maple Cardamom Lattes. Pro tip: If you happen to have leftover coffee any day ever, use it to make coffee ice cubes and that levels up any homemade iced drink all summer.

• I went to a fantastic book sale this past weekend with some other homeschool mom friends and came home with waaayyyy too many books (as usual). I’ll highlight a few in upcoming newsletters!

One more time: Here’s the link to the Giveaway!

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Here’s What I Read in June:

Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder {biography/nonfiction}

by Caroline Fraser

The kids and I listened to all of the original Little House books in the last couple of years. The books hit differently as an adult, and I knew I wanted a “behind the scenes” look at what was happening off the page. This biography won the 2018 Pultizer and it deserved it. Fraser must have spent years (decades!) on the research, and ultimately pulled together not only an account of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s life, but also situated it in the historical, economic, and societal upheavals that spanned the late 1800s and early 1900s. The book was dense, and it took me awhile to get through. I found it valuable in understanding why so many prairie farmers like the Ingalls and Wilders failed to establish lasting farms. The book also spent a good deal of time on Laura and her daughter Rose’s personal relationship and editorial relationship, which was tumultuous for their entire lives. Like The First Four Years, it was hard to read at times, but gave me a more clear-eyed view of the woman who wrote the stories and how they fit into the wider history of America.

Goodreads | Bookshop | Libro.FM

Better Than The Movies {YA rom-com}

by Lynn Painter

In complete and utter contrast to the above, this Young Adult rom-com took me all of 48 hours to finish and kept me glued to the page. It’s sweet, it’s a teeny-tiny bit spicy, and sprinkles in enough rom-com movie references to make you feel nostalgic about the genre in general. Liz is a bit of a nerd who is constantly rewatching her late mom’s favorite movies over and over instead of living her life. She’s in a perennial fight with her next door neighbor, Wes, over a coveted parking spot. When Liz asks Wes to get her an “in” with a cute new guy at school in exchange for the permanent use of said spot, and enemies-to-lovers trope ensues exactly as expected. A delight. (But also kids in my day didn’t swear so much… or maybe that was just me?!?)

Goodreads | Bookshop | Libro.FM

And that’s it! Because Prairie Fires was 500+ pages and the novel that I’m in-progress on is 571 pages and I’m resisting the urge to race through it because it is so good (it’s Green Dolphin Street by Elizabeth Goudge, FYI).

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What I’m Reading with the Kids:

I’m falling hard for well-done picture book biographies lately. We really enjoyed this one about mathematician Sophie Germaine (who I’d never heard of before!) and loved the joyfulness of this one on Ben Franklin’s childhood.

From the book sale I mentioned above, I was able to pull several picture books celebrating African American women. We’ve already fallen in love with Fancy Party Gowns which tells Ann Cole Lowe’s story of making Jackie Kennedy’s wedding gown and eventually receiving the recognition she deserved.

We finished The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe and swung back to tackling our final free reads for Ambleside Year 2. Along Came a Dog was a delight. We’re halfway through The Door in the Wall, and we’re listening to Five Children and It on audio — both are truly enjoyable. We’ve got a couple more on our list — maybe we’ll get through them before Year 3 starts in earnest in September.

Arthur surprised me and LOVED Redwall on audio, so he has raced through Mossflower and is deep into listening to the third book, Mattimeo. Tennyson is still stuck on checking out a million Paw Patrol/Barbie/Avengers/My Little Pony early readers from the library, a phase which I detest and hope ends soon. They’re terrible stories! She’s not even using them for reading practice! Sigh. Can’t win them all, huh?

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What I’m Reading Next:

I’m less than a hundred pages away from finishing Green Dolphin Street. I just got the newest Fredrick Backman book, My Friends, from the library so I’m excited to dive into that. Someone also recommended How to End a Love Story by Yulin Kuang (was it you? remind me!), and I’m always up for a rom-com in the summer, so that’s on my hold list as well. Plus, there’s a million books on my TBR shelf… not quite, but honestly it’s not a small shelf.

Our local library has a “bingo” card for adult readers for their summer reading program. Any recommendations for my “mystery” square? It’s not a genre I usually read in, although I bet Maisie Dobbs would count and that’s been on my list for awhile. Any other good summer mysteries you’d recommend? I’d love recs!

What are you reading right now? Hit “reply” and tell me!