Here are the books I read during the month of June 2018.

The End We Start From by Megan Hunter

A woman gives birth to her first child just as London becomes submerged by biblical floods. England becomes a disaster zone, people flee in the panic, resulting in deaths and disease as refugee camps are set up in an attempt to provide food and shelter for the displaced. Will this woman, her partner and her baby son survive? This is a short, fast-paced book; I read the whole thing during an afternoon at the beach.

 The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

A wondrous, bewitching fairytale fantasy that will make you want to wrap up in a blanket and sit by the fire, even if it is summer. Prepare to be enchanted and whisked away to magical version of Medieval Russia. This is the first book of the Winternight trilogy, and is definitely not for children.

The Last Act of Love by Cathy Rentzenbrink

In this devastating memoir, Rentzenbrink writes about her younger brother, who was severely brain injured in a road accident as a teenager, and subsequently spent years in a vegetative state. A powerful and moving book about family, love, grief and learning to live with loss.  I read it in one sitting.

Half Bad by Sally Green

A YA fantasy novel set in present day England, where witches and humans live side by side. All is not harmonious, however, as there are two kinds of witches in opposition with each other; White witches and Black witches. The Black witches are feared, derided and regarded as evil by White witches. This story focuses on a teenage witch, Nathan, who is half Black and half White, as he struggles with his identity.

This wasn’t really my kinda thing, but it was alright as a distraction.

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