This category was provided by friend E2 and it turned into a decent amount of homework! My birthday is in July which means that I recently celebrated a new year. That, along with the search for this item of the reading challenge, resulted in some fresh silver highlights in my hair.
The “ big one” with the month of July in the title, is Born on the Fourth of July which I’d already read so that was out. I did find other titles but they were out of reach due to unavailability (out of print/no shipping to the NL) or costs (second-hand books with a steep charge for taxes and delivery making them quadruple in price). Eventually I found something but it never showed up. The delivery status mentioned “out for delivery” and I’m not sure where it had to come from or if the mailman was on foot, but the status was stuck for several weeks. Failure of delivery was not going to be a reason for not getting an item checked so I ordered a back-up title and because the universe is funny that way, both books promptly arrived a day apart. Suddenly, I had two books with my birth month in the title. And because they are both short books, I decided to read them both.
Get ready for a double hit!
The Twelfth Day of July / Joan Lingard
What it is: friendship against all odds
Did I like it: yes
This book is YA fiction and part of The Originals published by Penguin. This includes other classic YA fiction such as S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders and I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. Classics indeed, so I figured I was in for something solid.
The Twelfth Day of July is set in Belfast in the seventies and the title refers to the day of the infamous Orange march. The story starts a few days before and slowly builds up to this date.
Kevin and Sadie live streets and worlds apart from each other. Kevin is catholic and annoyed by the drums as the bands practice in the lead-up to the Twelfth, while Sadie is protestant and eagerly counting off the days until the twelfth when she gets to march as a majorette and show off her skills in a new outfit. Kevin and his friends decide to make a statement and sneak into protestant territory one night to deface a mural. Sadie catches them and when her brother decides revenge is necessary, she demands to be included in the action. Sadie is not an average girl: although she loves being a majorette, dancing and twirling in front of the band, she also has no problems chasing intruders off and breaking into houses. Her fearlessness is inspiring to Kevin’s sister and although the girls appreciate each other, their addresses prevent them from becoming friends.
Kevin felt a bit less developed. He’s just an average teenage boy with a lot of eagerness to prove himself more than he actually is. When their parents have to leave, Kevin immediately takes over the role of the man in the house, bossing his older sister around without a problem. He likes Sadie but because she’s a protestant he knows he can’t treat her like a friend and also has no problem trapping her. The initial action sets off a back-and-forth which mimics the actions of the grownups around them and things build up until an escalation is unavoidable. When innocent people get injured, it makes the children reflect on their actions and they realize they have to make a decision on how to move forward.
I really liked this book. It was as solid as I’d suspected and it’s easy to understand why there would be more. This book is the first in a series (five in total) and the last few pages of the book are a sneak-peak/tease of the follow-up which is set a couple of years later, and I admit: I’m tempted to continue the series.
A Scandal in July / Kate Bateman
What it is: a light and breezy historical romance
Did I like it: it was a fun read
Rhys Davies and Lenore Montgomery are the last remaining singletons of their families. There is instant, well let’s say “like” from both sides. Unfortunately, they are from two warring and cursed families. Or so Rhys claims. It hasn’t stopped several of his brothers and cousins from hooking up with a Montgomery and living happily ever after. But Rhys is apprehensive and swears he will not fall in love with a Montgomery today, tomorrow, or ever. Lenore has a different approach: when she realizes who Rhys is she shrugs and admits that you love who you love and curse schmurse. What follows is a very determined Lenore going after Rhys with Rhys playing hard to get.
Lenore is pretty fearless (she famously chased off a panther with her shoe in Brazil, survived being shipwrecked off the coast of Madagascar, and has faced plenty shirtless men without swooning) and goes after what and who she wants.
To make Rhys slightly more interesting than the pretty bland character he is, he is given the backstory of a soldier who fought in the Napoleonic wars in Portugal, Spain and of course he was at Waterloo.
Their families are neighbors and because nobody but Rhys is bothered anymore by the original feud, the families organize a week-long joint party at their country estates. Most of the book is about the scavenger hunt that is hosted one day and since the others participants are all married couples, this leaves Lenore and Rhys forced to pair up and because this is a romcom nobody is concerned about them being unchaperoned. What ensues is a silly caper that of course ends in a happily-ever-after.
Because this is a novella the spacing is a bit odd, with a short introduction part that includes a lot of name-dropping, a massively detailed scavenger hunt in the middle, and then a very sudden and explicit ending.
This is book 7 in The Rake Review series (there is one for every month of the year) but can be read as a stand-alone. It was a helium balloon of a book and what’s not to like about those?
Bookworm in the City 