Episode 544 || August 2025 Reading Recap
This week on From the Front Porch, Annie recaps the books she read and loved in August. You get 10% off your books when you order your August Reading Recap. Each month, we offer a Reading Recap bundle, which features Annie’s favorite books she read that month.
To purchase the books mentioned in this episode, stop by The Bookshelf in Thomasville, visit our website (search episode 544), or download and shop on The Bookshelf’s official app:
The Names by Florence Knapp
The Most by Jessica Anthony
The Academy by Elin Hilderbrand and Shelby Cunningham (releases 9/16)
A Rebellion of Care by David Gates
Three Days in June by Anne Tyler
Buckeye by Patrick Ryan (releases 9/2)
One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune
Fall Literary First Look Tickets
Annie's August Reading Recap Bundle - $59
The Most by Jessica Anthony
A Rebellion of Care by David Gates
Three Days in June by Anne Tyler
From the Front Porch is a weekly podcast production of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in South Georgia. You can follow The Bookshelf’s daily happenings on Instagram, Tiktok, and Facebook, and all the books from today’s episode can be purchased online through our store website, www.bookshelfthomasville.com.
A full transcript of today’s episode can be found below.
Special thanks to Dylan and his team at Studio D Podcast Production for sound and editing and for our theme music, which sets the perfect warm and friendly tone for our Thursday conversations.
This week, Annie is listening to Dominion by Addie E. Citchens.
If you liked what you heard in today’s episode, tell us by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. You can also support us on Patreon, where you can access bonus content, monthly live Porch Visits with Annie, our monthly live Patreon Book Club with Bookshelf staffers, Conquer a Classic episodes with Hunter, and more. Just go to patreon.com/fromthefrontporch.
We’re so grateful for you, and we look forward to meeting back here next week.
Our Executive Producers are...Beth, Stephanie Dean, Linda Lee Drozt, Ashley Ferrell, Wendi Jenkins, Martha, Nicole Marsee, Gene Queens, Cammy Tidwell, Jammie Treadwell, and Amanda Whigham.
Transcript:
[squeaky porch swing] Welcome to From the Front Porch, a conversational podcast about books, small business, and life in the South. [music plays out]
“It was the little things, she knew by now, the small repetitions, that made a life.” - Jessica Anthony, The Most
[as music fades out] I’m Annie Jones, owner of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in beautiful downtown Thomasville, Georgia, and this week, I’m recapping the books I read in August. Before we get started, a thank you to everyone who’s been leaving reviews for From the Front Porch. iTunes reviews and ratings are how new listeners can best find out about From the Front Porch and — as a result — find out about our indie bookstore, too. Here’s a recent review from Rae: To say I'm obsessed with this podcast is an understatement. Thursday has become my new favorite day of the week because I know I'll have a new From the Front Porch episode to listen to. I grew up in the South and my parents have a front porch swing at their house (such a comforting sound) but now I live far away from them so this podcast gives me the home away from home feeling I so desperately crave. Thank you so much Rae! If you haven’t left a review, all you have to do is open up the Podcast App on your phone, look for From the Front Porch, scroll down until you see ‘Write a Review’ and tell us what you think. Your reviews help us spread the word about not only our show, but about our small brick-and-mortar business, too.
[00:01:51] Guys, I'm back. Here we are. Thank you so much for your patience with us this summer as both Olivia and I were on maternity leave. I am now back batch recording episodes. Today is a batch recording day. So I'm here in real time to recap for you the books I read in August. Believe it or not, I am still reading after the birth of my son back in June. And it's been such a relief to know that I still love books, still love to read. And I read some great books this summer in the midst of the chaos that is newborn life. So thank you for every single kind word, note, prayer, if you're that kind of person, every bit of encouragement you all sent both to me and to Olivia during this unusual season in our lives and in the life of The Bookshelf. I am so grateful to our team for continuing to run The Bookshelf so beautifully in our absences. And I'm grateful to you podcast listeners for being willing to listen to some reruns, which we don't often do here, and adjusting to a summer schedule.
[00:02:59] So we are back and I'm here today to recap those books for you. So I'm going to go ahead and start off with a book that probably a lot of you have already read, which will be interesting hear the consensus on this one. But I finally was able to pick up The Names by Florence Knapp. I want to preface this review by saying this was, I believe, a Shelf Subscription selection from Erin, our online sales manager. This was a Read with Jenna pick earlier this spring. People love this book. And I can see why; I really can. I believe Erin actually previewed this episode, or previewed the book for us on a previous episode. I think she previewed it in one of our New Release Roundups or rundowns. I never can remember what we call those episodes. But she previewed this book, and I was so intrigued by the premise. If you have not heard of it, if you are not familiar, this book is about Cora. Cora is going to the name registrar's office to register her newborn and to select a name for him. And on the way, she's kind of torn among three names: Gordon, after her husband, Bear, which is her daughter Maya's pick, and Julian. And what unfolds then is kind of an alternate history where readers get to see who Gordon would have become, how Bear's life would have unfolded, and how Julian's life would have unfold.
[00:04:33] So you get three timelines throughout the book with the three different name options. And I love this concept. I think it's really original. It feels like a choose your own adventure story in a way where you're reading Bear's life, and then it goes to Gordon's. And anyway, it follows those three names. I described this book to Jordan, and he said-- my gut feeling was it's like a choose your own adventure story. Jordan said, "It's like the butterfly effect." To see the different decisions that these different people would have chosen if they had been named certain things. So it's all about the power of a name, which as somebody who just named a child, I thought was really fascinating and interesting. Here's what I did not know about the book and I wish I had, which is why I'm going to go ahead and tell you. This book is also honestly a really, I suspect, accurate look at domestic violence and abuse. I had no idea that that was going to play such a huge role in this book. Cora is our main character and her husband, Gordon, is extremely violent and abusive, both emotionally and physically.
[00:05:51] And the book details that abuse in at times excruciating ways. I am not a particularly sensitive reader. Even after the birth of my son, I don't think I am maybe as sensitive as I thought I would be. That being said, I do wish I had known that this book was going to cover that kind of territory. It's like the through line throughout the book. It's a huge part of the book. It is not a minor part. And so I do wish I had known that going in. Here's what I will say. Book clubs would love this book. I think my book club should read this book. There's so much to unpack, there's many interesting details, so many things you could talk about in terms of your own names, the names you've chosen for your children, how those names maybe have impacted us in ways that we don't realize. So I think this is great book club fodder. It was not my favorite book. I was actually surprised that I didn't love this book more. I totally get why it was a Read with Jenna pick. I can certainly see why it was a Shelf Subscription selection. And I think there are readers who are absolutely going to love this one.
[00:07:02] It felt a little bit flat for me just in terms of some of the choices in the book. I couldn't decide if they were brilliant or slightly cheesy. There are a lot of Easter eggs throughout the book. You'll notice in the different timelines with Gordon, Bear, and Julian. There is some overlap in characters. There's a character named Lily who shows up in each storyline, but in a different way. We get the character of Maya and we still get the characters of Cora and see how they would have grown and developed in those three different storylines. And so some of it felt absolutely brilliant. I can only imagine the bulletin board that would have been required to to plan out this particular these particular storylines in this particular book. And then some things felt a little less nuanced than I would have liked. At the back of the book, there is a list of names in the book and why those names were chosen and the meaning behind those names. I felt like that was unnecessary. I didn't really need to be told explicitly why those things were chosen. I could have guessed as the reader why those names were chosen.
[00:08:06] So the overall concept of the book, I totally bought into and was here for. The execution of the book, I maybe was a little less impressed by. That being said, I did completely download this book to Jordan. I completely told him every plot line because as I was reading it, I was just so intrigued, baffled. Yeah, which is why I think it would make a great book club selection. So if you're looking for a book club book this year or next year-- maybe you do paperbacks, I'm sure this book will be out in paperback next year. If you're planning ahead, I do think this is worth reading in a group context or as a buddy read. Overall, probably three to three and a half stars for me. So that is The Names by Florence Knapp, and it's out already. You can pick it up at the Bookshelf or your local library.
[00:08:56] Next, because I spent so much time with The Names, which is not a particularly long book, but I felt like I had spent so much with those characters, I was desperately ready to read something quick. Not necessarily light, but quick. So I picked up The Most by Jessica Anthony. This is a book that totally missed me and I'll be very transparent with you. I picked this book up at Barnes & Noble in Tallahassee. We are discovering where we can go in air conditioning with a child. And so I think we went with Isaac, but now I'm like did Jordan and I just go on our own one night? We found ourselves at Barnes & Noble and I still do love visiting Barnes & Noble and seeing what they have. And Barnes & Noble is just doing something that we can't, which is stock so many books. So many books.
[00:09:44] And I happened to see The Most. I was very struck by the cover. I saw it sitting on a table. It was a little paperback, really more of a novella. I know that it's less than 200 pages. I think it's about 130 pages, 10 chapters, but I was immediately hooked by the premise. And I remember I was debating because whenever I do go to Barnes & Noble, it does feel weird to buy something. I own a bookstore. I believe strongly in the power of indie bookstores. Also, is it weird to spend money at a bookstore when I could get my books for almost nothing. And so I was hesitant, but I read the description to Jordan. He was like, oh my gosh, that's an Annie book. And he's totally right. So I was struck by the cover, which has a swimmer on the front, a woman in a bathing suit on the front. And then I read the premise, which is Kathleen is a former tennis star, or at least a really good tennis player. The year is 1957. She's married with children and she and her husband are living in an apartment complex. He takes the boys to go to church one Sunday morning in November. It's unusually warm that day.
[00:10:52] And when he gets back, he finds Kathleen in the pool. The husband finds his wife in the apartment complex pool. And she's swimming and this is very unusual. Barely anybody uses the complex pool. They have never used it. And he asks her what she's doing and she kind of refuses to get out. And she spends the entire day in the pull. And what unfolds then are 10 chapters set over the course of one afternoon as Kathleen really contemplates her life. So I do need you to know this isn't like The Dinner where we're building to some big climactic moment, climax, in the book. That's not what's happening here. Instead, this is a very quiet, introspective look at, I think, midlife, middle-age, long marriages or marriages that are reaching midlife. And it is all about Kathleen's maybe inner workings, her decisions that she's made that have led her to this point, and to some extent, her husband and his decisions and the things that have led him to this. It's a thoughtful book.
[00:12:00] It is a quick read. I'm pretty sure I read it in one afternoon. I think it'll make great autumnal reading, honestly, because it's set in November. It actually would be great to read at least if you live in the South, in this kind of in-between season where it's definitely not fall, but also school has started back. We want it to feel like fall. Summer is kind of waning, even though the temperatures aren't. So I loved this one. I absolutely loved it. I think it takes a really deft hand to be able to write a complete story in 130 pages. This is not going to be for everyone because again we're not building toward a climax here. There's not some big moment, big revelation. This is just a quiet little novel novella that I really fell in love with. I was surprised I hadn't heard more about it. I do think then upon looking around, I realized it got more buzzed maybe than I realized. For whatever reason, this one passed me by. Now it's out in paperback, and I would encourage you to pick it up if you like quiet books where nothing happens or character-driven novels where you're really just being given an insider's look into a character's life and decision-making, her motivations rather maybe than her actions themselves, I really liked this one. That is The Most by Jessica Anthony.
[00:13:20] Throughout maternity leave, I have read some books on my Kindle. I've really struggled with audiobooks and books in the audiobook format, but. I have utilized my Kindle quite a bit. And you'll probably hear me reference on multiple episodes of this show because I'm coming back into the world of podcasting; I'm diving back into life at The Bookshelf. And one of the things I did over the summer was I read a lot of Elin Hilderbrand. When we talk about places where you can go, where it's air conditioned and you can take a child, we wound up utilizing the public library really more than I have since moving to Thomasville. I think when you're a bookseller or a bookstore owner, libraries still are such special places. But I spend a lot of my days at The Bookshelf-- or at least I did-- and so I rarely had time to go to the library. And honestly, there's a way in which the Bookshelf is my library. I have ARCs at my disposal. I have books that I can special order. And so, I have not often felt like I needed the library. Whereas, when I lived in Tallahassee and before I took over The Bookshelf, I used the library all the time. I was an avid library goer. I liked to just go and browse. Now I spend my browsing time at the store.
[00:14:38] And so it felt kind of fun to use the library for browsing purposes. And then I kind of realized, you know what, I don't really want to use it for browsing purpose except maybe for books for Isaac, but I will use it for going back and forth to pick up an Elin Hilderbrand books. That's what I decided. Last year, I read Elin Hilderbrand's The Perfect Couple in preparation for the show that was on Netflix. And then this year I read 28 Summers, I read Summer of 69, and then I remembered that Elin Hilderbrand has a book coming out this fall. So, releasing on September 16th is a book called The Academy. She co-wrote this with her daughter, Shelby Cunningham. I downloaded it to my Kindle. And I loved it. I absolutely loved it. I thought it was so fun. It is Elin Hildebrand's contribution to the boarding school canon. I will definitely be talking about this book in multiple episodes. I will probably be talking about it in our fall Literary First Look coming up in September.
[00:15:43] But what I really liked about this was so many books, and I love them by the way, so many boarding school books are dark, gritty, complicated. Often there's some kind of death at the center, some kind of mystery maybe even at the center, and I love books like that. This felt like it had some of that. I would not classify this book as a mystery though. There is a death that kind of happens off page where the students are grappling with it. It happened last year before we were privy to what was going on at this school. So there is something like that, but overall, this book is delightfully soap opera-esque, but in a good way. Like, it's your favorite teen drama, but well-written and elevated. The book is about fictional Tiffin Academy. It's a boarding school in New England. It's set over the course of a year, follows a few different students, all of whom I felt attached to. There's this great influencer character. Then, of course, there's the transfer student who's trying to make her way in this elite environment. There's the ne'er-do-well kind of bad boy. I thought this was great.
[00:17:01] The reason Elin Hilderbrand wrote it with her daughter is because her daughter and her son both attended boarding school. And so Elin always knew she wanted to write about her kids' experiences at boarding school because she felt like there was so much storytelling there. And I think they've done a great job. I was hooked, couldn't put this one down, thought it was great fun. What I didn't know, but I'm going to be sure to tell you because at the end of the book I was like, well, that was really good. I really liked it. But there were so many threads left undone and I couldn't quite figure out why. I don't need pretty bows, I don't need tight endings, but I felt like things were unfinished. And then I realized this is the first book in a duology. So there will be a second book, which actually makes a lot of sense because the kids who are at the center of this one are juniors in high school. There's a different boarding school terminology, but I'm just going to use good old regular school terminology. They're juniors and high school, they have senior year, and so I assume the next book will be set at their senior year. If you like Elin Hilderbrand, this is more of what you probably already love about her. If you've never read her, I think this is a great place to start to give you a sense of who she is, what kind of writer she is. I actually think she's a really great writer. Her books are maybe not quite as heavy as your traditional literary fiction, but I found the books that I read this summer to be really fun, and this book was no different. So that is The Academy by Elin Hilderbrand and Shelby Cunningham, releases on September 16th.
[00:18:37] I picked up from The Bookshelf A Rebellion of Care by David Gates. Perhaps you are familiar with David's work. He is a poet and you can find him on Instagram @davidgatepoet. We'll link to it in the show notes. But this is definitely a collection for fans of Erin Moon, Sarah Bessey, maybe even Lindsay Rush if you liked A Bit Much. I actually think I saw-- did I make this up? I think I thought that maybe Lindsay and David would be in conversation at the bookshop in Nashville. So if you're a Nashville person, you might want to look that up. I think that's happening. I don't think I dreamed that. Though my dreams have been really weird postpartum. So it also wouldn't be shocking if I dreamed a really specific book event with two authors I don't know. That actually weirdly feels on brand for this season of my life. Anyway, A Rebellion of Care is a collection of David Gates poetry, but pleasant surprise for me, it also included essays that introduced each section. So you really got a sense of the themes of the collection and why the different poems were written.
[00:19:48] Probably in an ideal world, Rebellion of Care would be a book I picked up, read a poem or two, and put it back down. That would just be the life if you just had a poetry collection sitting on your nightstand or sitting at your dining room table and you just read a poem here or there every day or two. I didn't do that. I literally picked this up from The Bookshelf and one night had a stack of books by my bed and I just started flipping through them and I got to this one and I literally just sat there and read the whole thing. I'm glad I own it because it is definitely a book that I will come back to and I tabbed the different poems that I liked the most and I will definitely be revisiting those. If you like Cape Bear, I think this is a collection that could be shelved alongside that one. He's writing a lot about-- it's not all affiliated with religion or spirituality, but you can definitely get a sense or a spirit of deconstruction, grappling with what does my faith look like in this season? Maybe even beyond faith, what does it look like when the institutions I used to trust, I no longer trust? What does it like to live in a capitalistic society? That's kind of what the poems are dealing with. I loved it. I wasn't surprised that I loved it. I follow him on Instagram. I have a couple of his poems printed in my house. So I knew that I was going to go into this one probably loving it and I did.
[00:21:18] I also felt like it was even more thoughtful than I assumed that it would be because of those essays. So much of what we get from David Gate on the internet is poetry. David Gates on the internet is poetry. And so it was pretty neat to get to read some of his more long form writing, which I think he does do on his Substack, but I don't always read the Substack. So anyway, if you're not familiar with him, check out his Instagram first, we'll link to it in the show notes. But I really do recommend this book. It's a beautiful little collection. It has a great cover, great size, perfect for gifting. Probably I will potentially include this on maybe a gift giving guide this holiday season. I really liked it and I'm glad to have a copy. It is one of those that I wanted in print. So that is A Rebellion of Care. By David Gates. I'm sorry, this is me not even post edit. This is me. This is realizing I've been alternating between David Gates and David Gate because I'd written it in different ways in my notes. David Gate, singular. One David Gate. So, A Rebellion of Care by David Gate and you can find him @davidgatepoet on Instagram. We'll get it right in the show notes.
[00:22:30] Continuing along with maybe short books that I knew I'd be able to finish; I finally made time for Three Days in June by Ann Tyler. Let me tell you why I finally picked this one up. I, as I mentioned, have kept reading throughout maternity leave. I feel pretty good about the reading rhythm I was able to maintain in a chaotic, relatively restless season. But because sleepless isn't quite accurate, I still feel like I've been able to sleep pretty well. That's because Jordan Jones has done those overnight feedings and it's because I've had a lot of help from a village of my people and I'm super grateful for that. So it feels disingenuous to say a sleepless season and then restless doesn't quite capture it, but it's been a weird season. So I wasn't sure I was going to be able to maintain a reading rhythm, but I did. And I'm really grateful for it. However, one aspect of my reading life did kind of change, which is I did not find a ton of time for audio books. I was rarely/never alone. And when I was, audio books are not how I typically consume books anyway.
[00:23:37] I listened to audio books when I'm on walks or when I am in my car. I was almost never in my cars, certainly never alone in my car. And on walks, I was frequently listening to music with a baby, like singing to a baby. So, anyway, just a kind of a weird season in audiobook land. But finally, in August, I thought, well, let me try listening to audio books while I do bottles. Like maybe if I add in an audio book rhythm to a specific task. And so I thought well bottles are a pain. We're having to sanitize bottle; it's a whole thing. It's a full process. And so, I was scrolling through my Libro.fm account and I realized nobody told me this. Y'all didn't tell me this. Three Days in June by Ann Tyler is a super short audiobook because it's a really short book narrated by J. Smith Cameron who plays Jerry on Succession. And I was like, oh, this is great. So I immediately downloaded the audiobook files and started listening to it. Loved the audiobook. Listened to it one night while I was merchandising The Bookshelf, and then finished it up in physical format. Because again sometimes that's just faster for me. But all in all, fantastic.
[00:24:55] And I knew that I would like this book. I knew I would have a good time with it. If you are hesitant to pick this one up because it's in June, June has passed. I don't know who else is like that. I'm a little bit like that. I really wanted to read this one this summer. There's nothing super summery about this book. You could call it three days in September and it would feel the exact same. So, if you're hesitant because you're like June is over, there's really nothing explicitly summery about this book. The book takes place over three days, the course of a wedding, where a mother and father who are separated are now under the same roof, coping with their daughters’ impending nuptials. And there is so much-- I didn't realize, but a lot of the books I read this month were books about midlife. If you are one of our listeners, because I do think we get requests from this fairly regularly, books about middle age or books with older protagonists, this would definitely fit the bill. And I absolutely loved it. I marked a couple of passages that I really enjoyed. Definitely dysfunctional family story.
[00:26:05] Again, this is a quiet book. Not a ton happens, but it's so short that I loved it. And I was hooked, which I would not always say that I'm hooked when a book is quiet or thoughtful or introspective, but these characters are so very real and quirky. The main character in particular, she has just kind of, I guess, lost her job. There's some complications there, but she's just lost her job. She's separated, divorced from her husband. She has been divorced for years, but all of a sudden he's kind of back in the picture as they reached this parenting milestone together of their child marrying. I just loved it. Weirdly, if you like Fleabag, I think you'll like this. It's not as biting or not as maybe witty as Fleabag, but that family dynamic that we get in the first episode of Fleabag Season Two, I think there's some of that dynamic at play in this one. I really liked it. And the audio book narration is fantastic. So that is Three Days in June by Ann Tyler, narrated by J. Smith Cameron.
[00:27:16] Okay, then big book time. So I've been trying to read for fall. August is such a weird-- oh, y'all know I'm trying so hard. I've tried so hard to have a good attitude about August and every year it brings me to my knees. Every year it breaks me. But I have found myself in August really going back and forth between summer books and fall books. So for example, I would call The Most, which is set in November, but it felt summery to me. It was set on a warm day at a swimming pool. The Academy is a fall book set over the course of a year, so it covers way more than just fall, but it's at a boarding school so it feels autumnal. Three days in June, I just told you it could be three days in September and it'd be the exact same book. But because of the title, I thought, okay, that's kind of summery. Then I picked up Buckeye. Buckeye is a book that releases on September 2nd, so coming up real soon. I don't know, but if I had to guess, you're going to see this book a lot of places. It would not shock me. I'm not privy to this information. This is pure speculation, but it would not shock me if it's a celebrity book club pick of some kind. It feels like it could be a Jenna pick. Again, I have been given no indication that it is a Jenna pick.
[00:28:32] This is a long one. And yet just like I was impressed with The Most for being 130 pages, I'm equally impressed with Buckeye because it never felt too long. Maybe there were some descriptions that could have been shorter, but overall worth every page I guess is what I'm trying to say. So if you're daunted by it when you see it at the store, I wouldn't be. I think it actually reads much shorter than it actually is. So Buckeye is set in small town, Ohio. This is one of those books that undoubtedly will be described as a sweeping novel or an epic novel. Those are normally words that do not work for me, but this one did. It's set in a small town in Ohio, spanning from World War II to the Vietnam War. There are four kind of main characters. To me, the mainest character, the major protagonist, the leading man of this book is Cal. Cal is a man who was born and raised in I'm guessing the pronunciation is Bonhomie, Ohio. I'm not quite sure.
[00:29:39] Born and raised there, he wants to go to war alongside his peers for World War II, but he is not drafted or does not get called up because he has one leg that's shorter than the other. And this is one of the defining aspects of Cal's life. He is married to Becky. Becky is-- how would I describe Becky? She's a seer. Meaning she convenes with the dead. Again, if I were to read about that on the back of a book, which I did, that is part of the reason this has been sitting on my TBR stack for so long, because I thought, is this going to be some magical realism stuff? Which is fine. And in fact, you as a listener may love that. That's not what this is. I thought that it would be, but it's not. She really does have this connection to spirits and to the spiritual world. And so that is one of the defining aspects of her personality. Then we meet Margaret. Margaret Salt is a really interesting complex character. She is raised in an orphanage, never adopted, although the woman who runs the orphanage takes a real care and liking to her. And then I honestly think that the way she was left at the orphanages affects how Margaret is as an adult and who she becomes as an adult.
[00:31:00] She ultimately marries Felix, who is maybe a slow burn in terms of he's hesitant to show her very much physical affection. They do deeply love each other, but Felix has some things he is grappling with behind the scenes that Margaret doesn't know about and that we only come to know later. So the book follows those four characters from pre-World War II or middle of World War II to the Vietnam War, all in this tiny Ohio town. If you like The Women, if you like In Memoriam, even if you liked The Names, I actually think there are similarities to those books here. I loved this one. This is a spoiler; this is not my Shelf Subscription selection. So if you're like, oh, it's probably Annie's Shelf Subscription pick, it's not. It could have been, but I picked something else that I really loved. So this one is fantastic to me. This is very autumnal book because you can hunker down with it. It's historical fiction, which is not always my jam, but here it totally worked for me. And I think it'll work for a wide range of readers. This is to me going to be a pretty easy hand sell this fall. So if you like The Women, In Memoriam, The Names, historical fiction, literary fiction, I think you're really going to like this one. It is called Buckeye by Patrick Ryan. It releases on September 2nd.
[00:32:24] Then last but not least, again, kind of went back and forth between summer and autumnal books. I decided to give it a go. I decided to give One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune a try. If you have listened to the podcast for a long time, I didn't love Every Summer After, Carley Fortunes first book. I was in the minority, which is why I feel comfortable saying that I didn't like it because I know most of you did and so it's okay that I didn't like it. It wasn't really for me. And so I haven't followed along too much. They do really well. Carley Fortune books do really well for The Bookshelf, but I have not really picked any of hers up, except then I saw that this one, One Golden Summer, was a sequel. It functions on its own, but it is in partnership with Every Summer After. Again, I did not love Every Summer after, so when I saw this was coming out, I was like, well, I don't need to try that because I didn't like the first one. Turns out this is better, charming. I really liked it. If you're looking for an end of summer romcom, here you go.
[00:33:23] Actually though, I do think it's probably more accurate to call this one a romance. There are at least two or three open-door scenes, which again you may love. And so you'll really enjoy this one. I loved the protagonist in this book. So Alice is a photographer. She's a bit insecure coming out of a relationship. Her grandmother, also a lovely character, has just-- gosh I'm trying to remember-- broken a hip or something like that. And so Alice decides to take her grandmother to the lake where they spent a summer together. And the caretaker of the lake house is a guy named Charlie. And I do really like that in this book there definitely is a conflict as there is in romances or romcoms, but there's just an immediate connection between Charlie and Alice and we don't mess around. Like it immediately they really do like each other. They develop this really fun friendship and it's set at a lake over the course of a summer. And the setting is fantastic. Which I liked the setting in Every Summer After. I just do not recall liking that one at all. But this one I loved. And I thoroughly enjoyed the characters. Maybe that was it. I really enjoyed Alice and Charlie and their romance. Probably a four star book for me.
[00:34:38] I liked it and I thought it was a fun end of summer book. And now I do feel like I'm done. I'm with summer reading for now. For this summer, I'm done. And so I'm moving on fully to fall books and maybe you are too, but I had a great time with One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune. We did it. Did I sound out of practice? I've been recording Don Quixote episodes, that is true. This is my first talk for 40 minutes by myself in a room that I have done in a long time. So again thank you for your patience this summer. I hope you enjoyed the episodes that we brought to you in July. Those are the books I read in August. If you are new here, or even if you've been around a long, with our reading recap episodes, we always do a book bundle that we sell on our store website.
[00:35:28] So the August reading recap bundle is $59 and it includes The Most, that is the Jessica Anthony novella set in November, A Rebellion of Care, which is the David Gate poetry collection, and Three Days in June by Ann Tyler. I really tried to pick books that wouldn't feel too summery and also we're not quite like embracing full autumn just yet. So those are the three books that we're including in this month's bundle at $59. You can find more details and purchase the bundle through the link in our show notes or just visit bookshelfthomasville.com and type today's episode number, that's 544, into the search bar. Also, I'm going to put a plug here for our fall Literary First Look. These are our seasonal Zoom events. We also do an in-person lunch, but I think most of you are long distance listeners. So we do a Zoom where I preview my favorite books of the season, so our fall Literary First Look is coming up on I believe it is September, drum roll please, September 10th. And you can find tickets through the link in our show notes as well, or just go to the website and click on events, and you should be able to find all the info you need. So if you're curious what other books I've been reading for fall, and what books I think you should read in this next season, you can tune in to that event. Okay, thank you guys for listening.
[00:36:55] This week, I'm listening to Dominion by Addie E. Citchens.
Annie Jones: From the Front Porch is a weekly podcast production of The Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in Thomasville, Georgia. You can follow The Bookshelf’s daily happenings on Instagram at @bookshelftville, and all the books from today’s episode can be purchased online through our store website:
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Our Executive Producers of today’s episode are…
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