August Wrap-Up: My Favorite Reads of the Month

The Bossy Bookworm
Aug 29
6 min read

Bossy Favorites of the Month

I've read a lot of books I've loved this month, in a range of genres. Here are my six favorites, although I had to deliberate a little bit before settling on this list.

What are some of your favorite reads of August?

01 Heartwood by Amity Gaige

Amity Gaige's Appalachian Trail-set novel offers several of my favorite elements: a Maine setting, a missing-person storyline, an unforgiving wilderness, and a strong woman succeeding in a male-dominated field. This mystery hit the spot for me.

But the nonbeliever is in a bind, because without God, who forgives? Human beings are pretty unforgiving. The law certainly isn’t forgiving. Forgiveness needs a messenger.

Amity Gaige's Heartwood offers the story of Beverly, a dedicated Maine State Game Warden who has fought for years for an amount of respect to match her commitment and ability, and Valerie, an Appalachian Trail hiker who has gone missing 200 miles from her final destination.

Wheelchair-bound Lena, who is following the search from afar, Valerie, and Bev are inexorably connected, and Valerie's survival depends upon the other two women's bravery and relentlessness. Meanwhile, the novel explores imperfect parenting, compounding mistakes by clinging to fear or regret, and against-the-odds second chances. Forgiveness is a concept that emerges again and again here.

I love a Maine setting, a missing-persons story, and a tale of brave women thriving in a traditionally male career. This story is so intriguing, I had trouble putting it down.

Amity Gaige is also the author of O My Darling, The Folded World, Schroder, and Sea Wife.

Check out the titles at the links here for more missing person stories and for more books set in Maine.

For my full review of this book please see Heartwood.

02 A Family Matter by Claire Lynch

Claire Lynch's novel shapes two timelines separated by decades into an engrossing, complicated family story of forbidden love, secrets, impending death, and second chances, against a backdrop of everyday minutiae. I read this in a day; I loved it.

In A Family Matter, we track a British family along two timelines. In 1982, Dawn, a young mother in a fine but loveless marriage finds happiness in a socially unacceptable relationship, and the legal backlash causes her to lose custody of--and contact with--her beloved young daughter Maggie.

In 2022, Heron, Maggie's father, has just received terrible news about his health, and he works to come to terms with it within his carefully prescribed daily routine and regular banal conversations with Maggie and family.

It becomes clear that Maggie is unaware of the particular circumstances around her parents' divorce and the reason for her mother's subsequent disappearance--until a clean-out of her childhood home reveals long-held secrets.

I read this engrossing family story in a day and can't wait to read future fiction by Claire Lynch.

Claire Lynch is also the author of Irish Autobiography and Small: On Motherhoods.

For more family stories I've loved, check out the books at this link.

For my full review of this book please see A Family Matter.

03 Trust by Hernan Diaz

This story-within-a-story-within-a-story reveals a clever woman working within the 1920s confines of her sex to outsmart Wall Street while retaining a conscience while showcasing foolish, greedy men determined to manipulate the truth in order to paint themselves in a better light. I was intrigued by the structure and by the peeks behind the curtains of a wealthy family and one woman's financial acumen.

In 1920s New York, Benjamin Rask is a ruthless, outrageously successful Wall Street tycoon, and his beloved wife Helen is the daughter of quirky intellectual aristocrats. They have exceeded any imaginable measure of success and wealth, and their elite financial position and power has in turn catapulted them to the peaks of social status.

But dark secrets lie behind their intriguing success. Diaz's novel explores multiple versions of the couple's story through various points of view, which together present fascinating questions about the true story of two disparate personalities, their marriage, and their intertwined success.

The structure of the novel is intriguing; through shifting perspectives and increasingly occluded reality, the reader must choose a narrative to believe. Characters come off as less realistic than their fictionalized versions (who are main protagonists of the story inside a story), and the ability of those with money and power to manipulate the truth into pure fiction is chilling--and chillingly familiar these days.

Hernan Diaz won the Pulitzer Prize for Trust. He is also the author of In the Distance.

For my full review, please check out Trust.

04 Vera, or Faith by Gary Shteyngart

Gary Shteyngart's story of an uncommonly intelligent fifth-grader, Vera, allows for a precocious child's point of view and observations that are delightfully spot-on and insightful. This is zany, heartwarming, often funny, and just lovely.

Through precocious fifth-grader Vera's point of view in Vera, or Faith, we get to know her family, the Bradford-Shmulkins, and its various dynamics.

The family lives in New York City, and Vera's parents, Anne Mom (her stepmother, a stay-at-home-mom at times derogatorily called Trad Wife) and Daddy (a culturally Russian, self-aggrandizing magazine editor and sometimes-writer), struggle to cope with financial pressures and relationship issues, while young Vera tries to simply make a friend at school and find her biological mother--while avoiding her annoying little brother's roughhousing and meathead games.

This was wryly funny, sometimes zany, and so very heartwarming.

Gary Shteyngart is also the author of The Russian Debutante's Handbook, Absurdistan, Super Sad True Love Story, and other novels.

I received a prepublication edition of this title, which was published July 8, courtesy of Random House Publishing Group and NetGalley.

For my full review, please check out Vera, or Faith.

05 A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck by Sophie Elmhirst

Sophie Elmhirst's A Marriage at Sea is the true story of a couple whose sailing trip to New Zealand becomes a fight for survival. This is nonfiction that seems too incredible to be true, and I was hooked on the details of their 118-day-long struggles on the ocean.

Sophie Elmhirst revisits a decades-old true story that she crafts like fiction, skillfully using dry firsthand accounts and subsequent interviews to build a fascinating, fluid, compelling nonfiction book about a couple whose ambitious sailing trip from England to New Zealand was abruptly halted when a whale breached beneath their sailboat, capsizing it.

Elmhirst manages to shape a suspenseful nonfiction work despite the Maralyn and Maurice's significant periods of isolation, struggle, and repetitive tasks. She delves into their inner lives, exploring the workings of their relationship and fleshing out an intriguing dynamic against the unforgiving backdrop of the endless-seeming expanse of ocean and 118 days of clawing for survival.

The story's pacing doesn't flag, although the tale sets a slower tempo as Maurice and Maralyn settle into a daily pattern of fishing, gathering water, and struggling to keep their minds occupied--a measure that is largely driven by Maralyn. Maurice is frank about his deteriorating emotional state and his reliance upon Maralyn's unfailing determination.

Click here for my full review.

If you love nonfiction books, you might like the titles on my Greedy Reading Lists Six Compelling Nonfiction Reads , Six Favorite Nonfiction and Memoir Reads of the Year, Six Nonfiction and Memoir Reads I Loved, Six of My Favorite Nonfiction Reads, or these other nonfiction books I've reviewed.

06 The Knight and the Moth (Stonewater Kingdom #1) by Rachel Gillig

The shadowy, eerie tone of the first title in Gillig's Stonewater Kingdom series gives way to heartwarming, sometimes funny moments as an unlikely pack of allies sets out on a journey of discovery, complete with battles, evolving loyalties, and an increasingly high-stakes quest. The romantic aspect is less essential than the fantasy elements, which I appreciated.

The first book in Rachel Gillig's Stonewater Kingdom series, The Knight and the Moth, considers Sybil Delling ("Six") and a group of five other foundling girls who have given up ten years of their lives to serve as Diviners, dedicating themselves wholly to being submerged in magical waters and conveying their visions and dreams of Omens at her abbess's whim.

But the shrouded girls, who have bonded over the years like family, begin to disappear, and Sybil doubts for the first time whether their collective purpose is holy and noble after all. She starts to question the motivations of those with influence, including the abbess who has tasked them with the violent drowning dreams and the Omens themselves.

I don't love an overly swoony, melodramatic "romantasy" story in which characters' energy is spent on pining and obsessing, where dramatic declarations overshadow a novel's fantasy elements. The Knight and the Moth is built on a spare yet satisfying fantasy world with a limited number of characters and an essential engaging romance aspect that is far more than a swoony distraction. I really, really liked this balance. I can't wait for the next books in this series.

For my full review, please check out this link.