The Bookish Mindset

Sometimes it feels overwhelming scrolling through social media or browsing through bookshops with so much choice. Summer is well on it’s way and you’re looking for something juicy to get stuck into. Let me help you choose what to read this month. Each month I create an exclusive list of the months new releases for our patreon group, it’s one of the groups favourite features.

So let me share some of my favourite new releases for June. Just tap on the titles to get more info from Bookshop.org and to support my work.

A Forgery of Fate – Elizabeth Lim. Fantasy. Hardback. “Beauty and the Beast meets The Little Mermaid in an East-Asian inspired world”. Publish date: 05/06

Ordinary Love – Marie Rutkoski. Literary. Hardback. Set to be a big hitter, Emily and Gen used to be in love and 20 years later they find each other again, involved in each others far from straightforward lives. Publish date: 12/06

Jamaica Road – Lisa Smith. Literary. Hardback. Set in a British-Jamaican community, friends fall apart and then find their ways back to each other. Publish date: 12/06

Wild Moon Rising – Jenny Knight. Literary. Hardback. A moving debut about a post marriage, post menopause Claire as she reclaims her life. Publish date: 19/06

Wearing the Lion – John Wiswell. Fantasy. Hardback. A Hercules retelling with queer found family vibes. Publish date: 19/06

We Are Green and Trembling – Gabriela Cabezon Camara. Historical. Hardback. A “reimagining for South America’s most famous trans me”. Publish date: 12/06

The Last Soldier of Nava – Yejin Suh. Fantasy. Hardback. A debut with Korean inspired mythology, sapphic rep and shadow magic set to heal a nation. Publish date: 19/06

Augmented – Kenechi Udogu. Sci-Fi. Paperback. A dystopian future where extreme weather has depleted plant life, Aakego finds a way to help their growth. Publish date: 05/06

The Passengers on The Hankyu Line – Hiro Arikawa. Literary. Paperback. From the author of The Travelling Cat Chronicles comes a novel set on the scenic Japanese railway, split between five commuter encounters. Publish date: 05/06

Wish You Were Her – Elle McNicoll. Romance. Paperback. Set between bookshops and book festivals with autistic rep and enemies to lovers trope too. Publish date: 05/06

No Small Thing – Orlaine McDonald. Literary. Paperback. Set between grand mother, mother and child this is not one to miss. One of my favourite reads of last year. Publish date: 05/06 (Bookshop.org current have 10% because it’s their current book on the month! Use code SMALL for the discount!)

Like A Love Story – Abdi Nazemian. Romance. Paperback. Set in 1980’s in the arts, a story of friendship and identity. Publish date: 05/06

All That We’ve Got – Jendella Benson. Literary. Paperback. Over a summer, two women’s collide in ways they couldn’t imagine. I LOVED this one. Gritty and addictive. Publish date: 26/06

Queen B – Juno Dawson. Fantasy. Paperback. We’ve had part one and two of this exciting trilogy and now we’re going back to the beginning with Queen B. Set before book one (Her Majesty’s Royal Coven), and tells the story of Anne Boleyn. Publish date: 19/06

Have you planned to pick any of these up? I’d love to know!

Time is running out to enter my reading challenge, check it out here! Read nine books from nine prompts over the first six months of the year and be entered into a draw to win a bundle of bookish goodies.

If you like what you’ve read and would like to access more content, I’d love if you could take a look at my patreon and consider supporting my content on there too. You can also find more content on my Instagram here.

And don’t forget to check out my other blogs and reviews – you can find books with similar themes in the same folder link below, or click back onto blogs to see the whole offering.

Last updated 05/06/2025