The 20 Books of Summer Reading Challenge is hosted by Cathy from 746 Books, and I have taken on the full challenge of reading 20 books from June 3rd to September 3rd. The following is an update on my progress one month in.

It will be no surprise to anyone that I am very behind. I hit a bit of a slump in June, which is partly to blame for not finishing more books. However, I did finish two of the books on my #20booksofsummer list, so I technically made some progress.

Books Read So Far: 2

Pickle’s Progress by Marcia Butler

Over the course of five weeks, identical twin brothers, one wife, a dog, and a bereaved young woman collide against each other to hilarious and sometimes horrifying effect. Everything is questioned and tested as they jockey for position and try to maintain the status quo. Love is the poison, the antidote, the devil and, ultimately, the hero.

This debut novel was published in April, and I am very much looking forward to what Marcia Butler writes next. You can read my full book review here, but for the sake of this post I will say that although the story falls flat at the end, the writing makes reading worth it.

In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez

It is November 25, 1960, and three beautiful sisters have been found near their wrecked Jeep at the bottom of a 150-foot cliff on the north coast of the Dominican Republic. The official state newspaper reports their deaths as accidental. It does not mention that a fourth sister lives. Nor does it explain that the sisters were among the leading opponents of Gen. Rafael Leonidas Trujillo’s dictatorship. It doesn’t have to. Everybody knows of Las Mariposas—“The Butterflies.”

In this extraordinary novel, the voices of all four sisters—Minerva, Patria, María Teresa, and the survivor, Dedé—speak across the decades to tell their own stories, from hair ribbons and secret crushes to gunrunning and prison torture, and to describe the everyday horrors of life under Trujillo’s rule. Through the art and magic of Julia Alvarez’s imagination, the martyred Butterflies live again in this novel of courage and love, and the human cost of political oppression.

One of my new favorite books and authors – and I owe it to Book of Cinz and the #ReadCaribbean challenge. I initially checked this out of the library, but shortly after I found a copy at a local bookstore and thought “yes, I think I did see an empty spot on my bookshelf” (plus one more empty spot for a second Julia Alvarez book I picked up at the same time). Please add this to your TBR – immediate or at least short-term.