Hey everyone, and welcome back to My Sister's TBR! We're Stacey and Rebecca—your favorite sister duo back with our July wrap-up episode! This month, something wild happened: Rebecca outread Stacey. (No, really. The world tilted. A prophecy was fulfilled. We have the Goodreads receipts.) Stacey hit a bit of a reading slump while Rebecca spiraled into a whirlwind of short stories, romance novels, and a five-star reading high that knocked her into next month.
In this episode, we’re recapping all the reads from July: the sweet, the swoony, the mysterious, and the murdery (yep). We’re also diving deep into our featured read, Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry, which had us unpacking grief, gossip, secret NDAs, and sisters (both fictional and very real—hi!). Let’s get into it:
What We Read in July:
Stacey's Stack (3 Books)
🖤 Queen of Shadows by Sarah J. Maas – 5 stars. “John Wick but make her an assassin with sarcasm and daggers.” Obsessed. The Throne of Glass series continues to wreck lives and we love that for us.
🖤 Every Summer After by Carley Fortune – also 5 stars. The nostalgia? Immaculate. The lake house summers? Dreamy. The emotional fallout? Gut-wrenching. It’s the reason Stacey’s in a slump now—nothing can compare.
🖤 Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry – our featured read!
Rebecca’s Stack (4 Books)
🩷 With Any Luck by Ashley Poston – 4 stars. A Valentine’s Day novella with magical realism, missing grooms, rekindled hookups, and a lovable best man. Tiny book, big charm.
🩷 Beach Read by Emily Henry – 5 stars. Augustus + January = banter-fueled brilliance. A rom-com that also tackles grief and writer’s block. Romance, but make it layered.
🩷 The Ex-Wives Club by Sally Hepworth – 3 stars. A short mystery with a Dark Places-adjacent dual timeline vibe. Celebrity chef found in the freezer. Sass, ex-wives, and a little The Other Woman energy.
🩷 Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry – More on that below 👀
July Featured Read ✨
5 stars from both sisters 💫
Every July, we feature an Emily Henry novel—and this year we got hit with a curveball. This isn’t your typical rom-com Henry. It’s less “kissing in beach houses” and more “dual biographies, generational trauma, and the truth-vs-story tightrope.” We loved it. Hard.
Set the Scene:
Alice is a hopeful, heart-forward writer with a people-person superpower. Hayden is a Pulitzer-winning literary thundercloud. They’re both vying to write the biography of Margaret Ives—a scandal-shrouded heiress who’s finally ready to tell her story. But Margaret isn’t making it easy. Both writers get different pieces of the puzzle, wrapped in ironclad NDAs, and they can’t share notes. Oh, and there’s some serious slow-burn yearning happening across their respective notebooks.
Why We Loved It:
💬 Banter.
💔 Grief and complicated family dynamics.
👯♀️ Sibling drama, cults, and a huge twist we didn’t see coming.
💞 Romance that simmers in the background but isn’t the point.
📖 Quotes that had us screaming into the void:
“I think you live in a world that's more interesting than the one most people live in... I wish I could live in it too.”
“It’s yours,” he offers. “You can have mine.” [World. Heart. Whole damn cosmos.]
We unpacked it all in the episode—from Alice’s complicated relationship with her mom, to Margaret’s tragic backstory, to how we'd react if one of us joined a cult. (Spoiler: The other would immediately fly in and drag us out by the ear.)
Final Verdict:
If you’re in a romance slump, if you love a layered narrative with dual timelines and unreliable narrators, or if you’ve ever loved someone so much it cracked you open a little—read this. Then come scream about it with us.
That’s a wrap on July!
Whether you read five books or fought your way through a slump like Stacey (we see you 💕), thanks for being here. We’ll be back in two weeks with more chaos, new releases, and a fresh stack of TBR hopefuls.
Make sure to:
🩷 Leave us a comment on Spotify
🩷 Follow us on Instagram @mysisterstbr
🩷 Read along with our next featured pick (TBA 👀)
Toodles! ✌️
Share this post