☀️ Sunday Sharies: July 2024

a recipe for matcha cookies, 6 book reviews, and a pizza sauce that changes the game

It’s the last Sunday of the month, and you know what that means. There’s a lot of stuff we’d like to share that won’t fit in our usual Thursday TV newsletter. Some of that stuff is here. Read on for a special monthly peek into what your trusty Double Take duo has been watching, reading, listening to, and more.

— Jenni Cullen and Jess Spoll

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Jenni:

This has been a month of quick and easy reads for me, starting with the aptly titled Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez. It was very cute, if predictable, and while Emily Henry still has my favorite books in the modern romance/rom-com genre, Jimenez is a decent alternative. (3.5/5)

Next I picked up The Invocations by Krystal Sutherland. Dark academia meets serial-killer mystery meets queer witchy romance, this book was grim but unexpectedly good. I would suggest you wait a few months to read it though; it’s a perfect vibesy, spooky story for autumn. (4/5)

On Jess’s suggestion from a few weeks ago, I also read How to End a Love Story by Yulin Kuang. I liked it ok, but mostly I liked that her writing style made me excited to see her work on the Emily Henry adaptation, ‘Beach Read’. (3/5)

And then I finished the month off with a fantasy recommendation from BookTok, Throne in the Dark by A.K. Caggiano. It is extremely slow burn enemies-to-lovers with a low spice-level (at least in the first book), but a cute read that is part of a completed trilogy. I still haven’t decided if I’ll be reading more. (2.5/5)

Jess:

I got my hands on an advanced copy of Look in the Mirror by Catherine Steadman, and while I’m not finished with it yet, it had me hooked from the very first page. Instead of a slow-burn with one big twist at the end (as is standard in the thriller genre), Steadman maintains a pulse-pounding current of tension throughout her novels. This one centers around a mysterious mansion in the Caribbean that is bequeathed to an unsuspecting young English woman by her recently deceased father. When she goes to see what truths it might unearth about him, she discovers something sinister within. The book comes out July 30; if you’re a thriller fan, you won’t want to miss it.

After it came highly recommended by various friends and seemingly everyone on Goodreads, I picked up The Women by Kristin Hannah to read on vacation. For the uninitiated, note that this is very much not a beach read. It’s the story of a woman named Frankie who volunteers as a nurse in the Vietnam War after her brother enlists. Tracing Frankie’s journey from her spoiled upbringing in California to her rough and traumatizing days during the war and then back to an America in the middle of a cultural revolution, this novel is nearly 500 pages, and it feels like it. With lots of telling rather than showing, a grating main character, and flimsy romance, the only thing saving this for me was that it opened my eyes to what went on during the Vietnam War both abroad and at home — a subject that wasn’t covered in my high school history classes. (2.5/5)

Jess: It’s been a slow and weird month for TV and movies, but I guess that’s the summer for you. The movies are big and blockbuster-y and the TV is in the wings, waiting out the post-Emmy-nomination period before anything exciting can be released. But besides my first watch-through of Bridgerton (catch my thoughts on recent Double Take pod episodes!), I have seen a few movies of note in theaters…