# July Book Dump

- Link: https://blog.jouskaio.me/july-book-dump/
- Published: 2026-08-09T19:35:01+02:00
- Author: Manon Salsou

Another month, another little stack of books 📚

Here’s a look at what I read this month — the stories that kept me turning pages,
the ones that surprised me, and a few that might just stay with me for a while.

Let’s take a look at this month’s reads. ✨

 [](https://blog.jouskaio.me/book/yellowface/)

##  󠀁[Yellowface](https://blog.jouskaio.me/book/yellowface/)󠁿 󠀁[#](https://blog.jouskaio.me/july-book-dump/#book-220)󠁿

 **By** Rebecca F. Kuang

  Finished

 Psychological thriller Satire

 ⚠ Violence ⚠ Abuse

### Summary

Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars: same 
year at Yale, same debut year in publishing. But Athena’s a cross-genre literary
darling, and June didn’t even get a paperback release. Nobody wants stories about
basic white girls, June thinks. So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak
accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an
experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers to the British
and French war efforts during World War I. So what if June edits Athena’s novel 
and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher
rebrand her as Juniper Song–complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn’t
this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That’s what June claims,
and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree. But June can’t get away from
Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June’s (stolen) success
down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how 
far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves. With its totally immersive
first-person voice, Yellowface takes on questions of diversity, racism, and cultural
appropriation not only in the publishing industry but the persistent erasure of 
Asian-American voices and history by Western white society. R. F. Kuang’s novel 
is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable.

The best way to hide a lie is in plain sight.

 * **Publisher:** Pile à Lire
 * **Published:** 9 August 2026
 * **Pages:** 336
 * **ISBN:** 978-0008532772

 [Buy this book](https://www.amazon.fr/Yellowface-Rebecca-F-Kuang/dp/000853277X)
[View on Pagebound](https://pagebound.co/books/390398a4-d83e-4987-84fc-bd032f35d233?view=about)

### My Review

 ⭐ 4 / 5

 **Started:** 20 July 2026 **Finished:** 1 August 2026

3/5

Enjoyment

4/5

Quality

5/5

Characters

4/5

Plot

Insufferable is the word I would use to describe the main character of this story,
June Hayward.

Rebecca F. Kuang, whose tragic series The Poppy War I had heard so much about, was
an amazing discovery through her novel Yellowface. Unlike many books where the main
character is portrayed as either a kind-hearted hero or a sarcastic antihero you
can’t help but grow attached to, Rebecca F. Kuang chose to make hers as insufferable
as possible.

Between racism, jealousy, betrayal, bad faith, pathetic behavior, and a complete
lack of self-awareness, you might expect June to eventually learn from her mistakes—
but not at all. That’s actually what makes this book so fascinating: every time 
you think she’s hit rock bottom, she somehow manages to dig herself even deeper.
What’s even more surprising is the confidence with which she keeps making one terrible
decision after another, even though most of her problems are entirely self-inflicted.

Overall, this was a huge favorite of mine. I’ll definitely be reading more of Rebecca
F. Kuang’s books.

 [↑ Back to list](https://blog.jouskaio.me/july-book-dump/#book-dump-toc)

 [](https://blog.jouskaio.me/book/nachtland/)

##  󠀁[Nachtland](https://blog.jouskaio.me/book/nachtland/)󠁿 󠀁[#](https://blog.jouskaio.me/july-book-dump/#book-201)󠁿

### translated by Maja Zade

 **By** Marius von Mayenburg

  Finished

 Satire Theater

### Summary

The people who buy paintings like this aren’t just driven by aesthetic desire. People
who buy paintings like this want a story. A story that catapults them into the orbit
of the Führer.

As Nicola and Philipp are clearing out their late father’s house, they find an old
painting stashed in the attic: a quaint watercolour of a church on a pale summer
day, signed ‘A. Hitler’.

Nicola wants to sell it. Philipp wants to keep it. Philipp’s wife Judith wants to
burn it.

A jagged satire from one of Germany’s foremost playwrights, Nachtland opened at 
the Young Vic Theatre, London, in February 2024.

There's no statement without the person making the statement, there's no art without
the artist.

 * **Publisher:** Faber & Faber
 * **Published:** 7 March 2024
 * **Pages:** 96
 * **ISBN:** 0571390382

 [Buy this book](https://www.amazon.fr/Nachtland-Marius-von-Mayenburg/dp/0571390382)
[View on Pagebound](https://pagebound.co/books/4e8403bf-5418-4f21-81b6-31c0a35bdb24)

### My Review

 ⭐ 3.5 / 5

 **Started:** 1 August 2026 **Finished:** 6 August 2026

3/5

Enjoyment

4/5

Quality

3/5

Characters

4/5

Plot

Nachtland, by Marius von Mayenburg, is a play that deliberately embraces provocation
as its dramatic engine. It exposes the worst in its characters to explore a burning
question: can we truly separate the artist from their work?

Through figures that are by turns opportunistic, moralizing, or simply overwhelmed
by their own contradictions, Mayenburg crafts a human gallery oscillating between
the grotesque and the disturbingly plausible.

The play multiplies its angles of attack: ethical debates, vulgar provocations, 
and parallels so heavy-handed they sometimes verge on irrelevance. Yet despite these
excesses, it manages to evoke a wide range of emotions. We laugh, we cringe, we 
feel outraged, but we also – sometimes reluctantly – understand the characters? 
reasoning, however twisted or exaggerated it may be. It is precisely in this tension
between rejection and comprehension that the play finds its strength.

Reading Nachtland, it is impossible not to think of contemporary debates surrounding
the separation between an artwork and its creator. The controversies involving Roman
Polanski during his Oscar recognition, or the public accusations surrounding Gérard
Depardieu, resonate strongly with the questions raised by the pLay. Nachtland seems
to converse with these cases, not to judge them, but to reveal how deeply they divide
us and expose our own moral contradictions.

On another level, the play reminded me of Le Prénom by Matthieu Delaporte, a French
comedy that sparked intense discussion upon its release. Both works share a similar
device: a family gathering that spirals out of control around a charged symbobvo
here a painting, there a name But while Le Prénom relies on 6-humor and social discomfort,
Nachtland pushes provocation much furtherluv ziotisq confronting the audience with
its own ehical boundarie.

Ultimately, Nachtland is disturbing, sometimes excessive, but indeniably stimulating
play. It forces us to face questions we often prefer to avoid, and or that may well
be its greatest achievement.

 [↑ Back to list](https://blog.jouskaio.me/july-book-dump/#book-dump-toc)

 [](https://blog.jouskaio.me/book/scythe/)

##  󠀁[Scythe](https://blog.jouskaio.me/book/scythe/)󠁿 󠀁[#](https://blog.jouskaio.me/july-book-dump/#book-272)󠁿

 **By** Neal Shusterman

  DNF

 Dystopian Fantasy Romance Science Fiction

 ⚠ Violence ⚠ Death ⚠ Drug Use ⚠ Abuse

### Summary

Thou shalt kill.

A world with no hunger, no disease, no war, no misery.

Humanity has conquered all those things, and has even conquered death. Now scythes
are the only ones who can end life-and they are commanded to do so, in order to 
keep the size of the population under control.

Citra and Rowan are chosen to apprentice to a scythe—a role that neither wants. 
These teens must master the “art” of taking life, knowing that the consequence of
failure could mean losing their own.

The greatest achievement of the human race was not conquering death. It was ending
government.

 * **Publisher:** Walker
 * **Published:** 10 August 2026
 * **Pages:** 441
 * **ISBN:** 9781442472426

 [Buy this book](https://www.walkerbooks.com.au/book/9781529512434/) [View on Pagebound](https://pagebound.co/books/397cb3b3-41ad-4df1-991c-9d003ff5d557)

### My Review

 ⭐ 2 / 5

 **Started:** 10 August 2026 **Finished:** 24 August 2026

1/5

Enjoyment

2/5

Quality

1/5

Characters

3/5

Plot

I unfortunately abandoned my reading of **Scythe**, despite some genuine qualities.

On paper, the world-building is very appealing: a society where death has been conquered,
where “Scythes” must decide who has to die in order to regulate the population. 
The theme is original and raises some great philosophical questions, even though,
in the portion I read, this potential remained fairly underexploited.

The novel does, however, deserve credit for offering main characters whose age is
finally consistent with their characterization. Here we avoid the recurring YA cliché
of the 13-year-old teenager who, with no particular background, already possesses
the maturity and expertise of a forty-year-old man. In the same vein, the romance,
while present, remains understated and never takes precedence over the plot. This
is rare enough to be worth pointing out, since this kind of subplot is usually poorly
handled in the genre, with romances that end up overtaking the story to the point
of erasing the world-building, and characters who fall in love for no reason other
than their looks. Here, it stays in its proper place, which suits me well since 
I don’t particularly enjoy this type of subplot when it becomes too overwhelming.

The novel’s real problem is its pacing. The plot takes an interminable amount of
time to get going: I understand the narrative logic — the characters are in training,
and it’s normal for that phase to take time — but almost nothing happens for far
too long. On top of that, the characters lack depth, especially the main protagonists,
which makes them bland and hard to connect with despite their central importance
to the story.

In the end, **Scythe** remains an enjoyable, undemanding YA read, carried by an 
appealing world at first glance. But between the slow start and the underdeveloped
characters, I couldn’t find the motivation to see it through to the end.

 [↑ Back to list](https://blog.jouskaio.me/july-book-dump/#book-dump-toc)

## Newsletter

**Stay in the loop! ✨**

 

Subscribe to my newsletter to get my latest updates, new articles, and thoughts 
on tech, projects, and what I’m building.

Name

Firstname

Email

I accept the privacy policy