June 2025 roundup 🤠

a chaotic summary of all the things I clung to while pretending to have my life together once again...

Something a little different for the end of my first month here on substack - welcome to my monthly roundup (yeehaw), where I get to share my reading habits, food personalities, playlist obsessions, life highlights, and all the brain chaos in between.

📚 reading
I would say my reading habits this month were like when you realise you haven’t eaten a vegetable in two weeks and suddenly ram down as many greens as you can, like a raccoon in a dumpster at midnight. But make it gay and existential.

The Wedding People - Alison Enoch ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Not usually something I would go for so I’m glad I went in completely blind off the back of a podcast recommendation. Essentially, it follows a suicidal woman who accidentally gets roped into a strangers’ week long wedding celebration. The way she can observe things so objectively and then slowly starts to unravel about her own life in the process? Weirdly comforting and confronting yet beautifully done. Big quiet ache energy.

Atmosphere - Taylor Jenkins Reid ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Gay. 1980’s Space program. Need I say more?
It felt like I had lived this life before. Like watching a documentary of two people I had known for a very long time. Less like I was being told something new, more like remembering an old story or memory another countless time. It has a softness about it which I completely fell into.
I loved this book almost as much as I loved Evelyn Hugo, and I don’t say that lightly. I couldn’t put it down and if you really want to feel immersed in Joan’s world, the audio book is perfect too.

Want to keep up with my book chaos and see what books I finish in 2 days or abandon dramatically at 20%?
📚 Goodreads
🎧 Fable

And if you see all my library full of smut… hell yeah you did.

🍓 eating
This month’s food personality has been: anything I can eat while walking home because I refuse to go to the supermarket again. I am a woman on the edge, living off snacks and convenience like it’s an Olympic sport.

Current obsessions include:

Yo-Chi
Half açai, half chocolate fro-yo (don’t come for me — it works). Toppings are a very specific science: strawberries, kiwi, watermelon, both strawberry and kiwi popping balls (yes, both), mango or strawberry mochi, and an emotionally healing chunk of cookie dough.
I’m not saying this is a personality trait… but it kind of is.
For those at home in the UK, yes you are missing out.

Juta Mango Biche
Once a place I just walked past when going to the West End Markets has now completley changed my tastebuds with their frozen mango.
A Columbian drink that’s made with blended mango, mint and lemon, then seasoned with salt, pepper, chamoy and tajin for a wild sweet-sour-spicy flavour contrast.
I think about this drink at least once a day - no exaggeration.

🎧 my june playlist
If I’m not walking across a bridge in Brisbane pretending I’m in a music video, at least 3 times a week, I’m not living my life seriously enough.
A mix of music and podcasts I’ve been orbiting around all month.

View Between Villages (Extended Version) – Noah Kahan
Manchild - Sabrina Carpenter
Shameless Podcast
The Affair with Anna Williamson Podcast

spotify playlists I have had on repeat
’oh and another thing’ taylor swift songs
cunty songs for the girlies
it’s ovulation week baby

✨life highlight

I remember watching Blue Planet years ago, seeing whales on screen and just knowing — one day, I had to see them in the wild for myself. After a few attempts, I got to catch a glimpse of them on the final weekend of June in Byron Bay. I was on a boat in a whole bucket load of rain, somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, drenched head to toe but completely and utterly in awe of the absolutely magnificent creatures we get to share this planet with up close.
It felt almost magical.
I sobbed. A lot.

💭 thinking about
Lately, I’ve been having a lot of conversations with my friends about two very different topics: one, the importance of not letting someone else be in charge of your goals (or your life, really), and two, the wild thrill of knowing that our lives are still completely unraveling.
Most of us don’t have a clue where we’ll be living in six months, let alone in a few years. Catch us on a bad day and we’re spiralling into full existential dread, but right now? I’m riding the high of possibility. How lucky I am to even get to make these decisions. To build something that’s mine. And when that changes because of course it will, I can change with it.

So that’s been my June, behind the posts.
Feel free to leave me any recs because adding to my already never-ending TBR is my favourite hobby.

off to live another 31 days,
trying not to get too famous I get cancelled,
Jess
xxx