Blog Tour Review: Temple of Swoon

Posted January 6, 2025 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

When I first saw RAIDERS OF THE LOST HEART, it immediately became one of my most anticipated books of the year. There’s something about a romance with a super unique, adventure-filled premise that intrigues me. I enjoyed the general concept of SOMETHING WILDER by Christina Lauren for example – yes that one got a little far-fetched at times but this kind of ~adventure~ story mixed with rom-com elements has me written all over it for some reason. I ended up enjoying RAIDERS quite a bit, and seeing TEMPLE OF SWOON announced soonafter was a dream come true. Another rom-com with archeologists and Indiana Jones vibes? Yes, keep them coming, Jo Segura! TEMPLE OF SWOON follows Miri (mentee of the MC from the first book) and Rafael (a journalist with an overbearing father who forced him on this mission even though he tried to quit). Miri is looking for the lost City of the Moon and leading her first expedition without any help. Rafael’s mother and her ancestors had been protecting the lost city for years; his real reason for being there is to sabotage the mission on her behalf (and his father’s) to ensure its legacy remains intact. He didn’t expect to start falling for Miri and her tenacity though! This book was even better than Segura’s debut – the same Indiana Jones adventure vibes were prevalent without being too unrealistic. The romance was excellent. Yes, the two had a little bit of instalove, but I enjoyed it a lot. […]

January TBR

Posted January 3, 2025 / Book Lists, Features, TBR Lists / 1 Comment

My monthly TBR feature here shows my progress based on last month’s TBR, my plans for this month, and anything else I might be thinking about from a reading perspective. Sometimes I feature a little poll at the bottom so you guys can help me figure out a certain title I should read from a group of books. January TBR I skipped my December TBR due to the uncertainty of holiday reads…I also did a terrible job of predicting my EOY reads as well. Lots of novellas, but oh well. I love the beginning of a year where I can wipe the slate clean and I’m super excited for the books on deck! Review Copies I already decided my first book of the year will be SAY YOU’LL REMEMBER ME, even though it comes out in April. I know I’ll love it and need that kind of energy for the start of the year. The other January review copy I want to get to is YIN YANG LOVE SONG because Lauren Kung Jessen is an auto-read now. Upcoming Releases January has a few key new releases on my radar that I’m 95% sure I’ll get to in the month. The newest Wayward Children book comes out in the beginning of the month and I always listen to the audiobook right away once its released. They’re short and easy to get off on the right foot for my reading challenge. BEG, BORROW, OR STEAL is a hiiiiighlyyy anticipated read for […]

2024 End of Year Wrap-Up and Stats

Posted January 2, 2025 / Features, Wrap-Ups / 0 Comments

103 Books Read I don’t like finishing the year with a number ending in three (I prefer a 0 or 5) but whatever, let’s get over that and move on. As always, I’d like to share some final statistics for the year! Books Read Yet again I’ve had some success in keeping my combined romance/mystery/thriller section under 75% – this year I finished around 67% between those genres. I think I’d like to read a lot more fantasy next year – I’m just kind of feeling it. I’d also like to increase my literary fiction category. As always, “mixed” format was my biggest category. This will continue to increase as time goes on because I’ve found myself mixing in the Spotify Audiobooks more and more. It’s just so easy! I was thinking I’d find a better way to track that next year but I’m too lazy. Maybe that’s for 2026… I still need to prioritize reading books on my shelves and the ones I keep buying… but I really loved Libby and my Kindle this year, clearly! This was a weird year for me, especially at the end – I read a ton of mid books in November/December. I feel like 4 stars is usually my most popular rating but I am a little alarmed that 3.5 is so close this year. Hopefully I can focus on reading some really good stuff for next year. So yes generally speaking I can read 8 books a month with a few exceptions […]

Holiday Review: The Holiday Honeymoon Switch

Posted January 1, 2025 / Book Reviews / 1 Comment

Story If you’re a fan of THE HOLIDAY (people switching houses around the holidays) and strong friendship stories, this could be a good Christmassy read for you. Holly and Ivy (lol yes they discuss how funny their names are together) are best friends. When Holly gets broken up with the day before her wedding, she can’t bear the idea of still going on her Hawaiian honeymoon but still needs an escape. Ivy had planned to head to an eco-friendly cabin in NY for her annual two-week art retreat during the same timeframe, so they end up switching places. Naturally some romance occurs in each location for the two main characters. I can’t decide if I didn’t love the characters themselves or if I just didn’t like how the author wrote them (like her writing style for them?). I didn’t feel overly connected to them and thought the writing style was just not great? The concept was good, the friendship vibes were strong, and the third act “breakups” / miscommunication were minimal, which is a plus. Wintery Setting & Holiday Feels The story alternates between a very Christmassy setting in upstate New York and a not-so-wintery Kauai. Both places had nice Christmas vibes though. It was fun because I’ve actually been to both settings in this book! I liked how they made holiday traditions in both settings even though one of them had warm, beachy weather. The small town in New York was really cute and holiday-ish, especially with the parade […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #460: Best of 2024

Posted December 31, 2024 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 0 Comments

Favorite Books of 2024 Top Ten Tuesdays were started by The Broke and the Bookish and are now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, where we make lists of our top ten books (or something else!) based on that week’s prompt. The topics are provided ahead of time and can be found here. Book links bring you to Goodreads or my review. I recently filled out a little survey for Instagram based on my favorite old blogging survey so I thought it would be easiest to share a couple of those graphics here!

2025 Challenges

Posted December 30, 2024 / Book Challenges, Features / 0 Comments

I don’t think I announced my 2024 challenges like I have in year’s past, but I’m doing something a little different this year. I’ve abandoned the Popsugar Reading Challenge because it’s similar to the 52 Book Club and I think one challenge of that type is good enough. I preferred the prompts for 52BC this year. Anyways, here are my plans for 2025 reading challenges! Buzzword Challenges Booksandlala, my favorite booktube channel, always hosts these challenges and this is my first time joining in! She’s doing two this year – one book titles and one for book covers. You need to read a book with a certain word in its title or a certain item/theme on the cover. Kayla breaks this into monthly challenges but some people just try to read the 12 books throughout the year without intentionally reading them during that month. I haven’t decided yet how I want to work on this challenge. I had a few ideas. I never completed my 24 in 24 but thought this could be a fun way to use the same idea for 2025 and try to figure out which books I “have” to read this year and make a set TBR to read one per month that applies to the prompts. I’m REALLY bad at challenges with set TBRs though… any time I’ve done a “must read” thing, it’s failed. In a perfect world that’s semi-realistic, I would like to read each book during the set month. In a more […]

Holiday Reviews: The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year and A Winter Wish

Posted December 25, 2024 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 0 Comments

Story I’ve been an Ally Carter stan since I was a preteen so you know I’m going to be here for anything she puts out. I didn’t love her previous adult mystery/romance and was really hoping this one would be better for me. I’m thrilled to report that it was! Maggie and Ethan are rival mystery book authors (according to Maggie at least). They’re both heading out on a mysterious Christmas trip, no clue that they were invited by the Agatha Christie of their time (Eleanor Ashley). They, along with members of Eleanor’s family, were brought to her huge mansion/castle in the English countryside for some reason. When Eleanor goes missing a few days before Christmas, Maggie and Ethan use their crime, poison, and general mystery trope knowledge to try to figure out what happened and where she is. I really enjoyed the romance between these two and the setting was incredible. Only one bed, enemies-to-lovers, he-fell-first… all the good tropes! The fact that there was also a mystery in the backdrop made this book even better. Carter did a great job balancing both genres IMO but I do wish there was a liiiittle more of the mystery. I think the Knives Out plus holiday rom-com comparison was perfect for this book, which also means additional puzzles, riddles, and time with other characters would have been welcome. Wintery Setting & Holiday Feels The book is set at a snowy castle on 20,000 acres in England with no phone signal, plus […]

Top Ten Tuesdays #458: Santa

Posted December 24, 2024 / Top 10 Tuesdays, Weekly Memes / 1 Comment

Books I Hope Santa Brings Me Top Ten Tuesdays were started by The Broke and the Bookish and are now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl, where we make lists of our top ten books (or something else!) based on that week’s prompt. The topics are provided ahead of time and can be found here. Book links bring you to Goodreads or my review. As usual, I could go a month and a half without posting a TTT and then there’s a TBR-related one… I’m back! I’m going to include the books I plan to finish my year with as of right now (writing this post 12/16), as well as January and February titles. There’s something about a new year that juices me up for reading again! On My Christmas List I put these five single books on my Christmas list and in the process of checking Amazon, I may have spoiled which ones were purchased lol. Oh well. I also added the TOG boxed set because I only read these from the library and I don’t even think I own them on my Kindle. What I’ll Buy/Preorder with Gift Cards All of these except the Nita Prose would be preorders that I’m excited to own next year! I’m hoping to get a B&N gift card because I don’t buy books from Amazon as a general rule but we’ll see what people do for me lol. I own the first Molly the Maid book as cute little paperback and want to collect […]

Ranking the Amazon Short Stories Read in 2024

Posted December 23, 2024 / Book Reviews / 0 Comments

Amazon has been releasing some exclusive short stories lately that come free with Prime/Kindle Unlimited… including audiobooks! I decided to read three of these collections in 2024: Improbable Meet-Cute (romance stories with meet cutes), Busybodies (quick mysteries), and Under the Mistletoe (spicy holiday romances). I thought it would be fun to rank all of the stories as well as the collections in general. Which overall collection had the highest rating? Which novellas did? Let’s go! Story Ranking The Exception to the Rule – Christina Lauren Worst Wingman Ever – Abby Jimenez Rosie and the Dreambout – Sally Thorne Staged – Elle Cosimano Cruel Winter with You – Ali Hazelwood A Classic Case – Alicia Thompson With Any Luck – Ashley Poston Drop, Cover, and Hold On – Jasmine Guillory The Reunion Dinner – Jesse Q. Sutanto All by My Elf – Olivia Dade Crime of Fashion – Emma Rosenblum Merriment and Mayhem – Alexandria Bellefleur Only Santas in the Building – Alexis Daria The Nosy Neighbor – Nita Prose Royal Valentine – Sariah Wilson Merry Ever After – Tessa Bailey One Lucky Subscriber – Kellye Garrett Collection Ranking Average rating: 3.91 stars This was very easily my favorite collection – I enjoyed the majority of the books (really all of them but one) and they only got slightly worse as they went on. But there were actual 5 and 4.5 star reads in here! What a treat. Average rating: 3.08 stars While this was a fun and worthwhile collection overall, […]

Holiday Review: Christmas Crimes at the Mysterious Bookshop

Posted December 18, 2024 / Book Reviews, Review Roundup / 1 Comment

Overall Average 3.5 stars across the 12 stories. This wasn’t a bad collection but not very memorable. I liked the stories that centered more around the bookstore. Lots of them were about authors or writers (which made sense) and had a ton of literary/mystery references. Probably a great collection for a classic mystery lover. Stories Black Christmas – Jason Starr This was a bit creepy and depressing to start off the book of stories, but I didn’t mind it. I could assume where it was going but the very end confused me. A Midnight Clear – Lyndsay Faye I kind of thought this was too similar to the first story but it took a more interesting turn toward the end. You expected it to go in one direction and it didn’t. Wolfe Trap – Loren D. Estleman This is meant to be a “Claudius Lyon Mystery” apparently and even though you could argue you don’t need to know anything about that series to read this little standalone, it definitely would have helped… I’m still pretty confused about who the characters were, including the narrator. The ending was funny but overall not worth the effort and confusion.” Secret Santa – Ace Atkins This was my favorite so far, easily! You expect a certain story arc and it repeatedly changes. The author did a whole lot in a short story. “The Writer” character himself went up and down in likability as well – lot of complexity in this. The Gift of the […]