Reading in 2024 - December!

 1.  Bride, Ali Hazelwood - I had no intention of reading this book.  It has been all over booktok since I became obsessed with booktok, but I wasn't interested in the least....for a lot of reasons.  (Vampires are really not my thing.)  Then, Bride absolutely shocked me by showing up on NPR's Books We Love 2024.  With that endorsement, and needing a bit of a palate cleanser after an epic 1,800+ page trilogy, I decided to try it.  Friends, I think I love Ali Hazelwood.  This book was so much fun!  I absolutely love Misery, who is one of the more entertaining and unique main characters I've come across this year.  The story was engaging enough that I had trouble putting it down, and the spicy stuff was just right.  Bonus, a quick google search showed me that Hazelwood is working on a sequel!

2.  How My Neighbor Stole Christmas, Meghan Quinn - I wanted a spicy holiday rom-com, and I got a spicy holiday rom-com.  Enough said!  Well, except for my complaint that what I purchased was not a standard ebook and was instead 350 images of each page in tiny, tiny print with a lot of white space around the edge.  Normal functioning - like being able to adjust the font size - was not available because of this.  It was difficult to read, and had I not paid for it I'd probably have just deleted it and moved on.  Never, in my decade or so of reading ebooks, have I seen anything like it.  

3.  With Love, from Cold World, Alicia Thompson - You're going to see a theme here.  I wanted a holiday romance, I got a holiday romance.  This time, it's a recommendation from a friend.  This year, I'm just in the mood.  These novels are winning out over the movies because they do go a little deeper in terms of emotion.  And there are some surprisingly deep themes in this one.  Am I going to be converted into a contemporary romance reader?  Nope.  This feels very holiday and year specific.  

4.  The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year, Ally Carter - OK, this may be my favorite of the holiday books.  It's a cozy mystery and a romance, and the main characters are writers and so there are lots and lots of fun references.  Super fun!  Bonus points, the way the main character feels about holiday parties makes me feel very seen.  (Update - this ended up being one of my top two favorites!)

5.  A Merry Little Meet Cute, 6.  Snow Place Like LA, 7.  A Holly Jolly Ever After, 8.  A Jungle Bell Mingle, Julie Murphy and Sierra Simone - 3 novels and 1 novella in this spicy set of interconnected standalone books, which I heard about through one of my trusted BookTok influencers.  These were the spiciest of the holiday romance books I read, and they were utterly unputdownable.  As a bonus, and this was unexpected, I found myself thinking about the stories and the characters long after I finished reading them.  

9.  The Last Hour Between Worlds, Melissa Caruso - This is the first of the 2024 Books We Love (that I hadn't already read...) that I was drawn to, and I absolutely loved it!  First of all, our main character is a sleep-deprived single mom of a newborn, which is absolutely something I've never read about before.  Second of all, the worldbuilding - with a prime "real" world and echoes that go down and get more and more dangerous and bizare as you go down - was also an original idea.  The groundhog day like concept of repeating the same timeframe over and over until you get it right was not new, but it felt fresh due to the characters and world.  Love Kem and Rika, and have preordered the second book!  Such a good read! 

10.  Someone You Can Build a Nest In, John Wisewell - Another Books we Love 2024 selection, this is a delightfully weird story about a shapeshifting monster and the human she falls in love with.  I absolutely adored Shesheshen and Homily, and I felt the book had some pretty profound things to say about family and love.  But also, I've always been a sucker for books that make you fall in love with and sympathize with the monster.  They are much, much more interesting than books where the monster is just the bad guy.  

11.  Lovelight Farms, B.K. Borison - I got sick again, so I went back to a holiday romance because that was about all I had energy for.  This time it was a friends to lovers/save the Christmas tree farm book....and I happen to really enjoy a good friends to lovers, probably because that's my own love story.  This is the first in a series, and I really haven't decided if I want to continue or not.  (Also, this is the book that made me admit I might just be a fan of contemporary romance after all, and it might just last beyond the holidays.)  

12.  The Tainted Cup, Robert Jackson Bennett - I added this to my TBR some time ago, probably heard about it on booktok, but then moved it up the list when it wound up on the 2024 Books We Love list.  Oh my goodness…it was so much fun!  It was like a weird Sherlock Holmes-esquire mystery in a fantasy world with amazing characters and a really interesting set-up.  I love, love, love Ana, our detective, who is quirky and weird and all sorts of interesting.  Cannot wait for future books! 

13.  The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, Barbara Robinson - Rereading this is a holiday tradition! 

14.  The Christmas Tree Farm, Laurie Gilmore - Ahem…yeah, it’s my thing this year.  This time I picked the book because there was a Westie on the cover.  (It’s not the first time I’ve picked a book because my dog was on the cover…)  It was sweet, but was probably my least favorite of the holiday romances.  

15.  Snowed In and 16. Holiday Romance, Catherine Walsh - Snowed in turned out to be the second of my top two favorite holiday romances.  This time it’s a fake dating story, which I didn’t know I’d like and then I did.  And then I discovered that Snowed In was technically the second book in a series of standalone holiday romances, so I had to go back and read the first.  Yep, total sucker for friends to lovers stories.  

17.  Long Live Evil, Sarah Rees Brennan - So this was a recommendation from a booktok account I trust - Mypresentbooks.  In fact, it was her top book of October.  To my surprise, it also ended up on the 2024 Books We Love list as well.  I enjoyed it, but didn’t love it.  It took me FOREVER to read it.  (I think I started back in November.). I was super annoyed that there’s going to be a next book in the series, because I was super hoping it would be one and done.  It’s totally my husband’s sense of humor - which is why I got him a copy for Christmas.  Clever idea, but ultimately not really my cup of tea.  

18.  Blood Over Bright Haven, M.L. Wang - Given that Wang’s The Sword of Kalgan was my top book of the year, I eagerly picked up this book, which was given the traditional publishing treatment.  As with her other book, the writing is gorgeous, the characters are unforgettable, and the story is deep and important.  However, fair warning, the truth at the core of this book is brutal, and it can be a difficult read because of that.  Misogyny, racism on the vein of Nazi Germany, class warfare…the themes are not for the feint of heart.  Our FMC is not particularly likeable, but she is sympathetic.  And yet, it ended on a note of hope.  My only complaint is that the first part of the book felt a tad too didactic.  I think it was mostly necessary, but it was a bit difficult to get through at times.  

19.  The Midnight Library, Matt Haig (audio) - This reread was a lovely way to end the year.  What better book to listen to as I contemplate lessons learned in 2024 and hopes for 2025 than a book about the choices we make and the possibilities we have in life.