2025 Books - December!

1.  The Mating Game, Lana Ferguson - Ferguson has become a reliable author for me.  Her books are fun and lighthearted, and I fall in love with her characters all of the time.  Her type of "paranormal" or "monster" romance is the sort I vibe with - which is to say lighthearted and fun without taking itself too seriously.  Seriously hoping she writes more of these.  

2.  Bound, Ali Hazelwood (audio) - I've got opinions about Spotify in general, but I love Ali Hazelwood so much that I decided to give this a try.  Laughed all the way through.  How do you write a vampire story without it being about actual vampires?  Yeah...silly at best.  I do love the academic background, and the fact that our FMC wasn't exactly a good person going in.  I still maintain that Hazelwood is not at her best when she writes anything shorter than a full length novel.  Her writing needs a bit more room to breathe.  

And then the Holiday Book Binge began! You betcha, I went through the holiday sale page and picked up whatever sounded interesting!  

3.  Window Shopping, Tessa Bailey - Objectively a bad book.  I love the set-up, and in fact have seen it in a Halmark movie years ago.  Young women gets a second chance by becoming a window dresser at a store on 5th Avenue and falls in love with the owner.  BUT.  Damn, it was insta-love on steroids, the writing was pretty poor, and the whole thing was just one eye roll after another.  

4.  Cruel Winter With You, Ali Hazelwood (novella) - This is an Amazon original, part of last year's holiday group.  It was cute and sweet, and I liked it way more than the Halloween novella Hazelwood put out this year.  If I think about it too much, the best friend's little brother thing feels a bit ick, so I just try not to think about it.  

5.  Mom Com, Adriana Mather - I think this is the point where I started to get pretty pissy about the 'your family always knows what's best for you and is 100% right about what you need' trope....even though I enjoyed this book quite a bit.  Woman and her son move back to her home town to deal with her inheritance after her life implodes, and has to deal with the ghosts of the past.  I did like how they did the flashbacks, and I did appreciate the very complicated mother-daughter bond.  

6.  The Christmas You Found Me, Sarah Morgenthaler - This was my first tearjerker romance, and I think I'll just head back to the rom coms after this, even though I really did enjoy the characters and plot.  One thing I will say.  There is a medical crisis with a child at the end, and not only did Morgenthaler perfectly capture what it's like to be in that moment, she also delivered a few lines that made me feel really seen and acknowledged as a mom who's been there, done that.  This was a year for processing the trauma of my child's medical crisis...and who knew I would find a little bit of healing in a holiday romance.  

7.  The Plight Before Christmas- A FMC who's 38, sign me up! 8.  The Slight Before Christmas, Kate Stewart - Our lead couple finding themselves again after 22 years of marriage, also sign me up!  I loved, loved, loved these two books.  The central family was equal parts warm and hilarious, I adore that we were getting love stories with older protagonists, and damn...I want to live in that cabin!  Seriously good holiday books. 

9.  You're a Mean One, Matthew Prince, Timothy Janovsky - Spoiled rotten, filthy rich young man gets sent to spend the holidays with his grandparents and falls in love...oh yes, I've seen this movie a million times before.  I did get a big chuckle out of the whole thing, but I'm still mad that our protagonist let his parents off the hook so easily in the end.  

10.  Season of Love, Helena Greer - Lol,  laughed at the set-up.  Jewish woman inherits part of her eccentric aunt's Christmas tree farm and falls for the woman who manages the farm.  They must save the farm from the cartoon evil dad, while basking in the glory that is a family tree farm.  

11.  Merry Christmas You Filthy Animal, Meghan Quinn - Gotta say, this was a rollicking good time.  I love the set-up with the narrator and the breaking of the fourth wall, and the whole town of Kringle is so aggressively Christmas that the book almost reads like a caricature.  It's over the top in just the best way possible!  In some ways I didn't like it as much as How My Neighbor Stole Christmas, and in some ways I liked it more.  Seriously hoping there's more in the series!  My ONLY real complaint is that Quinn seems obsessed with getting her characters pregnant and that was a thing in the epiloges for both.  (Seriously....let the couple be a couple for a while, and what the hell when birth control was discussed.)

12.  Nick and Noel's Christmas Playlist, Codi Hall - My thoughts aside about the author blatently ripping off the title of another well known novel which was published before this - ahem - it was a fun read.  I'm a sucker for a friends to lovers, though, and when you throw in some best guy friends like I had?  Yep...loved it.  

13.  Grace & Henry's Holiday Movie Marathon, Mathew Norman - I saw this on one of the bookstagram accounts I followed, and I'm so very glad I read it.  A widow and a widower - both about a year out from the loss of their spouses - are set up by their moms and develop a friendship based on the fact that they understand each other better than anyone else.  I'm thinking about grief a lot this holiday season, and found this to be sweet and healing.  

14.  Merry: A Novel, Susan Breen - A family dramady, complete with the ghost of Charles Dickens!  I found this book in a best books of the year article, chosen by popular authors.  Messy families are a staple of holiday media for good reason, and this hit all of the marks - from the humor to the hijinks to the heartwarming resolution.  I’m only dinging this a little bit for occasionally feeling a bit cartoonish, and for the fact that the kids were just awful.  

15.  A Darker Shade of Magic, V. E. Schwab (audio) - And now a side trip to a much beloved book.  This is - I think - my second reread, and it was every bit as joyous as it always is.  I love, love, love Delilah Bard!  (And named my dog after her!)  

16.  Seas and Greetings, Julie Murphy & Sierra Simone - This is only holiday in that it’s a Christmas Notch novella.  It was short and sweet, but the story was fully characters and you really wanted to root for the characters.  Loved the tiny touches we got of the other Christmas Notch characters!  

17.  A Heart for Christmas, Sophie Jomain - OK, this is arguably the worst book I read this year.  Didn’t realize until I got home that it was a teen imprint, and OMG in this case that meant that it felt like it was written by a 14 year old.  BUT, I still enjoyed the experience because it was an Advent Book.  The chapters were sealed, with each chapter representing a day of action in the plot.  I started each morning by opening that day’s chapter with my Throne of Glass letter opener, and laughing at the ridiculousness of the story.  It was a perfect for me Advent calendar!  Just next year…maybe I’ll find one that’s a better book.  

18.  Merrily Ever After, Catherine Walsh - I adored Walsh’s two holiday novels last year, and so was delighted to find that she’d written four more short stories about the family.  Read this on Christmas Eve, and it was such a sweet way to spend the morning.  Bonus, the stories weren’t just about romantic love.  There was family and community love in there too.  

19.  A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens - Yes, I had to reread this after Merry.  It’s been years since I last read it, years since I read any Dickens.  It reminded me of just why I love Dickens.  Maybe there are some more rereads in my nearish future,  

20.  Katabasis, R.F. Kuang - I have a - ahem -  rather complicated history with Kuang.  As much as I admire her talent and skill, I’ve never actually enjoyed reading her books.  But, Carrie at Skylark nudged me to try this one - not only does she know my taste in books, but she also knows my educational background - and so I gave it a go.  To my absolute surprise and delight, I had a great time with this book.  For one thing, my entire college experience (even though I didn’t go on to grad school) is in this book.  It felt like revisiting an old friend.  For another, even though we have yet another pair of unlikable leads, this time I actually wanted to root for them, feeling a great deal of compassion for how they because the way they were.  And yes, I did rather enjoy studying Dante’s Inferno back in the day.  Really happy I gave this a try!

21.  A Gathering of Shadows, V.E. Schwab (audio) - Continuing on!  Goodness, I love this series so, so much.  

22.  Ring Shout, P. Deli Clark - I delayed reading this for a really long time.  I love Clark, so I’m not really sure why I put it off.  No surprise at all, this is a book that is deserving of all of the accolades that it has received since publication.  Ring Shout is an alternative history, where the KKK is full of actual demons that are being fought by a young woman and her community.  The ending is both hopeful and grim, given what the actual history of our country has been.  The writing is absolutely gorgeous.  Not a single word is wasted, and once again I’m in awe of what Clark is able to do within the confines of a novella length book.  I cried at the end, which I don’t do often.  This book will be with me for a while.  

23.  A Conjuring of Light, V.E. Schwab (audio) - Finishing my year strong with the final book in my favorite trilogy!  I started the year with an audio reread of some beloved books, and I’m ending the same way.  

Unfinished: 

This was kind of a month of sorting through some books that I'd acquired.  Life is too short to read books you aren't interested in!  To make this list officially, I have to have read a decent chunk.  There were several others that I started and just could not get into.  One was a sequel that I'd preordered even though I didn't like the first book.  Another was a very popular sci fi book that I hated within two chapters.  

1.  An Ember in the Ashes, Sabaa Tahir - This actually pains me.  I tried reading this book years ago, and really didn't make it that far in before I DNF'd it.  Can't remember much, except that it just wasn't for me.  BUT, I decided to try it again after falling in love with Tahir's Heir this year.  I loved that book, and thought that maybe I just needed to give this another try.  Well, I made it about 1/3 of the way in, and found myself in that place where I just feel exhausted trying to finish a book.  So it's just not for me.