It’s the first reading wrap-up of the new year! I got off to a blazing start with 21 books this month, which is about double what I had been doing the past few months. And this was also a huge month for audiobooks! It’s so nice to have a book in my ear while I’m driving or while I’m doing boring tasks at work. This month I also took a deep dive into the Osemanverse, starting with a reread of my beloved Heartstopper series. I’m hoping to wrap up with the last few books in February. And let’s talk about reading challenges for a minute. Last year I tried to…
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Behind the Scenes by Karelia Stetz-Waters Publication date: 31 January 2023 from Forever Publishing Twenty twenty-one’s Satisfaction Guaranteed was my first exposure to Karelia Stetz-Waters’ work, and it was insta-love. It’s become a comfort read for me, and I’ve probably read it too many times. Now she’s releasing the pug-tastic Behind the Scenes, and it’s more of what we’ve come to love about her work. Ash is a former filmmaker and current workaholic who relaxes by watching ASMR food videos by a woman who never shows her face. Rose is a business consultant who spends her off hours…making ASMR food videos in which she never shows her face. When the…
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Begin Again by Emma LordOut now from Wednesday Books “Anything worth doing starts with a mess.” Emma Lord is pretty much becoming the queen of sweet YA/NA books. I first discovered her with Tweet Cute, which was lovely, and then last year’s When You Get the Chance was an absolute delight (I still need to get You Have a Match off my bookshelf and read it). Lord brings that charm again in the upcoming Begin Again, which follows Andie Rose as she navigates life at her dream college while also living with the shadow of her late mother, who was also an alum of Blue Ridge State. Andie has a…
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Audiobook Review Pandora by Susan Stokes-Chapman Out now from Harper Audio This one took a little while to find its feet, but once the plot started to take shape, I was all in. Georgian London is the setting for this historical gem, and the best word I can find to describe the vibe of the story is “atmospheric.” As a long-time fan of Greek mythology, I did enjoy this take on the story of Pandora’s box, and our heroine, Dora, is an orphan, a jewelry designer, and a spitfire of a woman who can hold her own even under the restrictive culture of the time. This tale is told through…
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Locust Lane by Stephen Amidon Out now from Celadon Books I don’t read a lot of thrillers, but this one grabbed me from the first page. There is the mysterious death of a young woman, a crew of secretive teenagers and their parents who are harboring secrets of their own. Throughout the book, Amidon expertly pulls at the threads of the mystery which binds all of these people together. The story is told through multiple points of view, but interestingly only those of the adults. I usually have a tough time when there are a lot of characters in a book, but I followed these plot lines quite easily. Locust…
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Red Clay Suzie by Jeffrey Dale LoftonOut now from Post Hill Press “If you let fear make your decisions, you’ll never be what you are meant to be.” Grandaddy First of all, I would like to thank the folks at Pride Book Tours for not only inviting me on this tour, but also for contacting me again after I had initially passed on this one due to a full schedule. Because if they hadn’t offered me that second chance, I may never have gotten to experience the joy of reading Red Clay Suzie by Jeffrey Dale Lofton. OMG this book, y’all. It was simply incredible, a stunning debut. The story,…
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Take a Bow, Noah Mitchell by Tobias MaddenOut now from Page Street Kids Anything But Fine, Madden’s 2022 debut novel, immediately put him on my radar of authors I would be following closely. I was so enchanted by that book that I was ready to devour anything else he wrote. A year later, he has given us Take a Bow, Noah Mitchell, a story about a teenaged gaymer who gets caught up in a teeny-tiny lie and ends up mopping up the aftermath when it backfires on him. Now, I normally cringe when I read a book that involves a Big Lie and its inevitable consequences. I mean, really cringe.…
