January Wrap-up

Well, it's March, and I am finally getting around to writing some kind of January wrap-up, which is par for the course around here. If anyone ever stumbles upon this dusty little corner of the Internet (Is "Next Blog" even a thing anymore?), you will find procrastination and lack of execution is a real stumbling block in my desire to be a "real" book blogger. Luckily, I have Goodreads to do much of the heavy lifting for me, and I belong to several book clubs on Facebook, so I am still able to enjoy the perks that NetGalley has to offer. As an aside, if you have ever considered joining NetGalley and trying to get your hands on advanced copies of books to review but have thought you don't have enough clout do so, let me be your muse. I started out by searching for a "read now" book that was available to anyone and read it (and it was a really good book...and I got a very sweet email from the author thanking me for my review, which was an unexpected bonus) and reviewed it on Goodreads and on the NetGalley site. I then started requesting books that looked good to me in my chosen genres (women's fiction, general fiction, romance, and thriller). I focused heavily on authors I already love, but I also branched out based on recommendations I found on social media. I have been a member since 2019, and I have been active off and on, so while I have been approved for a total of 96 books (and reviewed 41 so far), I have been approved for 26 titles that have been or will be published in 2025. My goal this year is to read and post reviews for each of these titles before their publication dates, which I admit I have not always done. A special thrill has been that, on occasion, I have gotten books sent directly to my email from publishers for me to review. ME! This has included books by Nora Roberts, Mary Kay Andrews, Christina Lauren, and Katherine Center, and each time, I have had to pinch myself because it has felt like such a gift for a reader like myself to have the opportunity to read these books before they are on sale to the general public. I do not take this gift lightly, and I encourage you to check it out if you think it might be something of interest to you. NetGalley suggests a goal review percentage of 80%, which is a lofty dream. If I get the rest of these 2025 books read and reviewed on time, I will sit right at 60%, which is the best my percentage will have ever been and will be a number I am happy with.

Anyway, on to January! In January, I read 13 books, which was the equivalent of 4568 pages. However, two of these were audiobooks, for a total of 20 hours of listening time. One book, Promise Me Sunshine by Cara Bastone, was an advanced reader's copy from NetGalley that was reviewed here. Five of the books I read I rated five stars. Two of these were the audiobooks I listened to, which were books that I had read in the past, Part of Your World by Abby Jimenez and Beach Read (reviewed here) by Emily Henry. One was Promise Me Sunshine, which I immediately requested after reading Bastone's debut novel Ready or Not, which I heard about last year on, of course, social media. It was another five-star read for me. If you are a contemporary romance fan, both of these books should be added to your TBR shelf immediately. Another was The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston, which I loved with every part of me. I had only read one other of her books, A Novel Love Story, which I also really enjoyed (a four-star read for me in 2024), but this one just had me from page one, and I can't wait to read The Seven Year Slip, as well as the book she has coming out this year Sounds Like Love. And then my final five-star review for January went to a real departure for me, which I read to fulfill a category in one of my reading challenges for 2025 (the sci-fi category in my Book BINGO in my reading journal), Dark Matter by Blake Crouch. I do not read sci-fi, but I also saw this listed as a thriller, and in 2024, I really entered by Thriller Era. I consumed those things like popcorn. When I had to dip my toe into the sci-fi waters, I heard that Blake Crouch was the way to go because his books would be sci-fi-ish without being "too much." Well, this book grabbed me by the throat and would not let go. I loooooooooooved it. I did find that I had to really tune in with my brain, and it was a thinking person's book, but the story was fast-paced and amazing, and I have already purchased his Wayward Pines trilogy on audio for my listening pleasure.

The rest of the month was mixed bag of four- and three-star reads that I won't bore you with details of. I really had a fun month with a mix split pretty evenly between thrillers and contemporary romance novels, which are usually my two top genres. As an aside, does anyone else recall really loving the word genre when they first learned it back in school? My first real memory of that word comes from a high school English class, taught by a cherished teacher who really shaped so much of my development as a reader, and every time I type it out, I get a little flash of how he encouraged me to really lean in to my love of reading. Such good memories.

I will be back (she says, with good intentions, but a history of lack of follow-through) with February sometime soon. I should warn you that I am a liberal Democrat whose reading life got derailed by the political climate in February, as well as the 20-hour audiobook version of Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (Spoiler alert: I may have already found my top book of the year.), so February was not as prolific of a month as January, but I am trying to head back in the right direction in March. We have a lot of months left in 2025, and my 100-book goal is still well within reach. My challenges in my reading journal are looking less promising, but we do what we can do, right?

Happy reading!