New year, new reading goals! I’m not sure what it is about this year, but this January honestly felt like a refresh for my reading. I think part of it had to do with the biggest reading slump I’ve ever been in the last two months of 2022. For Christmas this year, I got a Kindle Paperwhite and i have loved spending the past month getting to use it and figuring out how to deliver library books to it. I also feel like I’m reading faster on it.
Pro tip for Kindle users: add a popsocket to the back of your kindle to create an easy way to hold on to the Kindle. I saw this on either Instagram or TikTok and it’s the best thing ever. Then to protect my device when not using it, I got a Kindle sleeve (as seen in the picture) by Grace by Shan and it’s the cutest yet most padded sleeve ever to protect my Kindle in my bag for traveling.
This past month I’ve read five books, which seems like a slow month, but honestly after December I was honestly happy to finish a physical book, let alone four more. I read a mix of genres, including one popular Fantasy Romance series that intimidated me for the past year to read.
Lovelight Farms – B. K. Borison
Genre: Holiday Romance
The first book in a small town romance series, this book is a mix of best friends to lovers trope and fake dating trope. Such a cute story with tons of lovable side characters that gave me all the Hallmark movie vibes. Stella is struggling to keep her Christmas Tree Farm open and decides to enter a contest hosted by an influencer. In order to make her stand out as a romance destination, she lies and says that she runs her farm with her boyfriend, Luka, who is really her best friend. But what happens when the line between fake and real starts to blend together?
This book started off fast, but slowed down a lot through the middle part of the book. It felt like they were dragging out the set up of the influencer coming to the farm. But such a cute and fun read during the holiday season and I can’t wait to read the rest of the series. This book and the third book in the series are currently available on Kindle Unlimited with a membership.
Rating:
🌟🌟🌟🌟/5
Judge Me – Abby Knox
Genre: Romance Novella
Please don’t judge me (pun intended) on this book. It’s been sitting in my Kindle Unlimited library for a while after either seeing it on BookTok or scrolling through the library and I finally decided to read it. An age-gap trope novella (short story) where the Great British Bake Off meets spicy romance, Chloe is obsessed with a famous baker, Phillip who happens to also be a judge on a baking competiton. Chloe fakes her way into the competition for a chance to meet her celebrity crush, but what she doesn’t know is that Phillip may have also pulled a few strings of his own.
I honestly didn’t feel like the story flowed well at all and was just a touch too cheesy for me. I know that it being a shorter book means the story has to move faster and there isn’t as much time for development, but the jump in time had me confused on how long the story was and where exactly it was going. If you’re looking for a quick spicy romance read, you could try this one. It’s the first of five novellas (one for each of the sisters in Chloe’s family).
This book is available for free with a Kindle Unlimited membership.
Rating:
🌟🌟/5
A Court of Thorn and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Dark Fantasy Romance
If Colleen Hoover is the author that dominates BookTok and Bookstagram, then this series is the series that dominates BookTok. I’ve been hearing about this series for at least the past year. I am very picky when it comes to the Fantasy genre because sometimes it’s hard to keep up with the created realm or it’s too cheesy for me. The last fantasy book I read was The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue and y’all know how much I loved that book. It was my favorite read of 2020.
One of my coworkers kept telling me that I needed to read this book and I decided to make it my January recommended by a friend book for a reading challenge. I started off by listening to the audiobook because it was available immediately on Hoopla through the library, but unfortunately got very lost while listening because of how detailed Maas is with creating her realms. Thankfully the coworker that recommended this book to me as an immediate read also had a physical copy that she let me borrow and I flew through the rest of the book.
Known as a dark fantasy retelling of Beauty and the Beast, the story follows Feyre who is captured by two Faes as punishment for killing one of their kind, who was disguised as a wolf. The longer she spends in the castle of the Fae, she begins to learn that Tamlin is not always a beast as he first appeared, but there is more to this world than she ever knew and she may be the key to saving it.
The description of the realm and all the different parts of it was very visual and easy to keep up with as you continue through the novel, but I love how many different parts the book has. Just as you think you’re getting to the end of the book, a whole new part of the story begins and you get swept back into the world that Maas has created. I know the size of the books are intimidating, but I’m so excited to get back into the ACOTAR realms with the second novel, which everyone tells me is better than the first one.
Rating:
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟/5
Spare – Prince Harry
Genre: Memoir/Autobiography
Like many people, I was intrigued to read Prince Harry’s side of the story of everything that has happened in the past three years with his stepping down from the Royal Family. I went into this book with an open mind knowing that there are two sides of every storyand we’re only getting one side of it.
The story starts off on the day that Harry finds out about his mother’s death and has major focus on how her death along with the constant presence of the press has affected his life. For the first two thirds of the novel it was a very interested read learning more about his childhood growing up and especially with his military career. The details in his story is astounding with how much he remembered of his life with specific details in the stories he told. However, I felt like he took this opportunity he had writing the book to bash on his family more and by the time we get to the part of the story with his relationship withe Meghan, it felt like it turned into very surface level with the descriptions and we didn’t get much more than we already knew out of it.
Rating:
🌟🌟🌟💫/5
Dear Edward – Ann Napolitano
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Dear Edward follows a boy who is the sole survivor of a plane crash and how he tries to figure out how to move on with his life after losing his entire family, but also now being famous and family members of the victims all wanting some connection to him. In a dual timeline between the aftermath of the crash and the plane ride up to the crash, the book has a somber feeling from the first page until the last page.
The dual timeline was easy to keep up with as each chapter was labeled with either the time during the day of the crash or the month where the present timeline was in. I really enjoy dual timelines where every chapter alternates between the two timelines as I feel like you get equal time with the before and after of the story. The first half of the book in the present time felt very slow to me creating a build up where it feels like nothing is happening, but once you get to the revelation of everything, the story moves at a faster pace and I even almost wanted more by the time I finished.
This book has been turned into an Apple TV+ series and the first three episodes have been released at the time of this post.
Rating:
🌟🌟🌟🌟/5
Have you read any of these books yet? What were your favorite reads of January? Let me know in the comments below!
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