January is two weeks past us and I’m just now sitting down to write this wrap up. That’s more of a testament to how many other things have been capturing my attention than anything else, but I do hate being this off schedule. I also just made a list of all the ARCs I’ve read but haven’t reviewed and discovered that number is nine. So, that’s… a lot. Anyway, lots to do this weekend, so I’m going to move right on along to the books I read.
Books by Rating
5 Stars
I was so deeply invested in The Kiss Countdown from page one. Amerie is so great to follow as we’re picking up with her as she’s really trying to put her life together in the way that she would prefer. She’s Ms. Independent in the beginning and by the end, she’s really opening up to people and I loved it. This does still feel like a romance though. Her love interest is fabulous. At one point, he carries her quite the distance and I was swooning. A big fan.
Following The Kiss Countdown with In Your Dreams was a great pairing because similar to The Kiss Countdown, In Your Dreams is also about a woman trying to figure out her life. Maddie is a little messy and I loved her love story.
The Bright Years by Sarah Damoff is a debut from last year that I mostly read because I kept hearing people rave about it and I’m sometimes easily influenced. This book is actually really good despite the fact that I shouldn’t have loved it. It’s a literary fiction and deals with domestic violence a bit and with addiction. I’m not usually a lit pic girl. But I really did love the way it was written and how it truly did sweep me up in the story.
A Rake’s Vow by Stephanie Laurens is my favorite of the Cynster series so far. I think for me, it goes Vale, Devil, Scandal, Gabriel, Demon, although honestly, Devil, Scandal, and Gabriel could probably shift depending on the day. Demon’s book though? Not a fan. It turns out, I really like when the book has a good mystery I can figure out. Or theorize about. And alas, for both Demon and Gabriel, I didn’t feel like I was figuring anything out alongside the characters. Scandal’s book, I straight up shouldn’t have liked, and yet I actually did wind up attached to the romance of it. But A Rake’s Vow had everything I wanted. A good mystery that I could help solve and a romance I really enjoyed!
My Guild Hunters rereads are always going to be five stars. I love this series. I love Nalini Singh. I have the last two books to look forward to as new reads and I’m trying to read four books a month in the lead up to the final book, but you see, I lack self-control sometimes, hence the five from this month. Anyway, love them lots.
The Odds of You by Kate Dramis was really great. I want a physical copy because I want to annotate it. I really enjoyed it. The grief elements, the romance, the personal growth journey? Great elements. I could have gone for more pages, but at the end of the day, that just felt greedy. Also, this was an ARC and my review is posted. A miracle.
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This was such an indictment of the Left in American politics and as a Democrat, it had me thinking a lot. But it also still had me raging at the way people didn’t rally behind Kamala Harris, because actually, yes, having Donald Trump as our president IS the worst. So, lots of thoughts, lots of feelings, lots of processing to do.
But my absolute FAVORITE book of the month, maybe of the year already was The Raven Scholar. This book was E V E R Y T H I N G to me. I loved literally everything about it. I devoured it. I am so sorry to everyone who was pushing this last year when I was like, psh, that book is not for me. I was wrong. It was absolutely for me. Best book. A million stars.
4.5 Stars
This book is absolutely brilliant and yet, it took me a long time to get really sucked in. I was reading this for basically an entire month. So the half star missing is because of that.
4 Stars
Four Weekends and a Funeral by Ellie Palmer was my first book by Palmer and I’m looking forward to reading more from her. Let’s ignore that I already should have because I have an ARC of her 2025 book (and now 2026 one too). Anyway, I read this for the Swifties Book Club and had such a great time discussing this. In this, the characters started driving me up the wall in not a good way. I felt like a couple of threads went missing as far as side characters. But, I really do think I’ll five star one of her books in the future because there was so much to love about this one.
Blood in the Water by Tiffany D. Jackson is also a Swifties Book Club pick for February, but my library borrow meant I had to read it early. This is a middle grade mystery/thriller situation and I was thoroughly creeped out. This might be the level of horror I’m allowed to read, actually, because these rich people were giving me Get Out vibes despite being rich Black people not rich white people. The vibes were the same though. Too rich to care about humanity. You know? Anyway, great book that I never would have picked up on my own.
3.5 Stars
For One Night Only was a book club pick where I was too sick to attend, which is annoying, most especially because I actually had really mixed emotions about this book. I think that it doesn’t work as a romance because while I believe in the emotions, I don’t believe there was enough growth as characters for the two of them to really work it out. Or all the character work we would have needed to see happens off page. Depends on how you view it, I suppose. But it was also fun because I do always love books about musicians when there’s talk about the actual making and writing of a song on page.
Phantasma was good enough that I want to continue and read Enchantra, but I didn’t love it. It was good just not great.
Slightly Married by Mary Balogh didn’t leave me desperate to continue in the series, which after starting the Cynster series was a little sad. I am hopeful though that the familial elements will be stronger in the next books in the series. Fingers crossed!
I have a full review of Enchanting the Fae Queen, but the tl;dr is that I didn’t find it as charming as book one, but the set up for book three has me impatient! Unfortunately on its own, this one just wasn’t my favorite.
3 Stars
I think I may have liked Sorcery and Small Magics more if it hadn’t been chosen for a book club pick by a romance bookstore. This book does not have a sufficient amount of romance, let alone a certainty of a relationship, for me to really buy into the romance of it all. I needed more of that based on my expectations going in. And since I was reading it for that particular book club, I never adjusted my expectations because I kept thinking we were going to get there. So I don’t think I blame this book. I would say it’s a good one to read if you want a queer fantasy story with hints of a romance.
And They Lived Happily Ever After reminded me that magical realism tends to be a hard sell for me. I don’t always dislike it. Usually, if it’s a small enough element of a story OR in a romance, if it’s not intrinsic to the romance, I’m happy to read it even if it’s not something that specifically calls to me. But in this case? The dreams our FMC has play such a HUGE role in the romance and I just found myself really struggling to buy into the in waking life romance because I would have been irate at what was happening in the dreams. So it didn’t put me off continuing into book two, but I do wish I’d enjoyed this one more. (I DNF’d The Seven Year Slip, but I do wonder if you enjoyed that, if you might jive better with this one than me too.)
Closing Thoughts
I feel like I normally do more sections, but I actually typed my thoughts about these books in more detail than I’ve done in months, so I personally feel like January is sufficiently wrapped up. Let me know what your favorite book of the month was. Mine was obviously The Raven Scholar, hands down. I loved it enough to have me considering the six star system some people use.
xx
firewhiskeyreader 