We are taking baby steps y’all. I don’t even remember how to get gifs in here, but again baby steps.
I make no promises, but I am trying to do all the things that I like to do to keep myself sane these days. (Does anyone even know what is going on anymore?)
I should start by breaking down my reading goals for the year.
This year I am shooting for 200 books read. As I type, this Goodreads and Storygraph are telling me I am 8 books behind schedule. Rude. I am also doing the POPSUGAR 2022 reading challenge an A-Z reading challenge, and I might do the yearly reading challenge in the TBR and Beyond Facebook group (great book club group btw). I’ll post pics of my progress below. I also have a personal goal of lowering my TBR count on Goodreads this year, but I’m not sure that one is going well 😂 I started the year with 1,854 books on my TBR. (omg, now there are 1,878! How?!)
Let’s talk about January’s books!
Breakdown
Ebooks: 7
Audios: 2
Of those 9 books, 5 of them were ARCs (1 backlist) Let’s talk about the ones released in January and the backlist one.
1. Getting His Game Back by Gia de Cadenet
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57925077
Rating: 4/5 stars
Review: Let’s start by saying that Khalil was absolutely swoon-worthy, and I’m going to add him to my book boyfriend list for 2022.
Possible triggers: depression, seasonal depression, depressive state, mentions suicide.
There’s so much to cover in this review, so here is your spoiler alert because we are going to get into it.
Mental health is a theme in this book. I would even say that it is the antagonist in this story. Khalil suffers from seasonal depression, but he doesn’t have a name for it. He’s unaware of it and falls victim to it every year. He is in therapy, which yesssss because that is a serious step to take, and he is successful, caring, funny, and beautiful.
Another central theme is interracial relationships. This is a struggle that you don’t truly understand until you’re in one or are close to one. I remember a time I had a boyfriend who was white. He and I were getting an oil change on his car, and some black men walked up and blatantly and crassly expressed that they didn’t like our relationship—people would also stare at us while in public. After a while, I noticed that I wasn’t allowed to go to his grandparents’ house and that he was constantly referring to me as his “black girlfriend.” i got away from the point. Still, anyway, Vanessa has had bad experiences when in an interracial relationship, so she decides that her man would have to be black. But then she meets Khalil, and he proves her and her grandmother wrong. As I mentioned earlier, he is swoon-worthy.
Instalove, but it felt right. I swooned right along with both characters. Also, can I just say I’ve never read a sex scene from the male perspective, and i loved it?
Read this if you’re looking for the following in a book: interracial relationships, mental health, a male character in therapy, the successful female lead, Instalove.
2. On a Night Like This by Lindsay Kelk
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57577167
Rating: 3/5 stars
Review: Not sure why this is classified as a romance since the romance in this one was an afterthought.
Fran is our main character, and I loved her. She was fun, witty, hard-working, and open to new experiences. Her fiance was kind of a buzzkill. He had rainy cloud energy.
Fran does temp jobs. This seems to be a thing in books set in the UK. It’s not really a thing here in the USA, so it always throws me off. Anyway, she is restricted on how far she can travel to do these temp jobs because her fiance is a dirtbag. (Can you tell I didn’t like him?) But she gets offered a job that sounds fun, it’s mysterious, and the pay is good. When she tries to tell her fiance, he doesn’t make time for her to talk to him, so she goes to the interview and gets the job. She’s going to be the PA for a big singer named Juliette. Juliette is a handful, and all Fran has to do is make sure she gets to the Crystal Ball event.
I won’t spoil the rest of Fran’s story, but her story is one of self-discovery, setting boundaries, and believing in oneself. As far as the romance part of the story, I think the message is love will find you. Love cannot be forced. Also, to love another, you have to love yourself. I also want to point out that this has more friendship than romance, so if you are looking for a romance, this is not it.
I used this book for my “A book featuring a party” prompt on the 2022 Popsugar Reading Challenge.
I’d recommend this book for anyone who wants a book with a celebrity character, self-discovery, love at first sight, and a Cinderella theme (loosely).
3. Love at First Spite by Anna E Collins
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57724262
Rating: 4/5 stars
Review: This was a fun read.
A quick summary, Dani was engaged to be maried but her intended was a bit of a narcissistic jerk who ignored her wishes anddddd cheated with the real estate agent who sold him the house he and Dani were supposed to live in. Dani wanted the plot of land behind the house too but he didn’t get it. So Dani gets it with her cousin and her landlany and they start to build an Airbnb just to be petty and to ruin his view from the house. Dani gets an archetect from her job to help but he has the reputation and personality of a prickly cactus in the office.
Characters: I enjoyed the characters in this story. Dani has a good support system. Her cousin comes through for her and supports her pettiness. Dani has the best landlady ever. Shes witty and smart. She also encourages Dani and helps her. Wyatt has layers. He has a disease with vertigo and uses a hearing aid. I loved the representation there. I’m sure hearing aids can cause self esteem problems, especially when you need them at a young adult age. I loved the positive reinforement shown from Dani to Wyatt that express that it doesn’t have to be a burden if he doesn’t make it one.
I did not see that ending coming. I really thought the book was going to go in another direction but it ended up being fun and we learned a lesson. It is okay to depend on others. It is okay to ask for help. Plus you should always be truthful with people, especially the people you are looking to form relationships with, platonic or romantic.
Recommended for: people who like office romances, petty schemes and, of course, happily ever afters.
4. The Witch Haven by Sarah Peyton Smith
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56980357
Rating: 2/5 stars
Review: Well, crap, I’m lower than the average rating on this one. This review is going to be kind of spoilery.
Thank you, edelweiss and Simon & Schuster, for the eARC of this. Sorry, it’s a bit late, but covid wrecked me for everything with world-building, fantasy, and dystopia. This one obviously being fantasy.
From the very beginning, this story felt heavy. There was an oppressive tone to it which I guess makes sense since the story is set in 1912, and our main character is a poor woman. Frances (is it weird that this is the second book I’ve read with the main character named Frances this month?) anyway, Frances works in a tailor shop. Her brother has been recently murdered, and her mother has been put in an asylum. One night she stays late to finish an order, and her cringe-worthy sleazeball of a boss comes in. She is alone in the shop; the rest of the girls and the woman in charge are in the apartment upstairs. He is drunk. He attacks her, and while he has her pressed against the door to go upstairs, her sewing shears fly across the room and land in his neck. He dies. The next day while being questioned by the police, women come and take her away, claiming she has tuberculous. It turns out the sanatorium is a school for witches. In this world, extreme trauma gives you magic sometimes, which is depressing.
Without ruining the whole journey of the book for those who might enjoy this more than I did, let’s break it down.
Characters: I didn’t care for Frances. I spent most of the book mad at her for her decisions. Yeah, so the school turned out to be more oppressive. The girls were only taught how to control themselves and thus their magic and housekeeping spells. There’s this class where the girls have to describe their trauma to learn to control their feelings and magic during that type of moment. Or maybe to desensitize triggers? Who knows? I felt it was abusive in a way, definitely torturous, and I think I would’ve quit going. The headmaster is manipulative. Maxine was a spoiled brat. I thought she was fun at times, but she made Frances struggle with her power and the problems that came from being so powerful about her. She had real “woe is me” energy but would then turn around and be fun and supportive. Lena was my favorite. She seemed more levelheaded than the other two, but she was too much of a follower. Finn was smooth and fun until he wasn’t. Everyone else isn’t critical enough to bring up since we don’t learn much about them.
The plot: This book could’ve been so much shorter. It dragged most of the book while being heavy and depressing. I think it should’ve just been a murder mystery if it was going to do that, but the main character was so removed from the main world that she only ever heard about the deaths secondhand. Other than the fact that her brother’s murder could be connected to the others, they did not affect her. The ending felt rushed, like there were all these loose ends to tie, and everything happened quickly, and then it ended kind of open? It’s not listed as a series on Goodreads, so I don’t know if there will be more, but if there is, I’m going to have to pass.
Recommendations: I did tell my BFF this book might have been for her. She likes historical fiction. I don’t care much for it, but I do like magic and witches. Bottom line, I could be wrong about this one, but it was not for me.
If you’re still here and reading this post was a little long. I am debating putting up reviews as I write them. That way, I can just spend my wrap-up talking about the books I loved, andddd the arcs will have more time in the spotlight if they aren’t all lumped together. Maybe next time, I’ll remember how to get gifs in here 😂
I’m proud that this got published. It’s been a mentally draining couple of years. Hang in there, readers.
Happy reading,
Robyn
Reading Robyn 