January 2025 TBR

Posted January 10, 2025 in Features, TBR / 0 Comments

I’m excited to be back with making structured TBRs for 2025! I sort of fell off doing this in 2024 after March because I got pregnant and understandably other things took priority. But in those first three months of 2024 I was reading pretty much everything on my TBR and then some, and I felt like picking 6 books to hold myself accountable to worked well! Last year I made sure I had one book “per category,” but this year I’m being more flexible and just picking the top 6 priority books regardless of categories (hence the 3 ARCs on […]

Top 5 Books of 2024

Posted January 9, 2025 in Book Recommendations & Lists, Books, Features / 0 Comments

Another year in the books! Most of my top reads this year were in the first half of the year, as the second half was dominated by pregnancy and baby books. These are in no particular order, except for Quicksilver being number uno. Quicksilver | You know that GIF of Lady Gaga that’s like “terrific, fantastic, phenomenal, iconic” etc? That’s how I feel about this book. Is it super original? No. I haven’t written my review yet but in many ways it felt like it could’ve started as ACOMAF fanfiction, but it was still so so good and captivated me […]

Holiday Romance Review: Wreck the Halls by Tessa Bailey

Posted December 9, 2024 in Books, Reviews / 0 Comments

When I found out that my Spotify premium account now came with a free number of audiobook listening hours per month, I instantly pursued their romance selection and decided it would be a great chance to try my first Tessa Bailey novel. I’d heard her name floating around often online, and I was trying to make a conscious effort to read more holiday novels in December (always a challenge for me, as the month feels like it flies by so fast!) I didn’t know much about this one except it sounded seasonally appropriate and since it was “free,” I decided […]

Holiday Romance Review: Tis the Season by Morgan Elizabeth

Posted December 5, 2024 in Books, Reviews / 0 Comments

Did I have any idea going into this one that it was inspired by Legally Blonde? No, no I did not. Did that probably make me love it. Yes, there’s a good possibility lol. As a lover of romance novels AND of Legally Blonde (I object!) it was so fun to read a novel that is inspired by/a retelling of a more “modern” classic piece of media. The story follows Abigail, a makeup artist who’s contorted her life into a pretzel for her uppity boyfriend who clearly does not think she’s good enough for him and his blue-blooded world. Like […]

Enchanted to Meet You by Meg Cabot | Witches of West Harbor #1

Posted October 7, 2024 in Books, Reviews / 0 Comments

I have been reading Meg Cabot’s books for over 20 years, and she’s an auto-read author for me at this point. I don’t even bother reading the synopsis most of the time, I just know a new release is going to make it onto my TBR, regardless of the subject matter. Despite the fact that I would have read Enchanted to Meet You no matter what, I was THRILLED to see that Meg was getting in on the witchy rom-com trend. I loooooove witchy stories, movies, aesthetic, etc. and the cover + premise + title (please don’t be in love […]

The Reappearance of Rachel Price by Holly Jackson | Review

Posted August 26, 2024 in Books, Reviews / 0 Comments

I was a huge huge fan of Jackson’s debut novel, A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, and overall felt it was a very strong trilogy. I know she’s put a few books out since then, but this is the first I picked up since the original trilogy, and I was excited! I’ve been wanting to start reading more thrillers as the end of summer looms and we transition into fall up here in the Northern Hemisphere, and what better way to kick off my thriller TBR than with a tried and true author? Turns out I was wrong. I honestly […]

Pestilence by Laura Thalassa | The Four Horsemen #1

Posted June 17, 2024 in Books, Reviews / 0 Comments

I feel like I should not have enjoyed this book as much as I did, but I legit could not put it down. The former religious studies major in me always has a ~curiosity when I see a plot point that even remotely draws on religious themes, and once I saw that there was a ROMANCE series based on the FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE I was like of course I need to check this out for science. I am apparently terrible at reading/remembering synopses of books when I add them to my TBR because I didn’t realize that I’d […]

Forget Me Not by Julie Soto | ARC Review

Posted June 10, 2024 in Books, Reviews / 0 Comments

In a world over-saturated with illustrated romance covers, this one stopped me in my tracks. I found it stunning, and almost water-color like, completely different from the cartoony covers that are so popular in romance these days (which I love too!) THEN I heard that the author, Julie Soto, cut her teeth writing Dramione fanfiction, including one that’s very high on my TBR (The Auction) and I knew I had to read this one. Set in Sacramento, California (the first time I’ve read a book set in California’s capitol!), Forget Me Not centers on two protagonists who are in the […]

Ready or Not by Cara Bastone | ARC Review

Posted June 3, 2024 in ARCs, Books, Reviews / 0 Comments

Ready or Not by Cara Bastone is truly a slice of life novel. Following protagonist Eve, I found the story to be a beautiful exploration of identity and the transitional space between pre-parenthood and motherhood. The story takes a unique take on a pregnancy story. Eve becomes pregnant via a one night stand with a cute and charismatic guy she meets during a night out on the town. It’s a shock to her perfectly curated, if perhaps a bit too safe, life in New York, with her freedom and perfectly curated apartment and total devotion to her best friend. To […]

Mini ARC Reviews | Expiration Dates by Rebecca Serle & A British Girl’s Guide to Hurricanes and Heartbreak by Laura Taylor Namey

Posted May 27, 2024 in Books, Reviews / 0 Comments

I was super intrigued by the premise of this one- I love a touch of magical realism in contemporaries, and Rebecca Serle usually integrates magical realism so well into her romances. This protagonist in this story receives a slip of paper with an amount of time whenever she begins dating someone, which will determine how long the relationship lasts. This inevitably leads to questions about what is fate vs what is a self-fulfilling prophecy, etc. I was interested in settling into the flashes of Daphne’s past and seeing the snippets of her past relationships and how they ended juxtaposed against […]