Some of my favorite types of posts to write are ones where I’m listing my most anticipated books of the upcoming year. I thought it would be fun to look back on the reads that were at the forefront of my radar for 2021 and see how many I read, and overall what I thought of them!
January-June 2021 Releases I Was Most Excited For
Number of Books Read: 7/8 (All but Luck of the Titanic…not too bad!)
Ratings:
5 Stars: Chain of Iron, The Most Beautiful Girl in Cuba
4 Stars: The Project, A Court of Silver Flames, Good Girl, Bad Blood, The Soulmate Equation
3 Stars: You Have a Match
Thoughts: Honestly, this distribution seems about right. I actually read very few 5 star books this year (more to come on that in my 2021 stats recap post) but it was a weird reading year for me in general so I’m please most of my anticipated titles at least fell at 4 stars or above!
July-December 2021 Releases I Was Most Excited For
Number of Books Read: 4/8 (Didn’t do as well with the second half of 2021, and only got around to half of my most anticipated reads- The Jasmine Project, Never Saw You Coming, The Witch Haven and How Moon Fuentez Fell In Love with the Universe).
Ratings:
5 Stars: How Moon Fuentez Fell In Love with the Universe
4 Stars: N/A
3 Stars: The Witch Haven, Never Saw You Coming, The Jasmine Project
Thoughts: The second half of 2021 was where I started to loose steam with new releases, and honestly most of the books I was gravitating toward were back list (and I’m talking way, way backlist, like prior to 2010). I was in a bit of a reading funk where I just wanted the comfort of throwback paranormal and historical reads a lot of this year thanks to *gestures at everything going on.* Plus, I am not sure if it’s just me or what but I tend to be more aware of books releasing earlier in the year than later!
Out of my 16 most anticipated books of 2021, I read 11, which is a number I’m content with (I honestly thought it was going to be less!) The books I didn’t get to are definitely still on my TBR for 2022, however I was a bit surprised that in the second half of the year I had so many 3 star reads. I think my focus has shifted to wanting to catch up on more backlist, or at least read backlist and new releases equally, rather than push myself to constantly read new releases, which is what I feel many bookish content creators feel obligated to do in order for their content to stay relevant. I’ve found this year that stepping away from the frenzy of new releases a bit and mixing in some backlist books that I’m reading just for myself and that I don’t feel the need to review has helped my enjoyment of reading a lot, and allowed space to explore other hobbies.
Did you get to all of your most anticipated releases of 2021? Let me know in the comments!
Love this post! There’s still a few I haven’t gotten to – I’m looking at my shelves right now and Love, Lists, & Fancy Ships by Sarah Grunder Ruiz and Never Saw You Coming by Erin Hahn are both standing out.
Thank you!! It’s a fun exercise to do 🙂
I am impressed you read so many of your anticipated reads. I would be so much lower than you. I think it would be interesting to see if you read all the anticipated releases for the first half of the year close to their release or in the second half of the year because it could be those for the second half of the year you’ll get to in 2022 instead.
That would be really interesting to track! Honestly I am a huge mood reader so I am surprised I got to this many!
[…] shitty reading years for me and I didn’t even make a predictions post for 2021. When I saw Cristina post about her most anticipated 2021 reads to see how she did with them, I thought that would be a fun alternative for my usual five-star post. I always have two […]