I haven't been blogging much anymore and that's honestly not a surprise. But I've been really wanting to get back into it and even though I would love to redo my blog I think I'm just going to stay on Blogger because so far I haven't been able to make a new blog that will hold everything I want. I really want to combine my blogs together into one and call it ShayKay's World and then have a page for books, a page for the Disney Sims, and a page for the Berry Sims. Then on the home page, I would showcase whatever's being published that week plus some real-life stuff and even a creator showcase. I just haven't been able to figure out how to make that all possible and make it look good. Since thinking about that I've started not being all that happy with the way my blogs look now either. I haven't even returned to my Sims blog yet. I want too but until then I wanted to get back into blogging over here. Right now I'm only doing the monthly things such as my book hauls and wrap-ups. I have a couple other things planned too but I don't know when they will be released yet. So let's jump into this month's reads!
The Stats
I have read so many books this month and I am so proud of myself! I've read 5, and hopefully 1 more by the time this post publishes in January. This month I had 2 eBooks and the rest all physical books and I own them all. Most of them I already owned before this month. I actually bought 1 of the eBooks just so I can read it. Three of the books were written by authors that are completely new to me and I would honestly read more by those authors too. I managed to read a book by JD Robb, the third one in the series (and if I finish the book I'm working on now will be two in the series), and two Book of the Month books! So my yearly goal was at least accomplished this month. I honestly read books that were right around the same amount of pages, the most pages in a book was Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade that had 394 pages and the least amount of pages was 296 in Immortal in Death by JD Robb. Three of these books were contemporary/romance/chick lit, however, you want to categorize them. Only two books were standalone!? I thought I honestly read more standalones than anything but this month that was a negative. But to be fair a lot of the chick-lit books come off as standalones but are actually series and they follow different characters in each book. Finally, there were 2 three-star books, 2 four-star books, and one 5-star book, I'll update whichever category my current read goes into if I complete it tomorrow. I'm going to go into how I got these statistics later because I started using CAWPILE. I also want to talk about my yearly goals at some point. So let's get into what these books are!
The Books
I started the year off with a reread of Immortal in Death by JD Robb. One of my yearly goals is to read an In Death book and a Book of the Month book every month. I have been having so much fun being back in this world and I feel like this was the best way to start the year off on this year. This is the book that Eve and Roarke get married and we finally get to see PEABODY! I think Peabody had the worst possible start at being showcased in this world because of the things that happened in this book. I just wanted more of the Peabody I love. Now that I'm thinking back while writing my wrap up I really wished I had more of her and the wedding. I talked about both over on my Instagram. I think I ended up giving this one either 4 or 5 stars originally but this time around I gave it 4 stars, borderline 3 stars. I love this series but there are over 50 books in this series so there are going to be some amazing books and some alright books but I love how the background ties together throughout all of them. Anyways my first go around with this book was with the audible book and the person who narrates these does such an amazing job and I love them! But I also think they have encouraged me to give the books a higher rating than I would have if I read them on my own which is another reason why I wanted to reread the series.
The next book I read this month, and the one after this one, were Book of the Month books! I actually started out with a backlist one that has been on my bookshelf since summer! I was introduced to Riley Sager's books this year and my goal was to read all four of them in publication order however, I cannot get into Lock Every Door. I've tried and I've DNF'd it and it has pushed me not to pick up Home Before Dark but this month that changed because I really wanted to read it this month. Since reading Home Before Dark I want to give Lock Every Door another chance but I have until this summer when his next one comes out. Anyways I ended up giving Home Before Dark by Riley Sager 5-stars, but now thinking about it I think it would really honestly be 4-stars. But I'm leaving everything the way they are because I used CAWPILE to get the ratings and I wanted to keep to it this year. Now that I'm thinking about Home Before Dark I keep linking it to American Horror Story's first season Murder House! The stories are completely different BUT I think the vibes that both of these creations give off are the same and that is my all-time favorite season of American Horror Story.
After I was done with this heavy thriller book I wanted to pick up something light and fast read so I picked up this month's Book of the Month pick, The Dating Plan by Sara Desai. I have never read anything by Desai, and I think this one actually her debut novel. It focuses on a girl who is incredibly smart but is working a job that is below her because she doesn't like to make ties. I was first pulled to this book because of Daisy. I wanted to see how this book would pull her, her life, and her culture into this book and I LOVED IT! She was my favorite thing about that book. Liam was amazing too but I kept getting frustrated with how much emphasis was put on Daisy's prom and I get to some people that is a huge milestone but for me, I was just never that tied to my prom so it being such a huge event for her was hard for me to relate. Now I did relate very heavily to being abandoned by her best friend and it was really showing me why prom was such a major thing Daisy and helped me link to even though prom was getting annoyed for me. I loved the part where Daisy's coworker was like it's just prom!? I so related to him. I also had an issue with the whole brother angle. I get how Liam was her brother's best friend and that's how they were introduced I just feel like if the siblings were as close as it sounded that he would know more about everything that was going on with Liam and Daisy and potentially get involved in the story earlier on in the book. I loved the writing and I would honestly pick up more from Desai but I ended up giving this book 3-stars. It wasn't bad, it was a solid read, but it wasn't a new all-time favorite read for me.
After I finished The Dating Plan I was in an eBook mood. eBooks are just really easy for me to pick up and read since they are always with me whether through my phone or iPad plus it's easier for me to read them before bed so I can be lazy and not have to worry about turning the lights off since they are already off. Anyways that being said I knew I wanted to read something I just wasn't sure what so I looked through everyone's end of the year favorites and recommendations on Instagram, and ended up buying Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade. This book was another light, fast read but with its own spin on things. I honestly wanted something written kind of like Evelyn Hugo or Red, White, and Royal Blue that had a lot of excerpts and mixed media in it. I definitely got that in this book but unlike those other books, I didn't like the cutouts in this book. I really liked the story between April and Marcus but the excerpts from their fan fiction or scripts just confused me and pulled me out of the story. There was an excerpt between almost every single chapter and normally I would love that but this one for some reason just did not click with me! I related more to April in this book and found her amazing. She was the star of this book. I ended up really wanting more of April, Marcus was okay but he was just eh. He was one of those characters that you don't want to root for, or even really hate him. But I just didn't really care much about him. I ended up giving this one 3-stars. I liked it overall. I just didn't love it. It was a solid read though.
Then finally my last book of the month is Love Her or Lose Her by Tessa Bailey. This is actually the second book in her Hot and Hammered series. But it was the first one that I read. Most series like this one can be read out of order because each book follows someone introduced in the previous book. Like the first book in this series follows one of the characters you see in this book and the next one follows another side character in this book. I think I would love to read the first book to see how Rosie and Dominic were in that book I ended up giving this one 4-stars but I feel like it may have been more on the 3-star side of things. I loved the book overall, but I think if I had to compare it to the other two that I read this month that were similar it would be tied between all three of them. But I do want to read the others in this series. I already have the first one, I just wanted to read Rosie's story that's why I picked up this one first.