Book 4: It's a Fabulous Life by Kelly Farmer

As is probably obvious from the title of this Christmas romance novel, it's a take on It's a Wonderful Life. But instead of an actual angel, we have a group of drag queens who need to get the wings of their costume, and the small town has a sad lesbian who never got to leave the town to go out and experience the world because her dad died her senior year of high school, and the love interest is the girl who got away from high school who's just moved back. 

There's a lot in this that's cute, but the central conceit really falls apart in this version of it. We're supposed to think that by the end Bailey George (yes, really) will of course be happier if she stays in Lanford Falls and never leaves or moves to a different town (let alone city or country like her dream was), and that literally the entire town will fall apart and stop thriving if she leaves. And you can kind of buy it in the movie version, that a small town banker really could be the thing to keep an entire town and family together. But the book doesn't actually want to get as dark and sad as the movie does, and as a result both the low point and the catharsis fall flat. I have read this kind of movie romance novel adaptation many times, and this one unfortunately both misses the emotional impact of the movie and also doesn't give us new characters who make me feel anything different. Bah. 

Grade: C

Book 3: Make the Season Bright by Ashley Herring Blake

Exes who reunite is one of my favorite romance novel tropes, and it pairs especially well with a Christmas romance, since it's so easy to dwell on the past during the season and people end up seeing old friends and family in a way that makes an unexpected reunion more likely. But the big pitfall is always whether the reason they broke up in the past still exists, and whether forgiveness etc. can actually be had. 

Unfortunately, for me this book really failed on that front. Charlotte and Brighton were childhood best friends who became high school sweethearts and got engaged their senior year of college, and then Brighton left Charlotte at the altar, and I never came close to thinking that Charlotte should forgive Brighton for it. The explanation that Charlotte was also sort of at fault for not seeing that Brighton was miserable living in New York doesn't make up for that, and they can't fix any of that with good sex. 

It's also the sort of romance novel where they exist basically in a vacuum - there's a queer social group of sorts, but apparently neither of them had any other friends aside from each other in high school or college, and it honestly all just made me kind of angry by the end. I had high hopes but the central conflict and resolution just fundamentally did not work for me, which makes it a hard sell in the end. 

Grade: C

Book 2: The Jolliest Bunch by Danny Pellegrino

I picked up this collection of essays about the holidays after watching and enjoying a Hallmark Christmas movie that the author had also written. It is a fun, light read of stories about a variety of aspects of holiday remembrances: our experiences as children vs. adults, the sometimes bizarre people who get thrown into our lives around Christmas, how important the Scholastic book fair was to many of us who were born in the '70s and '80s, and the way end of year celebrations often make us melancholy and think of people who are no longer in our lives for many reasons. A well-timed read for right after the season has ended. 

Grade: B

Book 1: Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret by Benjamin Stevenson

We're still within the Twelve Days of Christmas, so I'm still reading Christmas books and watching Christmas movies! This one is a festive mystery novella in a series I haven't read any of the other books in, but I've heard very good things about the main books, and based on my experience with this, I'm not surprised!

This is a very meta mystery series, with a detective/protagonist who knows that he's playing that role in his 'real life' and so comments on elements of it within the story. In this case he discusses the specific aspects of a Christmas special, where the mystery is lighter and the story as a whole doesn't include every reoccurring character and plot element that you would expect from the main story. It's a festive story in which five days before Christmas, his ex-wife's current partner is murdered, and she's the main suspect, so he travels to help her clear her name. It's also about a magician and stagecraft hijinks and also includes commentary on how celebrity charity works, with a satisfying ending that I in no way predicted but that did all come together when he laid it out, and I could see how I could have put it all together if I was that kind of mystery reader. A very pleasant way to spend New Year's Day! 

Grade: A

2025 Master List

Somehow it is 2025, and this will be my tenth year of maintaining this book blog. I truly do not know how the time has passed, but that's the nature of the game, I guess. 

Last year I read the fewest books since 2017, when I somehow only managed to read 12 books all year. I would like to do better than that this year, and better than the 26 I read in 2024, although I do have a good sense of why I didn't have a ton of time or focus for reading. Last year I watched many many movies, and a fair amount of television, and also I got distracted by events of the world, for better or for worse. And this year I would like to at least try to find the pleasure in reading again, and in building out a TBR pile that makes me excited and doesn't make me feel burdened. I think I have a good handle on that right now, but we'll see. As is my standard, I have more books to start this year than I did at the beginning of 2024, but let's see how I can do. I'd like to read more books I love this year, which probably means I need to be more ruthless about giving up on a book when I know it won't be one I love. I would also like to reread more books this year as well. Here's hoping. 

2025 list is below!

Book 27: The Mistletoe Mystery by Nita Prose

This is a Christmas-themed novella set in the same universe as The Maid, and everything that I (despite my misgivings) ended up making my peace with in that book are back in this story and much, much worse. So! It was not be saved by the fact that it's a Christmas-themed story--I started to call it a mystery, but it's not. The only suspense in the book is the fact that Molly is unable to see that everything odd that's happening is because her boyfriend is trying to propose to her, but she doesn't see, but the reader sure does, and honestly it just made me think that if you are dating someone who (understandably!) needs things stated explicitly and clearly to you, you're doing a bad job if you try to keep secrets, even if it's in service of something nice, i.e. a proposal. This was the last book I read this year and no thank you!

Grade: C

Book 26: The Maid by Nita Prose

Man, this is one of those books that I feel really conflicted about! At its core it's a pretty well-constructed murder mystery that takes place at a fancy boutique hotel, where Molly, the titular maid, works. The mystery itself is pretty compelling, with some nice twists and turns, but what sets this book apart from most other similar contemporary mysteries is the extremely close first-person POV of Molly. It's never explicitly stated, but it's pretty clear from the narration that Molly falls under the autism umbrella: she has a hard time understanding what people's facial expressions mean, she takes everything literally, she is an exceptional maid in large part because she finds comfort in routine and cannot stand to let something be dirty or uncared for. It's a very readable and enjoyable POV, and before the mystery properly kicked off I prepared myself for this being one of the kinds of mysteries where someone's neurodivergence makes them a savant at putting together patterns and seeing things that more neurotypical people can't, a la Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock. And while I was already a bit 'sure, I guess' about that possibility, I was still looking forward to it.

But instead, she just...doesn't know what's going on. There's a whole seedy underbelly to the hotel that she's caught up in and just doesn't see it for what it is, and so it's this odd thing where I guess in theory the reader could enjoy being ahead of her in solving the mystery? But instead it just made me feel bad. The narrator's unreliable but not in a way that I found served the story particularly, aside from one reveal at the end that I did like a lot. But overall it left me a bit cold. However, I did enjoy reading it and I finished it in a very pleasant evening, so! As I led off with: CONFLICTED.

Grade: B