Book 12: Under the Mistletoe with You by Lizzie Huxley-Jones

Look, sometimes you need to end March with a gay Christmas romance novel, okay?

This one has a lot to recommend for it - it's got a baker named Christopher who lives in a quaint Welsh village. He gets snowed in with the famous actor Nash Nadeau there under a fake name who was supposed to stay at Christopher's apartment while he went home for Christmas. They clash! There's only one bed! They have to figure out how to work together to help the village! Christopher hides that he knows who Nash is! 

This book is extremely cozy, and it's lovely to have a lead character who's trans and not have that be the big message of the book. But for me, the balance of small village pre-Christmas stuff to romance wasn't quite what I was looking for - the two leads didn't have the kind of chemistry I was hoping for, and while they each had personal obstacles they had to get past, it didn't feel like they found the answers in each other. Plus, and this is just a particular pet peeve for me, Nash never sounded like an American (or a Canadian who moved to LA when he was a teenager) to me. I'm sure that the reverse happens for British readers all the time, but I wish his dialogue and internal monologue had been more carefully written to be that of a non-British person. 

Grade: C   

Book 11: The Fireborne Blade by Charlotte Bond

One of my best friends got married a few months ago, and she gave a selection of books to each person in her bridal party based on their tastes. This is one of mine, and I definitely know why I got it: a female knight! an inventive narrative structure! lesbian subtext! and a whole bunch of twists and turns and prophecies and betrayals. It's a novella that feels like it could be the launching pad to a full novel or series, because there's so much more of the world left unexplored and it ends at a place that is clearly kicking off something new. 

The titular fireborne blade is in the lair of a dragon named the White Lady, who can't be killed by a (male) knight. So following in the footsteps of Eowyn, the knight Maddileh is determined to force the other male knights to allow her to also be a knight by killing the White Lady and bringing back the blade. She has a squire who's fairly incompetent and the support of a couple of mages (official and hidden), and then the whole thing takes a turn! I read this in one sitting and it was just a very nice way to send an evening. 

Grade: B  

Book 10: The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles by Malka Older

The sequel to The Mimicking of Known Successes, this book picks up where that one left off, with our intrepid duo stumbling on a new mystery to solve on the rings of Jupiter! This one is in many ways an examination of why people within a society will contrive to create an "imposition of unnecessary obstacles" simply because they need to see themselves as living off the land or being good enough or having the ability to pull up those bootstraps that others can't, etc. And for obvious reasons, I found that pretty topical! Don't break things that are working but flawed because you're bored or because they're not perfect!!! Ahem. 

I will say that the relationship at the core of these books still isn't exactly my jam - there's too much hesitation and doubt for me, without an actual issue to give their relationship any real conflict. It's not the scifi novella series I'd most recommend, but if space colonization is your thing, it's fun!

Grade: B

Book 9: Orbital by Samantha Harvey

A book club book! And one that read with some trepidation, because I don't always vibe with a short novel that's more about mood and language than it is about plot, and I am more lukewarm on stories set in space than others. 

However! I really, really loved this book. The prose is certainly stylized, but I think the structure and format of the novel (24 hours on a space station that's rotating around Earth 16 times in that timeframe) made it all work for me. There are six astronauts up there, from a variety of backgrounds - two from Russia and then one each from Italy, the UK, the U.S. and Japan - and the book tells the story of what they go through on a typical day up there, and what they see of the world below. It's not a lot of plot, but it isn't just descriptions of the glory and wonder of the planet below, and even that stuff made me so happy. I just had a great time reading this book, and in the end that's worth a lot!

Grade: A 

Book 8: Saint by Sierra Simone

So I put a hold on this book in the library when I read the following quote from it:

"There's no instruction manual for falling in love with your best friend's little brother. And there's no manual for falling back in love with him when he's a monk." 

Up until the final three words it's just pretty standard gay romance novel fare, and then it suddenly takes a turn!! And that turn is why I picked up the book and it's why this book has the charms it does. 

The monk is Aiden, who had been a millionaire playboy with underlying trauma that he decides to deal with by breaking up with his hot boyfriend Elijah and becoming a monk (but like a cool monk, in a cool monastery that's fine with his queerness etc.). But then Elijah comes by because he's writing a big magazine piece on monastery breweries, and also he's engaged now to another man, and Aiden loses his mind and the chastity cage he's been wearing under his robes no longer controls his desires. 

The whole vibe of this story is giving these two men in contemporary life a reason why they can't be together that's also extremely hot, and the enforced celibacy of Catholic priests/monks/nuns is a perfect fit for it. It also begins to sag a bit at a certain point, because there's only one way out of this (Aiden leaves his monastery) and also we find out what his Big Secret was for leaving Elijah and entering a monastery the next day, and frankly it doesn't hit as well as it should. But the sexual tension and denial is extremely good, and the way they roleplay with the actual restrictions they're breaking is incredible. I was sad to discover that most of this author's books are either straight Catholic versions of this, which I'm less interested in, or fake modern politics based on Camelot, which unfortunately I simply cannot deal with right now. But this was a great winter read. 

Grade: B

Book 7: Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe

When I started reading this book, I worried that I might not be able to follow all of it because my knowledge of the Troubles in Northern Ireland was so limited (along with my general knowledge of Irish independence and history). It starts with a pretty narrow focus on one disappeared woman and a few key individuals who played major roles in the IRA in the late sixties and seventies, and gradually broadens the scope, until by the end of the book I wanted to go back to the beginning and reread it immediately, because now I actually had the context I needed for understanding everything. 

This isn't a criticism at all; it's actually one of my favorite things about the book and the way that it builds a world for someone who came in with practically no political understanding of how the Good Friday Agreement came to be and how contentious it was, and how impossible a conflict between neighborhoods and streets can be to navigate, no matter what your religion or position. It's also a murder mystery, and the final third of the novel has a series of reveals that I truly didn't know where they could possibly land. 

I started reading this in the fall and continued into the winter in part because there's a miniseries dramatizing the book, which I wanted to watch after I had read this, and I'm really glad I experienced the narratives in that order. The show is also very good, but I think that my experience of watching the show was deepened significantly by having read the book first. The story itself is highly compelling, but the structure the book gives the story is so effective and so impressive, and I'm already tempted to do a full reread. It's my favorite kind of narrative nonfiction.

Grade: A 

Book 6: The Christmas Swap by Talia Samuels

This is almost a really sweet and satisfying Christmas romance novel before it kind of falls apart in the end, sadly. Margot and her girlfriend break up right before the holidays, so when one of her clients asks her to be his fake girlfriend at his rich parents' home for Christmas, she says yes. All goes well until she meets Ben's hot gay sister Ellie, oh no! Ellie thinks she's a gold digger but is also drawn to her, of course. 

I thought this novel was going to avoid most of the worst pitfalls of this genre when Ben and Margot confess that they're faking it at about the midway point, long before Margot and Ellie actually kiss, but then the final conflict and resolution is so both overdone and underbaked that the whole thing falls flat. Not mad I read it, but it could have been much better with a bit more work, for me. 

Grade: C 

Book 5: Dark Heir by CS Pacat

I finally made it to the sequel of Dark Rise! And it was both exactly what I'd hoped for/expect while somehow being a bit less than the sum of its parts, unfortunately. 

The whole book is built around the tension that Will knows who he is deep down but none of his friends do, and if they did know, they'd immediately turn against him. And that's a pretty good central tension to a story, but either I've simply read too many of these kinds of stories at this point or the book didn't quite hold the tension as well as I'd like it to, because the moment of his reveal didn't quite hit for me. This is partly because James is on his own journey that's separate from Will's path, but it's one that's less about discovering who Will is and more Will continuing to somehow always be a step ahead of him in terms of accepting their intermingled destiny. I don't know! I get why Will is like oh noes he only loves me because he thinks I'm NOT the big bad and/or because he doesn't realize that the collar is linking him to me because I'm that guy, but I thought by the end of this book we might actually get to the next stage of it. I wanted more actual juice in the central relationship of the story. 

This may also be because so many of the other characters felt sidelined to me. This is a classic second book/movie in the trilogy issue, where the main crew gets sent off on their own journeys before finally coming back together at the end, but as a result I felt cut off from Violet and the whole Lions plotline and Elizabeth dealing with Visander. 

Having said all that, I think it was a much more coherent book than the first one, and I am still looking forward to the final book of the trilogy because I do think it'll probably land the plane pretty well. I think I just wanted a bit more tropey nonsense from these books and less lore. 

Grade: B

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!