Wednesday, January 7, 2026

December 2025 Reading Wrap Up

This month I did a thing and rejoined NetGalley! This will be reflected in my reads this month and upcoming months. I'm excited to be jumping in on reviewing new releases again. Let's do this!

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion Vol 5 by Beth Brower: The story of our heroine Emma Lion, continues. Things are just getting better and better. These books continue to make me LOL so many times.  I want to use the word "snarky" for Emma but when I said that in YouTube someone got mad at me thinking that snarky is a bad thing. But I maintain that she is pretty snarky, especially for her time period! Looking forward to finishing what's available of this series. And then following the journey from here on out as more get published!

Room to Breathe by Kasie West: This was my first NetGalley read of this new era of NetGalley-ing. How fitting for it to be one of my favorite authors! This is her latest YA romance just released this past week on the 6th. In this story, we have our two characters getting locked in a bathroom together. They were really good friends, but something recently happened and they've had a falling out and haven't been talking... until the bathroom that is. Now they have so much time to work it out and solve all their issues. We get the NOW in the bathroom, and the THEN flashing back to previous times. It's great. I loved it as expected. 

The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut: This our book club read for the month. And also counted as my last classic book of the year. (The Classic Six Challenge... to read six classics in the year!) I really enjoyed this crazy ride through time and space, trying to figure out what all the allegories were and what point Vonnegut was trying to make. But mostly just enjoying the story and all the weirdness fully. 

The Passion of Dolssa by Julie Berry: I worked on this book for months, just reading snippets here and there on my Kindle. Finally I decided it needed to be finished and the last half went by in only a day or two of reading. So good! This one is about a two girls... one is very devout and religious, so much so that the church has actually called her out as a heretic and she is on the run. The other is the girl who finds her and shelters her. And there are lots of other side characters whose lives are touched by the first girl (Dolssa) who seems to have some sort of special powers. It's based on stuff that actually happened during this time period... the 1200s... in France. (And other parts of Europe of course.) So eye opening and heart breaking and fascinating.

Recursion by Blake Crouch: I got this book at our book club book exchange and decided to quickly read it at the list minute of the year and it ended up being a five star book. Very very un-put-downable, and page turny. It's about our guy who is trying to figure out what's going on with this weird phenomenon where people are killing themselves because of false memories that show up in their brain. Then it starts happening to him. And he ends up meeting the woman who actually causes this thing... and they are working together to try and make it stop. IT's a time travel book with a science explanation behind how that happens. IT's very brain trippy and so much fun and craziness!

Love Me Tomorrow by Emiko Jean: The other NetGalley book I read this month, by an author I've been curious about but haven't got to quite yet. I really enjoyed this one which on the surface also seemed like a time travel book, but I'm not sure that it really ended up as one. Still a bit confused about that part. But our girl is getting love letters from a guy in the future, so she is trying to figure out which boy in her life this could be. But really, the letters and the guys all help her to figure out herself and what she really needs to do for her own future. It's cute and I really enjoyed it.

And finally I read a beta copy for an online writing buddy! It was a mystery that was okay, but not something I'd normally read and find amazing. 

And that was my December reading! I'm excited to start a new year of reading and have so many plans to make it awesome. What are your reading plans for this new year?


(Here's the video version on YouTube of this wrap up!)


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