LISETTE MARSHALL
Hythra has a plan. To avoid the suitors her mother sends after her, she’ll spend the Midwinter ball with the last man who’ll ever try to marry her: a drunkard who has made his dislike of her abundantly clear. Except it turns out Cai is no common drunk at all. Worse, he doesn’t seem to dislike her all that much…
Heat Level: Hot **
As I mentioned before, I recently joined the BBBC (Bujo Buddies Book Club) run by Jess (known as JashiiCorrin over on YouTube) to inspire and motivate myself a bit more when it comes to reading and book related things. I’ve never been a part of a book community before, and so far it has been lovely. I participated in my first book club meeting, and had a lot of fun discussing the read.
There are also challenges and read-a-thons that happen throughout the year, one of which is called ‘A Year of Goober‘ which is sort of like a new take on reading bingo. Ghosty Goober is the name of a ghost mascot the group uses, and basically each month you have the choice between two prompts, which are also tied to two types of flowers. Each month you build a bouquet of flowers up, depending on your monthly reading choices. The video I linked goes into resources available and how to sign up if you’re interested. I’ll be adding this to my reading journal, so I’ll share my progress here once I get that up and running.
I didn’t intend on getting so involved with the reading club once I joined, but I’m having a good time and it’s really nice to be surrounded by a possitive non toxic community who have similar interests. Even if we do spend a lot of time defending differences in opinion about books, there’s room for every sort of reader.
MALLORY DUNLIN
Fleeing a dangerous wizard, Safira takes a job at a remote, sorcerous Spire in the center of a water-horse’s lake. She expects to be alone, but the elemental creature strikes a bargain with her: he’ll water her garden if she’ll talk to him. He’s beautiful, naive, and hungry for companionship—but behind those ice-blue eyes is a merciless immortal. To touch a water-horse is to become his possession. If she lets herself follow the forbidden lure of his voice, not even a sorcerer can save her. He says all he wants is the sound of her voice. The stories tell a different tale. Words won’t ever be enough. And one way or another, he’ll have her.
Heat Level: Hot **
S.A. HEIDEN
Hugh Baum is tasked to get approval from the Kingdom to expand the Baum Bowyer business, but the magistrate in charge holds a 50 year grudge against the Fae. Hugh could have found a way to work around it, but when Lisette, the beautiful and fierce baker comes to town, both males are distracted by her presence. The rivalry between Hugh and Acworth intesifies as Lisette tries to dodge their advances and establish her family bakery. She has no interest in a courtship and is having a hard enough time keeping the business afloat. Unfortunately, Magistrate Acworth is a cruel and corrupt Fae, and when his sights are set on Lisette, only trouble ensues.
Heat Level: Smoldering **
VELA ROTH
Phoebe, a widow in her thirties, feels like a princess every time fanged, immortal Alethas spirits her out of her father’s castle for dances under the full moon. After years of making sacrifices for her eleven sisters, she’s tempted to let him fulfill all her secret desires. But loving him could get her killled.
Heat Level: Scorching ****
In order to be a bit spoiler-free for anyone else who may be participating in FaRoFeB I’ve decided to post these one day later than the books are received. For anyone unfamiliar with the event, it’s a fantasy romance book give away done in December, much like an advent calendar. It used to take place in February, hence the ‘feb’ at the end, but now there’s lots of different events for FaRo lovers, all year long. It’s a great way to check out new authors and find some hidden gem reads – if you’re into fantasy romance, at least.
The first book of the giveaway is How to Marry a Winged King, by A. J. Lancaster, which is a Cinderella retelling. I’m in the middle of reading something else right now and I tend to only read one book at a time (and one audio book at a time) but we’ll see where this one ends up in my TBR pile. Have you read it before? Let me know in comments! Keep in mind that this is a judgement free zone, it does not matter what people choose to read, so long as they’re reading.
It started out small, like most ideas. Jaedia (good friend who I adore) was talking about setting up a reading journal for 2025 – and I loved that idea. I’ve had lots of journals before, but never a reading journal. Why not start one. So I started browsing YouTube for spread ideas. That’s where I found JashiiCorrin. I watched a few of her videos and then before I knew it, I joined her reading club discord – the BBBC (Bujo Buddies Book Club). There, they have a monthly book club that works much as you would expect any book club to, along with reading buddies and other book related chatter.
I lucked out, because their next meet up was only a few days away, and it was a book that I had already read last month, The Spellshop, by Sarah Beth Durst. Even though I’m pretty shy, I wanted to throw myself into this community so that’s exactly what I did. The club meeting started, and they had it set so that you could either talk (I didn’t have a microphone set up yet) or you could type in the channel, and participate that way – if you just wanted to lurk, that was perfectly fine, too.
Normally when I read a book I might delve into the review section on goodreads, or I might see something about it posted to tiktok or instagram, but here were 35 people discussing their opinions in such an open and frank matter – I loved every second of it. I loved seeing how people interpreted things, and while the discussion did tend to slant to a very harsh review of the book, most people did finish reading / listening to it and almost everyone agreed that while it was not an earth shattering piece of literary writing, it was an overall good book that they did enjoy. We also learned how voting for the next books would take place in the new year, and we were presented with a theme to then make book suggestions from. The theme for January is book covers that have bones and flowers on it. I decided to recommend The Bone Orchard, by Sara A. Mueller. Two books will be chosen, and then we’ll vote on them around mid-December. I’m excited to see how that goes!
Over all, it was just a really good time hanging out with people who love books. It was something I’ve never really participated in before, and I’m already looking forward to the December meet up even though the book is one that I’m a little less enthusiastic about (I believe it falls under a self help / productivity category, which is not exactly my genre of choice – but I’ll still read it). Do you belong to a book club? Do you enjoy it? Let me know in comments, and who knows, maybe I’ll find myself in another club or two over the months, we’ll just have to see.
It’s not quite the end of the year yet, but I managed to finish my reading goal: 24 books in 2024. I read some incredible books and I don’t plan on stopping there, I’ll continue to read and see how many more I can add to the list before 2025.
Some of my absolute favourites include The Saint of Steel series by T. Kingfisher (so happy I found this author, I love many of her books, and read a lot of them this year), and The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst. I was happy to see a fair amount of diversity in my readings, and while I did stick to a lot of my usual fantasy/romantacy genres, there’s some other genres tossed in too. I’m excited to start up the 25 in 2025 reading challenge and hopefully I am a bit better about writing reviews and other book-related posts here.
This was my second book by T. Kingfisher – and I enjoyed it, but I wasn’t absolutely blown away by it like I have with some of her works. It tells the story of fourteen-year-old Mona, who has a magical gift of – bread. She can make gingerbread men rise, and her familiar is a sourdough starter which I found hilarious. I think in the case of this book, I was simply not the target. The book was written for a younger audience, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.
I didn’t particularly like how Mona went and solved her issues, either. Things start off as a murder mystery but quickly develops into a coming-of-age story – and again, nothing wrong with that, it just wasn’t what I was looking for.
There are some young adult books I can read and forget that it was ever written with an audience in mind, and unfortunately this was not one of those books, for me. Still, it was a fun magic system and brought some unique features, so if you’re looking for something easy to read and quite cozy despite the murder happening, this might be a read you’ll want to look into.
3/5 stars
A very interesting book that had a lot of informational facts that I didn’t know. Alex Trebek led a fascinating life, and I loved the ‘just an ordinary man’ perspective that the book came from, but, while reading I personally found a lack of flow. It read like a book of disjointed facts that were about the same person but didn’t really fit together. Each chapter was a ‘fact’ and some were explained in great detail and others left me wondering. The first half of the book read much different than the later half when he started talking about his career. It was probably on purpose, it almost felt like he was uncomfortable talking about himself (he states numerous times that the game should never be about the host) and he spends a lot of time paying homage to the wonderful contestants he had over the years.
I feel like that could have probably been an entire book all in itself, and not in his autobiography where I was there to read about him. Still, the book was an enjoyable quick read and my first Canadian autobiography.
3/5 Stars
The Nomadic Reader 