ARC provided by Atria Books through NetGalley. Martha Waters has become an auto-add author for me. To Marry and to Meddle is the latest installment in her Regency Vows series and I thoroughly enjoyed this one as much… More
A Year in Review | 2021 Reading Stats
Hello everyone and welcome to another review of my reading habits this year! Last year was the first year I looked at all my reading stats at the end of the year and I really enjoyed do that, so I decided to do it again. My only and biggest gripe this year was that I was totally on track to reach my goal–I only needed to read THREE books in the entire month of December–but my brain decided to once again have another huge reading slump and I couldn’t even manage that.
I also wanted to break down my reading habits between the first half of the year vs. the second, because I felt like they were totally different. I read way less in the first half, and it felt like I was reading more adult titles and hardly any fantasy books (definitely no fantasy that I liked, at least).
TOTAL NUMBER OF BOOKS READ: 97 / 100
PAGES READ: 38,168
LONGEST BOOK: 645 pages
SHORTEST BOOK: 154 pages
AVERAGE RATING: 3.7 stars
MOST READ GENRE:
This year it’s a tie between fantasy and contemporary romance, and while I’m not too surprised by those results, I am surprised fantasy was that high of a percentage. I was surprised by the big chunk of erotica, although that can be blamed on #smutok 😂
MOST READ AGE GROUP:
A complete difference from years in the past! This is the first year I’ve ever read more adult titles than young adult, and it’s not by a small margin either. In recent years I could feel myself growing away from young adult and now I have the stats to back it up. I still enjoy reading YA books, but I’m honestly much more pickier about which ones I want to read and tend to stick to well beloved authors and series that I’ve already started.
MOST READ FORMATS:
Unsurprisingly, I once again read mostly e-books on my Kindle. I got a library card after I moved into my apartment and I’ve been borrowing a lot more books from the library this year. My goal was to read at least 25% of my books with a physical copy but I did not reach that at all…I actually think I read less physical books 🙈
Another huge change in my reading habits from previous years was the number of ARCs I read. My number decreased by half this year! This was because not only was I not requesting as many titles on NetGalley, but in-person book events are really the only way for me to get physical ARCs and since those have been cancelled for the last two years….💁🏻♀️
I’m looking forward to another year of reading some wonderful books and I can’t wait to see how my stats compare at the end of 2022!
Top Ten Tuesday: Book Covers with Flowers & Foliage
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s theme is a freebie. I’ve always been drawn to covers with bursts of flowers on the cover. I think they’re so pretty. For today’s post, I decided to round up some of my favorite covers with flowers and foliage!
ARC REVIEW: Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves – Meg Long
ARC provided by Wednesday Books.
Sled racing, a frozen planet, and wolves? I don’t believe there’s another book out there as perfectly tailored to my wants and needs as Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves. I’ve made it very clear in the past that if the title says “wolves” or “wolf” there is a one hundred percent chance of me reading it and this was no exception. I was so excited for a story about the bond between a wolf and girl, especially one that features sled racing (I mean, I named my husky Balto for crying out loud).
The worldbuilding is definitely the book’s strong point. The author did an amazing job creating a setting that was both believable and imaginative. The vivid descriptions easily bring to mind images of an inhospitable frozen planet and the feel of the sharp sting of cold winds on your face. It was so easy to feel transported into the story while reading. The entirety of the setting of Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves was detailed, well thought out, and excellently written.
I was truly expecting to love everything and anything about this book, but the pacing of the story needed some work. The actual sled race doesn’t happen until well past the halfway mark. The beginning half of the story spent way too long setting up for the events of the second half and I was getting frustrated. I felt like the same plot line was reused multiple times: Sena angers her boss, Sena runs away from her boss, Sena has to go back because she needs something–rinse and repeat until the race begins. My expectations of the story were hoping for a book that spent a majority of time following Sena and Iska during the sled race as they fought for survival in the deadly elements of their world.
Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves is a debut that I still highly recommend, despite my personal shortcomings. The worldbuilding and atmosphere of the novel is phenomenally written and who can resist a book about the bond between a wolf and girl and a deadly sled race?
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ½
YALLFest 2021: Book Events are Back!
In-person author signings and book events are finally back and I could not be more excited! YALLFest took place this past weekend in Charleston, South Carolina. I started making plans to head back to Charleston as soon as I saw the announcement that YALLFest would be back this year. I hadn’t been in a few years (last year was cancelled, the year before I was in school) so it was doubly exciting for me.
Continue reading “YALLFest 2021: Book Events are Back!”
BOOK REVIEW: The Simple Wild – K.A. Tucker
Somehow I was led to believe that The Simple Wild was a cute hate-to-love romcom about a city girl moving to the middle of nowhere and falling for the grumpy small town love interest similar to It Happened One Summer. While that pretty much sums up the romantic subplot, this book is so much more than that. The Simple Wild was an emotional, poignant, heart-wrenching story that took me completely by surprise. I honestly could not tell you the last time I cried this hard reading a book.
It’s refreshing to read a hate-to-love story that actually encompasses that hate aspect. And I say that because I really, really hated the love interest, Jonah, for the good beginning of the book. It took a really long time for me to warm up to him (and to be honest there are still some aspects about him I’m not a fan of; mainly how he speaks about women who enjoy dressing up and wearing makeup), so I can easily imagine how Calla must have been feeling. The romance is slow-burn in the best sense, because it wasn’t until halfway through the book that Calla (and myself) began to change her mind about him.
I know this may be hard to believe, but the romance wasn’t even my favorite part about the book. The Simple Wild really touches on families, especially forming ties with estranged parents and the theme of regrets and forgiveness. Following Calla and Wren’s journey in learning about one another and recreating their father/daughter bond after so many years of not speaking was the best part of this story. The way their relationship was written was absolutely beautiful.
The story also places an importance on found families and community. Like Calla, I’m a city girl through and through. The thought of living someplace as remote as Bangor, Alaska makes me break out in hives. But I’ll be damned if K.A. Tucker didn’t do a phenomenal job showing a different side to small, rural towns and how tight-knit such communities are. Before reading this I was unfamiliar with Alaskan bush pilots and their roles but the author did a great job showing their importance to the remote communities and villages of Alaska.
This book simply had no reason to be this good and cause me this much emotional pain. My heart was physically aching at some parts. I was expecting a light-hearted romcom with some good angst between the protagonist and love interest, and instead I was given a book that was so much more than that. The Simple Wild was one of the best books I’ve read this year and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a beautiful story about love, families, community, and forgiveness.
⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Paws & Paperbacks 