Hello!

If I am anything, it is predictable – I love lists. I have so many books lists it’s arguably unproductive, but if I don’t get to a book on my monthly tbr, it then gets carried over to my leftover tbr – because it was leftover. I don’t need to over explain this.

There are some caveats – if I don’t get to my monthly Famous Five book, I will carry it over because I’m always playing catch up, then if I don’t get to the books from my 24 in 2024 list (another list!) it goes back on to the spinner, so these are the books that aren’t in those categories.

I promise, I do read for fun and I do enjoy it – I just also love stats and organising things and planning lists, hence so many lists. This is my idea of fun, don’t read too much into that…

January

So back in January, I made even more unreasonable TBRs than I do now – I still had Kindle Unlimited and I was trying not to waste the money I was spending on that by making a list of books from my physical TBR that are also on KU and one of those was Beastly by Alex Flinn. I have actually read this before but it was as a teenager which means it was probably over a decade ago so I want to read it again to see if I still like it enough to keep in my collection. My January TBR was ridiculously long so the chances I was actually going to get round to reading this were so slim, but having it on this list means I may get to it by the end of the year!

The other book I added to this list from my January TBR was Faebound by Saara El-Arifi – I pre-ordered this book because it had stunning sprayed edges and it had loads of hype. I’ve seen mixed reviews since then but that’s the beauty of reading – I still might love it, so I hope to read it at some point before the end of the year (how many times am I going to say that in this post?).

February

There were three books from my monthly tbr that were transferred to this list and those were another KU title, my Illumicrate subscription book and my Afterlight subscription book.

On KU, I intended to read The Library by Bella Osbourne which is a book I picked up in a garden centre several years ago, but it’s a book about books and I think it has an element of found family so as with every book on my tbr, I am looking forward to reading it, I just have one brain and finite energy so I can’t do it all but I will at some point!

Then the Illumicrate book for this month was Voyage of the Damned by Frances White and this is a prime example of a book that I wouldn’t have bought if it wasn’t in a subscription box so I definitely put this one off. It’s one I’ve not seen a lot of hype about and I think that says a lot about a new release, particularly from somewhere like Illumicrate, when no one then goes on to share their love for the book. I’ll try to go in with an open mind whenever I do get round to it, but I am dubious.

And lastly for February, the Afterlight book was At First Spite by Olivia Dade – I’d heard about this book before receiving it and I thought it sounded like so much fun, this was a prime example of a book I was really excited about but I just ran out of time for. The special edition is gorgeous and this is one that I’m still looking forward to, definitely one of the higher priority books on this list.

March

This month it was just the subscription books, so the Illumicrate book was To Cage a God by Elizabeth May which I must confess, I’d intended to skip because it was one of the books they announced in advance and I just didn’t really care for the summary, but I’d got confused about when I needed to skip the box by and missed it. I’m hoping to be pleasantly surprised by this one, whenever I do get round to it.

And the Afterlight book was Fangirl Down by Tessa Bailey and I am actually really looking forward to this one – I read my first ever Tessa Bailey around Christmas and this concept sounds so silly, it’s the perfect kind of light contemporary romance that I should have read this summer really! I’m hoping this will be a nice, quick one to squeeze in before the end of the year.

April

April was a really heavy new release month and the fact that I made it through all but two books was actually very impressive for me!

The Afterlight book was The Kiss Countdown by Etta Easton and this was another one I was so excited about but I just didn’t have enough time for. A fake dating contemporary romance with an astronaut? Right up my alley, to the degree that I put it on another tbr later in the year but I didn’t get round to it then either. Hopefully third time’s the charm!

And the new release I preordered that I didn’t get round to was But Everyone Feels This Way by Paige Layle which is a non-fiction book about how being diagnosed with autism saved Paige’s life. I’ve been following Paige’s advocacy content online for a couple of years so I’m really intrigued as to how her narrative style translates into the written word. This feels like one I might read in that week between Christmas and New Year but similarly, it might be a bit of a heavy topic but honestly, who knows!

May

By this point in the year, I was making smarter tbr’s and I only had one book that made it onto the leftover tbr and that was Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea by Rebecca Thorne. I must confess this is another book that I purchased because the sprayed edges are delightful but I have since seen a lot of fun reviews for the book and some wonderful content from the author herself, who has described the sequel as having twice as many lesbians due to the one negative review that claimed there were too many in this one. I have also pre-ordered the sequel that comes out in October so if I don’t read this before then, I will have no excuse when I have book 2 in my hands!

June

The only book that was added to the list was my Afterlight book One Last Shot by Betty Cayouette – this is another one that I was genuinely excited to read (predominantly because the love interest is a photographer), and I was gutted to be stuck in a rut reading a non-fiction book when a summer romance book awaited me! Writing this post is making me want to go and finish my current tbr so I can get back to reading some of these books!

July

This month was actually my best reading month of the year so far thanks to wanting to read all of my current reads ahead of the Summerween readathon, the readathon itself and a lot of time spent driving and devouring audiobooks. Whilst I did read over 50% of my monthly tbr, some of those titles rolled over so the only book that was transferred to the leftover list was Goddess of the River by Vaishnavi Patel. This one I can absolutely put down to the fact there was a massive delay with the Illumicrate delivery so I ended up having two books on my tbr in one month and whilst I did read one, the delayed one didn’t get a chance!

This is another one where the premise doesn’t really grab me at all, so I need to find a moment where I’m feeling particularly open minded before I dive into this one.

Now, if I’m being honestly realistic with myself, do I think I’ll read any of these by the end of the year? Right now, no – I’ve not managed to finish one monthly tbr completely, let alone have time to go back and read more of my backlist! But I have cancelled my subscriptions and I don’t have anywhere near as many preorders in the last quarter of the year so there’s a slim chance that I will actually be able to complete my tbr’s and read some of these catch up books!

Even when trying to be realistic, I am still absolutely delusional about how much I am capable of reading.

Either way, thank you so much for reading!

Sophie xx