Hello!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! How another year has flown!

Would it possibly be a reading wrap up if I don’t comment on how fast time is going?

I hope you had a wonderful festive celebration if you do celebrate and a restful New Year regardless. Mine wasn’t particularly restful as we had three separate Christmases with different family members and we were traipsing up and down the country, but we saw in the New Year in our own home with wonderful friends and have spent the first few days of the year recovering from all the busy-ness, so I’m starting to feel nearly functional again now!

But flipping back just briefly to 2024 – December was a really mixed reading month. I started so well feeling like I had absolutely found my stride – I read 7 books in 3 weeks (above average for me!) and packed so many books to take away for Christmas in the expectation that I’d have lots of downtime to read them.

I’m not sure why I did – there was no downtime whatsoever and the book I was slowly making my way through I didn’t end up finishing until January 2nd, so isn’t in this wrap up anyway! I’ve definitely learnt that next December I would like to reserve exclusively for reading festive books and rereading my favourite books of the year.

Either way, 7 books in three weeks is an achievement I’m happy to have ended 2024 on, so here are the reviews!

House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1) – Sarah J Maas (5 ⭐️)

This was a carry-over from November because it turns out reading a 27 hour audiobook / 800 page brick was a big ask and it took me a few extra days to finish it!

This is the first book in Sarah J Maas’ third series which is an urban fantasy story following half-human Bryce as she finds herself at the centre of the investigation into the murder of her best friend two years after the event. She’s paired with fallen angel Hunt and together they retrace the steps of creatures of all kinds to find out how they were involved and who really killed Danika.

For a book so long that I’ve only ever heard average things about, I was expecting there to be very heavy world building, no plot and very slow pacing but actually two of those things I disagree with. The world building is quite intense – there’s a lot of names for groups of people and areas and terminology that went completely over my head because I knew if I tried to focus on it all I would either 1) get overwhelmed or 2) end up spoiling the series for myself online. But otherwise, there most definitely was a plot which I thought was really engaging and took twists and turns I really I didn’t expect, and the pacing was very steady! There was no point where I thought things were getting slow or nothing had happened for a while – I was consistently engaged with the characters, invested in their solving of the investigation and eager to try to understand the world more. I really liked the urban setting and that all fantasy creatures appear to have been included.

I was planning to go out and buy the sequel, but I received a comment on TikTok telling me that there are some spoilers for Maas’ other series so if I wanted to I should read them first. I’m not sure whether to start with ACOTAR or Throne of Glass, but I will definitely be trying my best to at least start one of them in 2025.

Legends and Lattes – Travis Baldree (4 ⭐️)

After the intensity of Crescent City, I was definitely ready for something a bit lighter and the man attributed to have brought cosy fantasy to the mainstream seemed like a fantastic way to do it.

This book is about Viv – an Orc who has retired from her life of fighting and adventuring to set up a little coffee shop in a place where no one knows what coffee is. Alongside sourcing the machines, the materials and a couple of staff, trouble finds Viv even in her retirement.

I enjoyed this one a lot! It felt a lot like what happens after the end of a D&D campaign, especially with how Viv’s old team was part of the story. The found family was really, really sweet though I would argue the romance was oversold – I was under the impression that it was a lovely sapphic romance but the romance was barely part of the plot at all.

The pacing was a little inconsistent – there was a few chapters where Viv would realise she needed a new ingredient or a new machine or a new development to the shop and then the chapter would be about how she got it, but the latter half of the story where the plot picked up a little bit was fun and easy. My eyes have been opened to cosy fantasy and I’m excited to find some more!

Strong Female Character – Fern Brady (5 ⭐️)

A non-fiction book that was on my 24 in 2024 list, my 10 before the end and my December TBR because I was so desperate to read this before the end of the year.

This one is a memoire from an autistic woman who wasn’t diagnosed until she was in her 30s (I think) – Fern Brady is a comedian and her memoire is a fantastic balance between harrowing anecdotes of a life undiagnosed and academic research presented in an accessible and authentic way.

I didn’t think this book would be so much about autism, but of course it was – I related it to a discussion I’ve seen around person first or diagnosis first language (person with autism vs autistic person), there is no Fern without autism so it makes sense that there is no memoire without autism either.

This is a must to listen to the audiobook – Fern narrates it herself and whilst with most books, some people say that audiobooks take the interpretation element out of reading, I think with a memoire it makes sense to have the author give you the intonation they intended when writing it.

I loved this book so much – even though I haven’t been through a lot of the things Fern has, I empathised with her experience with feeling so alien and different from everyone throughout her life. Her writing style was fantastic, the storytelling was wonderful and it was a fantastic for shedding light on how often autism is missed in women, how many symptoms are overlooked and how much about autism is misunderstood. I adored this book and I would like to reread it immediately.

Radio Silence – Alice Oseman (5 ⭐️)

I was so pleased to finally read my first Alice Oseman outside of Heartstopper! From what I understand, all of Alice’s books are set within the same universe – there were references to Nick, Charlie and Tori in Radio Silence but the story focuses predominantly on Frances and Aled.

Frances is an over-achieving 16 year old girl trying to get through Sixth Form. She’s decided she has to go to Cambridge, despite no pressure from her mum, everyone considers her a study machine and she starts to wonder if she has any personality at all, aside from her secret love for online podcast Universe City. When she founds out the Creator lives across the street from her in acquaintance Aled, a friendship quickly forms. But the thing with being popular on the internet is that people will say whatever they want behind a keyboard.

This is such a sweet coming of age story – Frances and Aled’s friendship is beautiful and so true to how difficult being a teenager is. YA can be a bit hit or miss with me, but I think the advantage of this book in particular is that it’s set in the same era that I was a teenager so the references to earphones with wires, hours scrolling on fan tumblr and messaging friends by email is very relatable to me.

I borrowed the audiobook for this from my library and it was wonderful. Alice has a fantastic easy-to-read writing style that seamlessly integrates difficult topics like mental health, identity and academic pressure. I can’t wait to read Solitaire as part of my 25 in 2025 and no doubt the rest of Alice’s backlog at some point too!

Two Can Play – Ali Hazelwood (5 ⭐️)

I didn’t expect to rate an audiobook novella at all, but it turns out I am an Ali Hazelwood fangirl and I’m obsessed with anything and everything she writes.

Viola is a video game designer with a love of books, so when her company is offered the chance to work on the third instalment of a game based on a book she truly loves, even having to collaborate with their rival studio won’t sour her enthusiasm. Until she realises that her correspondent dev, Jesse, has made it abundantly clear he can’t stand her. The two companies go on a snowy cabin retreat to prove they can stand to be around each other but it’s not just the rivalry defrosting by the library’s fireplace.

For a four and a half hour audiobook, I really wasn’t expecting to feel so invested in these characters. Is it because arguably all Ali Hazelwood characters are the same? Yes, absolutely, but I love them. She writes the exact kind of protagonists, humour and romance that I adore. As the wife of a gamer boy I understood a lot of the video game references and it just made me feel at home to be reading about such nerds.

I devoured this audiobook and I have no shame in rating it 5 stars.

The Christmas Book Club – Sarah Morgan (4 ⭐️)

My first actual festive read of the year! I got this one as an audiobook from my library too and I ended up listening to all of it in less than a week.

With its historic charm and picture-perfect library, the Maple Sugar Inn is considered the winter destination. But widowed far too young, and exhausted from juggling the hotel with being a single mom, Hattie dreams only of making it through the festive season. But when Erica, Claudia and Anna—lifelong friends who seem to have it all—check in for a girlfriends’ book club holiday, it changes everything. Hattie discover’s they’ve also got their own struggles, and nothing prepares her for how deeply her own story is about to become entwined in theirs. With things falling apart at every angle, each of these women can help each other in more ways than they ever could have expected. 

I would call this more of a women’s fiction book than a romance because whilst there was an element of romance, it wasn’t the main plot point at all. Again, this was a very sweet story – whilst Hattie is exactly my age (with a 5 year old daughter, I’m trying hard not to compare), Erica, Claudia and Anna were women approaching 40 and the re-evaluation of their lives that comes with it. I thought the way that each of the four character’s main issues were weaved together was wonderful and though it was somewhat predictable, I feel like that’s allowed in a Christmas book.

The setting was idyllic, the character’s were sweet and fun and the ending was exactly what I needed in the run up to Christmas!

Midnight Express – Billy Hayes with William Hoffer (3.5 ⭐️)

And in a complete opposite, we have my wedding book club book for December – a non-fiction memoire from a man who got caught trying to smuggle hashish out of Turkey and was unfairly sentenced to 30 years in the hellish Turkish prison system, and how he escaped.

My autism makes reading memoire’s about criminals a bit awkward because whilst objectively I can recognise that the punishment that was given was extreme for the crime, my black and white thinking brain meant that I didn’t love that Billy Hayes seemed to view himself as completely innocent when he has literally tried to smuggle an illegal substance out of the country. So not being able to completely root for him made it a slightly more difficult read.

But overall, the narrative style was engaging though sometimes a bit vague, the story moved very slowly in places (this may have been intentional, but it did get boring) and the ending felt a bit rushed. Part of me felt like there should have been some consequences for literally escaping prison, but also I don’t know if disclosing that he was offered loads of contracts for books, films and interviews which meant he could pay back his parents for the thousands of dollars they spent on helping him was a bit unnecessary.

I’m a bit unsure about rating memoires because it feels harsh to rate someone’s description of part of their life, but 3.5 feels right for this one.

And that’s everything!

It was a great reading month, but I definitely need to expect less reading time over Christmas – whilst it can be a time for relaxing and taking a break, for me it involves driving around the country making sure I’ve seen everyone in the family and socialising a lot which I find very draining!

I’m a little behind on content, but I’ll be posting my January TBR next week and hopefully updating my YouTube channel before that too!

Thank you for reading,

Sophie xx