Hello!

I know everyone complains that January feels really long, but I think with my husbands birthday towards the end of the month and the way I make the New Year into a massive thing with my journals and new goals, the month has gone relatively quickly!

And my reading year has got off to a pretty good start too – as a reminder, my TBR for January was 7 books, including the book clubs I have with my husband and sibling, the new release I’d pre-ordered, a couple of books from my 25 in 2025 and a couple of others. It was a banging TBR and it really made me feel motivated, which is exactly what I needed for the New Year!

For the most part, I’ve really enjoyed everything I read this month but I know I do tend to ramble in these wrap up posts so I shall crack on!

Lovelight Farms – B. K. Borison (3.5 stars)

In an effort to save the Christmas tree farm she’s loved since she was a child, Stella enters a contest with insta-famous influencer with the hope of publicity and a huge cash prize, she might just be able to save the farm. There’s just one problem. To make the farm seem like a romantic destination for the holidays, she lied on the application and said that she owns Lovelight Farms with her boyfriend. Only… there is no boyfriend. Enter best friend Luka Peters. He just came home for some hot chocolate, and somehow got a farm and a relationship in the process. Will their fake love affair save Lovelight Farms in time for Christmas?

I normally try to end the year by finishing whatever book I’m reading and starting fresh but I didn’t quite manage it this year – I started Lovelight Farms before Christmas and it took me about two weeks to finish it. I liked the writing style, I loved the festive vibes and the small town cast, but Stella was almost completely unbearable, Luka felt ridiculously fake (and I know we like our book boyfriends unrealistic but he was on another level) and the third act conflict was so insane I started dictating the book to my husband because I was so baffled by how difficult Stella was making her own life.

I was really hoping to love this series as much as everyone else did so now I’m really conflicted about continuing the series – if you’ve read it, I need your advice please!

She Who Became The Sun – Shelley Parker-Chan (1.5 stars)

In a famine-stricken village on a dusty plain, a seer shows two children their fates. For a family’s eighth-born son, there’s greatness. For the second daughter, nothing. In 1345, China lies restless under harsh Mongol rule. And when a bandit raid wipes out their home, the two children must somehow survive. Zhu Chongba despairs and gives in. But the girl resolves to overcome her destiny. So she takes her dead brother’s identity and begins her journey. Can Zhu escape what’s written in the stars, as rebellion sweeps the land? Or can she claim her brother’s greatness – and rise, ruthlessly, to take the dragon throne?

This book made absolutely no sense to me. I felt no connection to the characters whatsoever, there could have been a fantastic message about gender but it all felt very messy and badly executed and for some reason (spoiler), trying to fulfil someone else’s destiny just involves murdering everyone and stealing their powerful positions?

When I was writing my review in my book journal, the last thing I wrote was ‘don’t even get me started on the fisting’, and I’ll leave it at that.

Maximum Ride: The Angel Experiment – James Patterson (5 stars!) reread

Fourteen-year-old Max knows what it’s like to soar above the world. She and her siblings are just like ordinary kids. Except for the fact that they have wings and can fly. Very cool, but their lives can morph into a living nightmare at any time – like when Angel, the youngest member of the Flock is kidnapped and taken back to the School where she and the others were genetically engineered by sinister scientists. In a desperate attempt to save Angel, they soon find themselves in yet another nightmare when the School sends wolf-human hybrids to find them. But the Flock will do whatever it takes to stay together.

At a point where I was considering DNF-ing ‘She Who Became The Sun’ (I’m going with my gut next time), I started my reread of this book that was chosen as part of my 25 in 2025… and then read nearly 90 pages in one sitting. Once I’d been told I should finish the other book, I had to put it down but it was my incentive to finish ‘She Who Became The Sun’. I then absolutely binged this book and it felt so cosy and comfy to be back with the Maximum Ride characters – yes, the writing is a bit cringy, straddling somewhere between middle-grade and YA with some very ‘I’m a parent trying to be down with the kids language, but it was also published in 2007 so I don’t think that can be held against it!

These characters have so much heart and at it’s core, it’s a super fun sci-fi/fantasy story. The kids get distracted by a toy store, there’s teenagers who just want to fit in and they all want to be loved by parents they don’t have. I loved rereading this book and if you read my February TBR post, you’ll already know that I put the second book in the series on my list for next month so I hope I get to continue reading this series throughout the year.

Fourth Wing – Rebecca Yarros (4.5 stars) reread

Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general— her mother—has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders. But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away. With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter—like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant. Friends, enemies, lovers. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda—because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die.

And so The Empyrean reread begins! With my only pre-order for this month being the new instalment in this series, I knew I would need to reread the first two books to remind myself of everything that’s going on and also because they’re fun and I wanted to.

Although I rated it 5 stars the first time I read it, I actually enjoyed it more the second time round even though I rated it lower – when I rated it 5 stars I knew it wasn’t a 5 star book but I wasn’t doing half-star ratings at the time and I enjoyed it too much for it to be 4 stars. This time I could notice all the things I knew would happen later, I felt completely immersed in the Basgiath setting (it lives so vividly in my mind) and all the things I felt mildly irritated by the first time, I could gloss over the second time because I knew they were coming.

I had so much fun and I had a fantastic time reliving The Empyrean series, as continued in…

Iron Flame – Rebecca Yarros (4.5 stars) reread

I won’t provide a summary as it’s obviously a sequel, but I was pleasantly surprised with how much more I enjoyed Iron Flame on my second reading – I listened to my first ‘graphic audio’ (terrible name) which is a full cast audiobook with additional sound effects and music so you’re essentially listening to a film. I wasn’t going to choose it because it’s 7 hours shorter than the full, single narration audiobook but then it was the day before Onyx Storm came out so I thought actually, having 7 hours less audiobook to listen to will probably work in my favour!

I didn’t love that it didn’t match the text word for word because it meant I couldn’t co-read without feeling like I was missing out on a lot of details, but when I stopped trying to also follow along on my Kindle it was a really enjoyable experience – I did colouring, I got on with some of the easier tasks on my to do list (I can multitask while I’m listening but only to a certain level!), I played silly phone games and on my longest day, I listened to the equivalent of nearly 10 hours of the audiobook (but slightly sped up, cos 1x is so slow).

Much like with Fourth Wing, having read it and been a little disappointed on my first read, I could much more easily ignore the things I didn’t like and just immerse myself in enjoying the sassy dragon book for what it is. I could appreciate how well the two parts were balanced, I noticed things from the end game in the clues that were left before, I ignored how the romance was way too obsessive, and I poured all my heart into loving the dragons and Ridoc, specifically (he’s my favourite).

So whilst my Fourth Wing rating went down, my Iron Flame rating actually went up by half a star! And knowing how much I enjoyed doing this reread before Onyx Storm, I’m already planning to do it again whenever book 4 comes out (hopefully they don’t rush it again).

Aaaaaaand I still have 13% left of Onyx Storm so even though I will almost certainly finish it today, February 1st, I didn’t finish it in January so I don’t get to tell you my thoughts so far. I’m actually really frustrated with myself because I’m SO close but I can’t be too mad because at least I didn’t finish it because I was working on my to do list and actually going to sleep instead of staying up way too late to finish it for the sake of it.

So in terms of my TBR, I managed to finish 4/7 – 4 and a half if you include that I nearly finished Onyx Storm! But I didn’t get round to reading my wedding book club book which was Our Man In Havana by Graham Greene and the second book I picked from my 25 in 2025 list, The Ex Talk by Rachel Lynn Solomon. I’ll put The Ex Talk back in my mini TBR jar to hopefully get to later in the year and then I’m going to try and squeeze Our Man In Havana into my February TBR because I really do try to keep up with my own book club books. We’ll see!

If someone could make reading my own TBR a full time job that would be fantastic, because I would really like to justify spending more time reading!

So my first monthly TBR of 2025 is a fail, but as were all of my monthly TBRs in 2024 so there’s still lot of room for improvement!

Thank you so much for reading,

Sophie xx