Reading Wrap-Up of 2019

2019 was the Year of the Book for me and all is merry and bright. New fabulous authors, great finds, perfect recommendations, fun series, five star reads, crazybananas alien romance FOR DAYS. This year made me so happy.

my 2019 mantra

This post also combines my last two Friday Favorites of the year. December 20: favorite releases of 2019 and December 27: Favorite Reads of 2019.

Number Of Books I Read: 250

Um. In my defense, I was left unsupervised. With lots and lots of books. And I work part time from home. And I tend to devour entire alien romance series (which usually have shorter, 40-50K word books) on my Kindle. My reading shot up by a LOT after I got my Kindle.

Number of Re-Reads: I refuse to count

This is definitely all #becauseofbookstagram. Taking the photos for my feed is deadly because I end up reading all of the old favorites I’m photographing and my TBR is over in the corner eyeing me like:

Genre I Read The Most From: Romance!

I let my horror reads go this year and only read like, two new Stephen Kings? I dunno, I was in a fluff mood this year so fluff is what I read.

Best Books I Read In 2019:

The Billionaire’s Wake-Up Call Girl, Annika Martin

The Madness of Viscount Atherbourne, Elisa Braden

Never Sweeter, Charlotte Stein (this is a redeemed bully romance and not for the faint of heart. CONTENT WARNING.)

Taming Chaos, Anna Carven

Bound to the Battle God, Ruby Dixon

The Naughty Princess Club, Tara Sivec

The Scandalous, Dissolute, No Good Mr. Wright, Tessa Dare

Queen’s Ransom, Isabel Wroth

Favourite new author I discovered in 2019:

It’s a tie between Tara Sivec and Anna Carven. Fortunately one writes hilarious contemporary romance and one writes steamy, emotional alien romance. So they fulfill two different niches in my life.

Book I can’t believe I waited until 2019 to finally read:

The Madness of Viscount Atherborne (Elisa Braden). A well executed revenge plot, along with a marriage of convenience which turns into flaming hot love is ALWAYS a win for SE, and I love historical romance too. This one was published in 2015. What on earth took me so long?

OTP of the year:

Purity and He’Rokvskaa from Hunting Purity, by Tracey Lauren. I found this book because we were making fun of the cover on bookstagram (RUN, PURITY, RUN!) and then ended up getting it because I love Tracey Lauren and the blurb was intriguing. Then the craziness of the plot combined with the adorably-clueless-about-feelings-gladiator getting hit over the head with the Feelings Stick won me over. They started out rough (He’ro is honestly hunting to kill her, this is an arena) but Purity wins him over through sheer cuteness and that makes them my 2019 One True Pairing.

Seriously look at that cover. Bahaha!

Book that stomped all over every emotion ever:

Queen’s Ransom, Isabel Wroth. If you have even a passing interest in the Greek myth of the Minotaur re-imagined as a romance, this is definitely the book you’re looking for.

Book(s) that I wanted to throw against the wall the hardest:

We have another tie between A Masked Deception, by Mary Balogh and Potent Pleasures, by Eloisa James. (And this is a HUGE shame because I love both of these author’s later books!) These short novels are each author’s older debut/first efforts and they lean hard into the tropes of the time. This means there are MULTIPLE misunderstandings which could have been cleared up by ONE HONEST CONVERSATION, aka one of my least favorite plot devices ever, omfg people just communicate already you’re giving me a stress headache with all these stupid unspoken words!!

THEN, ohhhhoho then, these misunderstandings lead to terrible overreactions on the part of both heroes. Seriously, by the end of Potent Pleasures I hoped the heroine would actually die in childbirth as the text was clearly threatening she might and this is NOT A GOOD reaction to a romance! The utterly fucking irrational hero deserved to suffer after all of his undeserved mistrust, blame, slut-shaming (LITERAL SLUT SHAMING, NOT OKAY) and rejection of the heroine. Neither hero responded to their misunderstanding with anything approaching trust, or acceptance, or love, and I just…