In the grand tradition of the new year, let’s do some tidying, list making, and wrapping up the previous year.
Number Of Books I Read in 2024: A somewhat respectable 55 new books
Number of Re-Reads: at least 55 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and probably more. My reading goal is usually 100 new-to-me books, and as many re-reads as my heart desires. Turns out in 2024 my heart desired more predictable books than unfamiliar new ones. It has to do with my neurodivergent need for the comforting serotonin boost which familiar books give me.
Genre I Read The Most From in 2024: Sci-Fi Romance.
AKA Ruby Dixon. I read a metric ton of Ruby Dixon. Ella Maven came out with a new series, Honey Phillips continued to add to all of her excellent series, and Cynthia Sax wrote a whole lot this year, for which I am very thankful!
Best Books I Read In 2024: Buckle up and get ready for ALL of the SciFi smut. However much you’re guessing, double it.
Stasia Black and her Angels and Monsters series was a rare new read for me in 2024 and I’m glad I took the chance on her. She also writes a lot of contemporary dark romance, if you’re interested, but I was particularly liking her take on the Godspark breathing life into assorted monsters who are almost godlike, but still can’t figure out how to handle a female.
I’m loving Cynthia Sax’s spinoff Dauntless series, and each new book added to it this year was a delight for me. The Dauntless crew has waited patiently for their stories for years now, and it’s making my heart happy to read their stories.
Ella Maven’s new series, The Queen’s Beasts, is including some amazing world building. She is so creative. The idea of a whole alien world which spends months in perpetual daylight, followed by a solid month of dark when the creatures come out and everyone has to find a way to hide from the dark to survive . . . makes you want to read about it, right?
Favourite new author I discovered in 2024:
Layla Fae. She’s an author with a big range. Everything from pure fun fluff to serious dark taboo romance, so I would definitely read up on those trigger warnings before diving in to her books all willy nilly. But Guarded By The Snake, her part of the Monster Security Agency series, was pure fun with a super monstrous main character. The trigger warnings are lighter in that one, so it would be a good starting point for you.
Book that stomped all over every emotion ever:
Hope for the Alien Warrior, by Honey Phillips. It’s got everything to make your heart go, “aww”. A grump vs. sunshine, desperate escapes, tension, peril, a reluctant hero feeling feels, redemption arc, healing, and hope. All fantastic things, that dragged me thorough multiple emotions as I read.
My OTP of 2024:
Maeve and Zhur from When She’s Common, by Ruby Dixon.
Maeve is an extrovert and desperate for some friendly company on her alien planet. She orders a cat to be her companion . . . and ends up harboring a Praxxian prince who’s on the run from an attempted coup. He’s spoiled. He’s prissy. He has no intention of doing anything other than hide out in absolute comfort, and Maeve is not exactly rich. Or subservient. She’s sassy and really, really bad at taking orders. She literally locks him in a barn overnight as a consequence for his behavior, where there are animals, and dung, and slobber, and HAY. The horrors he endures! They are a match made in reader heaven.
Book(s) that I wanted to throw against the wall the hardest:
One of the true benefits to all the re-reading I’ve been doing is avoiding books that make me want to throw them. I’m curating my book list carefully, and reading things that make me happy. No downside here!
I realize the judgy posts tearing apart a book are one of the fun parts of being a bookworm, though. So if you’d still like to read me being seriously disgruntled with some books you can check out my 2019 reading wrap-up where I tear into old school Eloisa James and Mary Balogh historical romance. They leaned too hard into the tropes of the time and let’s just say I really, really don’t love those ones. Or, if you’d like to find out which Sci Fi romance book I tried and absolutely hated, you can read my 2020 reading wrap-up to see why Octavia Kore is on my no-go list forevermore.
2 comments
I always like to see what people are reading. It’s great that you devote time to rereading books. I always have a too-long TBR list for that. Happy New Year!
Ah, but unfortunately I am a bookwyrm, rather than a bookworm, and I add books to my TBR willy-nilly with no care or concern to the consequences. It is a lovely, shiny hoard that I like to add to, but never actually read. I will need to live forever to read my TBR, but that’s a problem for future-me.