December 2021 Wrap Up

 And just like that, it's the end of 2021! December has been another crazy month to finish the year off with, as it always is. Despite having so much going on over the month, I still managed to read a total of 7 books in December. I read almost exclusively Christmas books, which was great, discovered a new author whose books I binged and, most importantly, really loved reading again. So let's chat about the final seven books I read in 2021.

Falling For Christmas by Kate Hewitt -

This is a Christmas novella about a woman who leaves a Christmas party after her ex brings his new girlfriend and ends up driving for miles with no destination in mind, when she ends up stranded and completely unprepared in a small town. She is rescued by the local carpenter and has no choice but to stay in his house with him over Christmas. This was a fun festive novella but really nothing particularly special. I enjoyed the small town setting and I like a snowed in together story, but the romance wasn't that well developed so I couldn't fall in love with it.

Rating: 3/5

Underneath The Christmas Tree by Heidi Swain - 

This is a cozy, festive read about a woman who returns to her late father's Christmas tree farm to spend one last Christmas before she sells her shares. This is not something I would typically pick up. It is much more women's fiction than romance, although does feature a romance, but turned out to be exactly what I wanted. The Christmas tree farm is the perfect setting for festive fun and I loved being immersed in this little community. It was lovely to get to know all of these characters as our main character does and just fall in love with the place along with her. The romance was a dull, which did affect my rating, but it wasn't the main aspect of the book. Overall, this was a lovely Christmas read and just what I needed at the time.

Rating: 3.5/5

Call Me Maybe by Cara Bastone -

Now that I have an Audible membership again, I have been wanting to try out the many Audible Originals. I had heard great things about this one so decided to pick it up. It follows a woman who sparks up a friendship with the customer service representative she ends up on the phone to for hours while trying to get her business website fixed. It seems like such an odd concept but I thought it worked so well. Vera and Cal end up getting to know each other through this phone call and the connection they have is so clear, even without them ever having me. It was such an adorable romance, with two really great characters that were such fun to follow. There is a bit of a twist at the end that I managed to work out pretty early on but it was still a lot of fun to read about. This was written for audio so the audiobook was a full production with sound effects and everything. It was the most fun and immersive audiobook that made for a great reading experience. I can't wait to listen to more like this.

Rating: 4/5

Mince Pies And Mistletoe At The Christmas Market by Heidi Swain -

I have gone down a Heidi Swain Christmas rabbit hole. I want to read every Christmas book she has written because they give me all of the cozy festive vibes. This one follows a woman who drops out of university and returns to her home town to run a market stall for her friends cafe over Christmas, but things get complicated when she discovers she is working next door to her ex-boyfriend. This one was just as festive as my first Heidi Swain as the stallholders all come together to make this the best Christmas ever and save their struggling small town market. It was just so sweet and I loved it. Again, this is more women's fiction but does involve a romance. The romance takes a definite backseat and while it was quite sweet, I wasn't all that bothered about it. What I really loved was getting to known all of the characters in this small town and experiencing the magic of Christmas alongside them. It seems that this is all I want this festive season.

Rating: 4/5

Sleigh Rides And Silver Bells At The Christmas Fair by Heidi Swain - 

Yet another Heidi Swain Christmas book! This is in the same series as the previous book and follows Anna who takes a job at Wynthorpe Hall in an attempt to avoid Christmas. However, when the Christmas plans at the hall change, Anna finds herself thrust into the festivities she has tried so hard to avoid for many years. This is a really adorable found family story featuring a great cast of characters who all bring so much to the story. Anna has had a really tough past and the characters in this sweet little town all help her to move on from that and look to the future. There is also some change and uncertainty at Wynthorpe Hall involving the owner's youngest son, Jamie, who has an instant connection with Anna. This was another fun and heartwarming Christmas story from Heidi Swain, with an adorable romance and lots of festive spirit. It was another perfect read to get me in the Christmas mood.

Rating: 4/5

Snowflakes And Cinnamon Swirls At The Winter Wonderland by Heidi Swain - 

When I say I fell down a Heidi Swain rabbit hole, I mean I really fell down a Heidi Swain rabbit hole. This was my fourth and final Heidi Swain Christmas book of the month and it takes us back to Wynthorpe Hall for more festive fun. This follows Hayley, the Wynthorpe Hall housekeeper who we met in the previous book, after her engagement has ended dramatically and she has moved into the Hall with others. Also moving to the Hall for this Christmas season is Gabe, a friend of Jamie who has come to work in the grounds and has baggage of his own. This has all of the heart, mayhem and festive fun I have come to expect from these books and it was great to spend another Christmas season in Wynthorpe Hall with the characters we met in the previous book. I didn't love this one quite as much as the others I have read this month, which I think is a lot to do with the romance. Hayley has just ended her engagement when she meets and feels a connection to Gabe, which is fine and I would have enjoyed a nice slow burn romance between them. What we actually got was a lot of angst followed by everything moving very fast. I also felt as though Gabe's past wasn't explored as much as it could be. I enjoyed the festive activities and the side characters just as much as I knew I would, but the rest fell a bit flat for me.

Rating: 3/5

Christmas At Carly's Cupcakes by Jessica Redland - 

I moved on from Heidi Swain to something with similar vibes. This is another women's fiction-y Christmas book with a bit of a romance thrown in. This follows Carly who own a small town bakery and has given a job to her struggling younger sister, despite her lack of skills in the baking department. She is also discovering her long held feelings for her childhood best friend who is coming home on leave from the Army over Christmas. This was a little all over the place for me and didn't quite hit the mark. I liked the small town bakery setting and loved seeing how all of the business owners worked together and became good friends. I liked the family aspect and how Carly was trying to help out her sister. I also liked the idea of the childhood friends to lovers romance. However, all of these aspects of the story felt half done and could have all been executed better. I constantly felt while reading that Carly's sisters storyline would have been better told from Bethany's point of view as it felt like the main focus of the story and took away from Carly's own storyline. The romance was really poorly executed, in my opinion, as Liam, the love interest, didn't appear until the last quarter of the book meaning we had such little time to see the couple together that is was difficult to be invested in them. It also meant that everything moved very quickly and felt rushed. This could have been great but ended up being pretty average.

Rating: 3/5

Those are the very last 7 books I read in 2021. I would say a load of Christmas books and a Heidi Swain marathon was a pretty good way to end my reading year. As I said, I have really fallen back in love with reading in December, which I am hoping will continue into the new year. I have also been getting back into blogging and I'm ready to jump back into things with the end of year content in January!

What was the best book you read in December?

Sophie :)

Five Christmas Reads At The Top Of My TBR

 I am all about the Christmas romance in the month of December and my list of Christmas books I want to read is pretty extensive. I thought I would share the five that I really hope to get to before the end of the month, mainly to help me not forget about them among the mountain of other books on my TBR. 

1. The Boss Who Stole Christmas by Jana Aston - This was on my list last year but I never got to it. This is the first in a series of Christmas novellas and features an employee-boss workplace romance.

2. Mistletoe And Mr Right by Sarah Morgenthaler - This is the second book in the Moose Springs, Alaska series that I started a couple of months ago. This follows the best friend of the heroine from book one and has the typical Christmas movie/book storyline of the rich person buying the small town.

3. The Fake Santa Apology Tour by Julie Olivia - A heroine who only dates fake Santas ends up snowed in with her grinchy santa-lookalike enemy in a small town. This sounds like a lot of fun.

4. A Cross-Country Christmas by Courtney Walsh - A Christmas road trip with her brother's best friend, who she also happens to have had a crush on for years, this definitely sounds like my kind of thing.

5. Kiss The Girl by Melanie Jacobson - This is a small-town, fake dating romance following our heroine who has returned to her hometown temporarily and has vowed never to fall for a small-town guy.

Those are five of the Christmas romances on my TBR this year that I am most interested in at the moment. I am really excited for all of these and I'm hoping I can get to at least a few of these before the end of the month.

What is your favourite Christmas book?

Sophie :)

November 2021 Wrap Up

 Well, 2021 is almost over! I know I say this every month but it really is crazy how fast this year is flying in. November was another busy month that caused me to put blogging to the bottom of my priority list. Despite being on holiday from work for some of the month, thing in my personal life took a challenging turn and my priorities had to change a lot. This is likely to be the case for the foreseeable future, however I am hoping to get more organised with blogging and bookstagram in the New Year which should help.

Back to November though, I read a total of 5 books, three of which were non-fiction for Nonfiction November. They covered pretty much the whole rating scale, one being a stand out favourite that will most likely make my favourites of the year list.

Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker -

This was my first read for nonfiction November, a true crime novel detailing the case of the online escorts who became victims of the long island serial killer. This is a case I had never heard anything about so thought it would be a good first true crime nonfiction read as I would be super interested in learning about something totally new. Unfortunately, I really didn't enjoy this book. It focused much more on the lives of the girls than the mystery itself, which is an interesting idea and makes a point of humanising people who may have been seen as simply victims previously. However, I don't feel it was done particularly well. The way it was written is incredibly jarring and confusing as the reader is introduced to so many different people in a very short period of time, all of whom have quite similar stories, and then continuously flips between each girl's story. I found it very hard to keep track of who was who. This book also focuses so much on the issues in these girls' lives and the family drama. I found this really took away from the fact this was a real crime that is still yet to be solved and made it into some kind of soap opera. Overall, this was a disappointing read and after reading a 400+ page book about this mystery I still don't know anything about it.

Rating: 2/5

The Soulmate Equation by Christina Lauren -

After discovering Christina Lauren last year and really enjoying a lot of their work, this was one of my most anticipated releases of the year. It follows a single mother who, on a total whim, signs up to a new app that promises to find your soulmate based on DNA. When her results come back as an unprecedented 98% match with the app's founder, the pair agree to fake date in order to gain publicity for the app ahead of it's official launch. I really like the premise of this as it sounds like a much more light-hearted and romantic version of The One by John Marrs, which I read and enjoyed but definitely had a different vibe. I also love a fake dating trope, especially when it is also enemies to lovers as this is, and I typically like single parent romance. This really should have ticked all my boxes, but ended up being a bit of a disappointment. I was bored for a lot of it and considered DNFing as it has such a slow start. I struggled to find the desire to keep reading but found my enjoyment of the relationship developing helped me get through it. While there were aspects I enjoyed, such as the relationship and our heroine's daughter, they just weren't enough for me to love it. I expected more from this author duo but this one just wasn't for me.

Rating: 3/5

The Only Plane In The Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 by Garrett M Graff -

This was my absolute stand out of the month. Another nonfiction November read, this is an account of all of the events of September 11th told by the people who experienced it first hand. This is probably the most comprehensive account of that day, and the days following, that you could ask for. It has accounts from those inside the Towers at the time of the attacks and family members of those who died both in the Towers and on planes, those inside the Pentagon and family member of those who lost their lives in that attack, family members of the passengers on Flight 93, air traffic controllers and those working in the airports, first responders involved in all three attacks, government officials and those who worked with them, and so many more that I can't list without being here forever. It was incredibly informative but also emotive and intense. It was such a powerful read and as someone who is too young to remember that day in anymore than very faint memories, it gave an idea of just how horrific that day was for those all over the world. 

Rating: 5/5

Fighting For Your Life by Lysa Walder -

My third and final nonfiction read of the month was, of course, some form of medical memoir. This is a memoir of a London paramedic, in which Lysa Walder shares just some of the most memorable jobs she has had within her role. I have read a lot of books like this so I am pretty critical but I didn't particularly enjoy this book. This was very much an account of the most shocking calls the author has been to and seemed to be much more about the shock factor than human emotion. I started to wonder at one point if any of the stories were going to involve the patient actually living in the end. While this may be more exciting to read about for some, as someone with experience in this area this definitely gives a very inaccurate view of the job. Though much of the role of a paramedic does involve really shocking calls with life threatening emergencies, so much of the job is about being caring and compassionate individuals, which was not something that came across at all in this book. In fact, some of the language used made the author seem not very caring or compassionate at all at points. Overall, this did have it's interesting parts but did not showcase the role of a paramedic well in my opinion.

Rating: 3/5

The Christmas Blanket by Kandi Steiner -

I was planning to save my Christmas reads until December but I just couldn't wait that long. This is a short novella following a woman who gets stuck in a blizzard on her way home for the first time in four years to see her family for Christmas. However, when she is rescued by her ex-husband things get awkward as the two are stuck in his cabin together through the storm. I absolutely loved this novella. It was such a sweet second-chance romance, with the chemistry between the main characters being apparent from the beginning. It was a very cozy, festive read and my only complaint is that I wish it had been longer. I could have read a full length novel of these characters. 

Rating: 4.5/5

A Groom With A View by Sophie Ranald - 

My last read of the month was one that I have owned in my ebook library for far too many years but never got around to picking up. It follow a woman who has been in a long term relationship for years with no plans to get married until one drunken night the pair end up engaged. While she has very little interest in the wedding plans, her husband-to-be becomes wrapped up in planning the perfect, extravagant wedding, with the help of his mother, who does not think she is good enough for his son. I knew nothing about this going into it so didn't realise that this is really not my kind of book. It's definitely more Women's Fiction than romance, which isn't usually my thing, and I hate the meddling mother-in-law that makes the life of her son's significant other absolute hell. Despite not being my kind of book, this was fine and I enjoyed it enough, until something happened at the end that I wasn't a fan of. I probably should have DNFed this when I realised it wasn't my cup of tea.

Rating: 2.5/5

Those are all of the books I read in November. A bit of a mixed bag, both in terms of genre and enjoyment, but a couple of really great reads in there. I am so excited to get to all of the Christmas romance in December, so definitely leave me some good recommendations.

What was the best book you read in November?

Sophie :)