Welcome to a new year of reading! My goal for 2025 is to read 35 books. That’s fewer than usual, but I don’t know what my reading schedule will look like as a parent.
This year, I’m doing things a little differently; I’ll be keeping track of my reads on The StoryGraph instead of Goodreads. As any reader knows, Goodreads is obnoxious to use. The StoryGraph offers the same tracking capabilities, plus more like stats on the types of books you read, the length and the themes. I think it’s worth giving it a go!
Now, onto my January reads, including a Christmas book that took me a while to wrap up.
Christmas Island by Natalie Normann • 🎧 • ★★☆☆☆
This is a repeat author for me. I read The Hygge Holiday by Normann a few years ago. It was wonderfully cozy. This read from her, though, just didn’t really click with me.
It had many of the same elements — a newcomer in a small town (this time a British woman in Scandinavia instead of a Scandinavian woman in the UK), the concept of hygge and a little bit of romance. But in Christmas Island, I didn’t find myself really liking the main character, Holly, as she navigated a tiny town in Norway and subtle sparks with the town loner Tor. She wasn’t an unlikeable protagonist, but she didn’t have much going on. Neither did Tor. Points for the cat being a major player in this, though!
Read if you liked: Christmas books by Jenny Colgan
I Need You to Read This by Jessa Maxwell • 🎧 • ★★☆☆☆
Another swing-and-a-miss by an author I’ve read before. Last year, I read The Golden Spoon by Maxwell. It had its flaws, but overall I loved the murder mystery-meets-GBBO vibes.
In I Need You to Read This, Alex lands a job taking over a longtime advice column after the death of its original author. I love this since I’m an avid reader of Dear Prudence and its Slate spinoffs. But after taking the job, Alex learns that the previous author was murdered and that there are some fishy characters at the paper. Maybe someone there is responsible?
Overall, I found this one to be kind of meh even though I did like the dual perspectives here: one as Alex in the present day and the other as an unnamed advice seeker from the past.
I think there are better mysteries out there for your time.
I Was Anastasia by Ariel Lawhon • ★★★★☆
Is it even winter for me if I don’t read some Romanov-related book? I think not. In the past, I’ve read The House of Special Purpose by John Boyne, The Romanov Sisters by Helen Rappaport, The Last Days of the Romanov Dancers by Kerri Turner and Russian Winter by Daphne Kolotay.
I Was Anastasia is like many of my previous reads since it follows the Romanovs as the family goes into exile. But this book is different since it also picks up another historical thread: the story of Anna Anderson, a woman who claimed to be Grand Duchess Anastasia starting in the 1920s. Anderson was actually a Polish factory worker named Franziska Schanzkowska, but that takes nothing away from this dual-perspective story. It was interesting to read how the fictional Anastasia presumably maintained this charade over many years and even had some of the real grand duchess’s connections believing she was the genuine article.
Read if you liked: The House of Special Purpose by John Boyne, Fever by Mary Beth Keane
We Sold Our Souls by Grady Hendrix • ★★★★☆
Grady Hendrix gets it right every time. I love how each of his books takes place in a different era with different horror elements. In We Sold Our Souls, he dives into the world of late ’80s/early ’90s metal music, fame and demons (?).
In We Sold Our Souls, Kris, the former frontwoman for a mildly famous metal band, is living a low key life — until she hears about a former bandmate of hers, Terry, is now hosting a mega farewell tour. She feels a need to reconnect with her other bandmates and her music, but in doing so she learns the real reason they’re all living life under the radar and Terry is a rock god.
I’ll say that metal isn’t exactly my thing, but I still read this book in about three days.
Read if you liked: Any other Grady Hendrix book
See you next month! And remember, I’ll be over on The StoryGraph this year!
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