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Fiction, literary fiction, Magical Realism, romance

Book Review: Shark Heart by Emily Habeck

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“Wren saw now how passion was delicate and temporary, a visitor, a feeling that would come and go. Feelings fled under pressure; feelings did not light the darkness. What remained strong in the deep, the hard times, was love as an effort, a doing, a conscious act of will. Soulmates, like her and Lewis, were not theoretical and found. They were tangible, built.”

Few weeks after Lewis and Wren get married, Lewis gets a rare diagnosis. He’s going to slowly turn into a shark while retaining all his memories and consciousness. As Lewis develops the impulses, features and appetite of a great white shark, he struggles to figure out what his future will be like and what life awaits him when he’s released into the ocean. Wren takes a break from her job to fully care for Lewis while trying to figure out a way for them to still be together after Lewis is a shark. This transformation triggers Wren’s memories of her own mother’s change into a reptile and how she went from the best, loving mother to someone Wren had to take care of and escape from.

“All the hours he spent theorizing about magic seemed so naive now. The main ingredient in transformation was not magic, it was pain.”

When I first started this book, I thought the transformation thing was an allegorical way to talk about the many changes people go through in long term relationships but as I read the last page of this book, I just thought: Wow, this was really just literally about people turning into animals. Yes, I know that it is still a metaphor for relationship strains and ills but Emily Habeck really writes it like she means it literally. The writer really did pull this off. I can’t believe someone agreed to publish this book as a debut work. The author still manages to explore the nuances of change even within such an outrageous premise and after a couple of chapters you ignore the fact that the premise is in fact ridiculous and just get really into the characters.

“Plants were probably the most sentient of all living things: rational, bloodless bystanders, witnessing the great horror of it all.”

Told in alternating timelines, this book explores the past, present and where both timelines meet. The writer tells this story with such beautiful language and unique structure that it was hard to tear myself from this book. This is such a tender look at how such a diagnosis absolutely devastates a happy couple and it is an exploration of all the lives we lead that brings us into the people we are presently and how that present life will lead us into the people we will become in the future.

“Wren no longer sees life as a long, linear ladder with a beginning, middle, and end. Instead, she considers how life is like a spiraling trail up a mountain. Each circling lap represents a learning cycle, the same lesson at a slightly higher elevation. Wren realizes she likes to rest as much as she likes to climb. She begins to enjoy the view.”

The chapters are short and sweet and never more than 4 pages. Some chapters are written in stanzas or are a couple of sentences. The first part of this book deals with Wren and Lewis as they deal with the diagnosis, the second part takes us back to Wren’s mother’s life before and after her own diagnosis and the third part brings us back to the present day. The middle part where we explore Wren’s mother’s diagnosis and life is really such a great way to talk about intergenerational trauma. Wren’s mother, Angela, tries so hard to be a different mother from the one she had but ends up being diagnosed with a reptile mutation that she becomes unwillingly the monster that her own mother was.

“In the rare hopeful hour, I tell myself this darkness has a purpose: to help me recognize light if I ever find it again.”

Even though I really enjoyed this book, I ended up giving it 4 stars because it dragged in the middle once it left Lewis and Wren’s point of view and it tied up a little too neatly for my taste. I still recommend this book because it contains such great writing and has all the heart a story needs to be amazing. I can’t wait to read what Emily Habeck comes up with in the future.

Leggy

Black Authors, Chick-Lit, Fiction, literary fiction, women's fiction

Book Review: This Could Be Us by Kennedy Ryan

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“You accept a man shitting on you,” she used to say, “he’ll make himself at home. There’s no three strikes. You use me, take me for granted, you prove you don’t deserve to be in my life.”

Soledad has devoted her life to her family which consists of her husband, Edward and their three daughters. She is also a fantastic domestic goddess who excels in cooking, catering and planning. While going through a rough patch with her husband, things go from bad to worse when her life is upended by her husband’s choices and she has to rethink and restart her life from scratch. This includes trying to ignore the chemistry she has with a man her husband’s hates, Judah Cross. Judah is going through his own struggles trying to co-parent his autistic twins with his ex-wife, Tremaine. How long can these two ignore their feelings?

“Life is always gonna be complicated, but the good stuff is worth fighting for.”

First of all, this book goes against my usual reading style in that it is apparently part of the [Skyland] series (not a fan of series), which I didn’t know it was when I read the first book, Before I Let Go and some consider it a romance novel (not a fan of the genre). This is my second Kennedy Ryan book and I still don’t consider both books romance novels because the romance is not the center of the story. Much like the first book, I liked this one.

“A woman who wants more and realizes she deserves it is a dangerous thing”

The book centers around two characters that seem like very real people with real people problems. Soledad realizes that she wants more from her marriage and her life so far, and Judah has to learn how to let love in while being a caretaker to his twin boys on the spectrum, which in itself is a full time job. Which brings me to what Ryan does so well which is making her characters so real and relatable. Anyone familiar with dealing with loved ones on the spectrum will appreciate Ryan’s depiction of it (she has a son on the spectrum).

Ryan does such a good job of showing the time, care and expense involved with it. I also appreciated how even though they were twins, they had different manifestations of it. While Ryan never explicity mentioned it, I did like the insinuation that Judah himself is just realizing that he might also be on the spectrum.

“Can I be the love of my own life?”

I mentioned earlier how Ryan knows how to make characters real and one of my favorite parts is when Soledad, going through her confusion is going through her late mom’s things and finds a letter she wrote to herself and Soledad gets to see her mom as a woman and not a mom. Through that letter are pearls of wisdom that would be beneficial to anyone.

“When are we ever done working on ourselves? I believe wholeness is not a destination, but a lifetime process. Something that instead of waiting for, you could be living for.”

Once again, even with many threads, Ryan didn’t make it complicated. We get to still enjoy strong friendships, healthy co-parenting, teenage angst, romance and yep, she doesn’t skimp on the sex. I will say though, one of my gripes is that Judah Cross came off as too perfect. I am not sure I can recall any negatives of his and I don’t think that’s realistic. I definitely recommend this book and I am looking forward to the next one which will be Hendrix’s story.

Taynement

Fantasy, Fiction, literary fiction, romance

Book Review: The Invisible Hour by Alice Hoffman

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Life was made up of a series of accidents and drastic errors. The unexpected became the expected, you made the right turn or the wrong turn, and all of it added up to the path you were on.”

Ivy Jacob is from an affluent family in Boston but is not able to relate with her family. She gets pregnant as a teenager and with no support from her family and the father of her child, she runs away. She unfortunately finds solace in a cult. Cult leader takes a liking to Ivy and marries her while also promising to be a father to Ivy’s child, Mia. It doesn’t take long for Ivy to realize that this is a mistake as the rules are stifling. Children belong to the community, members are not allowed to read books and disobedience is punished by branding but Joel has threatened Ivy that if she ever leaves she will never see Mia again.

“In a place where books were banned there coud be no personal freedom, no hope, and no dreams for the future.”

Mia gets older and becomes curious. She discovers the local library and breaks the rules and begins to steal and read books. She discovers The Scarlett Letter that seems to have a personalized note addressed to her but how could that be? The book saves her life as a series of events leads to her having a new life until one day she is face to face with the author, Nathaniel Hawthorne and has to make a choice about her future.

“It wasn’t easy to walk away from the past, even when you locked it up in a box for which there was no key. Memories rattle around late at night, they claw at the latch, escaping when you least expect them to do so.”

This is my first Hoffman book and I was very much into this story. All the themes were up my alley and the plot was paced in a way where you were slowly drawn into the story. I felt so many emotions from joy, dread, sadness and I was still looking forward to what was going to happen. I enjoyed the subtle way she conveyed the powerful love between a mother and daughter and how parenting comes with hard decisions. Right from the note to readers that was in the beginning of the book, you could tell with every line you read that Hoffman loves what she does and truly believes in the power of reading. As Mia discovers reading, Hoffman found a way to remind the reader of just how powerful books can be.

“Herein are a thousand different doors, and a thousand different lives. Turn the page and you open the door.”

Everything was going great for me till we entered the magical realism portion. I have mentioned before that I am going through the fictional best reads of 2023 and I have noticed that this seems to be a popular genre. When Mia encounters Nathaniel Hawthorne and they start a romantic affair, I was so confused. I don’t think an explanation was given as to how the portal was unlocked.

In my confusion, I looked up Hawthorne’s biography and Hoffman stayed true to his life story. As Mia decided whether to stay in that time period or return to the present, again I was confused. After experiencing the freedoms of the modern world as a woman, who on earth would even consider staying in a time period where women had little to no rights?

Overall, I thought this book was good storytelling and had a mix of everything and my only gripe as mentioned above, could probably be because I am too much of a realist and I struggled with accepting the magical liberties.

Taynement

celebrity memoir, Memoirs, Non-Fiction

Book Review: You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith

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“What would I have done to save my marriage? I would have abandoned myself, and I did, for a time. I would have done it for longer if he’d let me.”

Maggie Smith writes a poem that blows up and becomes the beginning of the end of her marriage. In her memoir, You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith details the disintegration of her marriage, the heartbreak that followed and her renewed commitment to herself and her children. This is a book about what happens to a marriage where your significant other becomes jealous of your success and expects you to shrink yourself and maintain the status quo of what your marriage was before your fame.

“I’m desperate for you to love the world because I brought you here.”

I remember reading an excerpt of this book as an essay in The Cut and loving it, which is why I picked it up. This book should have stayed an essay. I do not think Maggie Smith had enough material to make this an actual book. I was fascinated by the dynamic I saw expressed in that essay because it is a dynamic that I am very familiar with as a Nigerian woman. Smith’s lawyer husband constantly belittled her creative work, expecting her to perform a housewife role, even though she worked from home and when success finally found her, he resented her for it. I wanted to get an understanding of how despite being more educated than her mother, she had fallen into the exact same role as her mother even though she thought her, and her husband were a modern couple.

“Here’s the thing: Betrayal is neat. It absolves you from having to think about your own failures, the ways you didn’t show up for your partner, the harm you might have done.”

I never got this understanding because even though Maggie Smith chose to write this memoir, she is very reluctant to share her side of the story. She insists on telling us that there is no one truth, which is true, and also the very reason she should have never written a memoir if her truth hadn’t been solidified yet. If your feelings are still ever constantly changing, don’t write a memoir and then accuse your readers of having a voyeuristic gaze for daring to be curious about information that you are writing about.

She constantly would bring up a piece of information and then proceed to tell the readers that she would not tell us that information, why bring it up then Maggie? We did not ask you to write this book. You did! Why write the things you do not want to write about? Why keep bringing up specific scenes that the reader would have no idea about if you didn’t bring it up only to tell us that you won’t tell us what was said in the scene?

“I’m trying to tell you the truth, so let me be clear: I didn’t want this lemonade. My kids didn’t want this lemonade. This lemonade was not worth the lemons. And yet, the lemons were mine. I had to make something from them, so I did. I wrote. I’ll drink to that.”

One thing that is very clear in this book is that Smith is still angry. You can read it from the lines she has written and those she insists she will not write. I do not fault her for this, and she has every right to be angry. Her husband cheats on her, she finds out and proceeds to never confront him about it. He lets them go to couple therapy for months where he demands things from her that would mean the death of her career while never admitting that he cheated.

Infact Maggie spends therapy sessions continually twisting herself into pretzels to get this man to stay and never brings up the fact that she found out he was cheating on her. In the end, he makes the decision to end their marriage, get on dating apps and then move out of state, away from his children, to begin a new life with his affair partner. Who wouldn’t be angry?

“As if you have to break someone’s heart to make them strong. I could say you don’t get to take credit for someone’s growth if they grow as a result of what you put them through.”

Maggie Smith is a better poet than she is a prose writer. This book is so repetitive that I just wanted it to end. I love poetry so I enjoyed this more than the general public is ever going to. Smith spends the entire book circling around the thing while refusing to tell us about the thing. And she is so heavy handed every time she thinks she’s written a great line or said something profound that you can smell her smugness coming off the page. All in all, I gave this book 3 stars on Goodreads because I enjoyed the great lines in the book, but I actually wouldn’t recommend it.

Leggy

Fiction, literary fiction, race

Book Review: Come & Get It by Kiley Reid

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It’s 2017 and 24 year old Millie Cousins, a young black woman, is back being an RA at the Belgrade dorm at the University of Arkansas. Millie is back after taking time off to help care for her sick mom. She has used the time to also work and save money. Millie is trying to buy a house so when Agatha, a visiting professor and author wants to interview some students as research for her new book, Millie jumps at the chance to earn some extra money. The initial interview is the start of a spiral that leads to boundaries crossed and complications.

Reid’s debut novel “A Fun Age” was my favorite book the year I read it and I was looking forward to this one. Not going to lie, it took a while for me to get into it because I couldn’t get the characters straight. Reid follows the lives of 4 roomates – Tyler, Casey, Kennedy and Peyton, Millie, Millie’s friends, Collette and Ryland, her bosses, her parents, Agatha, Agatha’s girlfriend, Robin. Okay I’ll stop but you get my drift. It was just a lot of people to keep up with.

I eventually got a handle on who was who and what the backstory was and while I still wasn’t sure where the story was headed, my intrigue was held because Millie lets Agatha stay hidden in her room to listen to the roomates’ conversations as fodder for her new book. Agatha does ask Millie if she is sure it’s okay but Millie is so casual when she says of course it is that I too was like “oh wait, is it?” With more thought, of course it wasn’t okay and because I knew nothing good could come out of it, I was on the edge of my seat wondering how this would play out.

I don’t know how Reid wanted us to see Agatha but she came off as unlikeable to me. I think Reid tried to include layers of race into the story without making it the focal point but I don’t think it ever quite took shape. Any plot that could have led to that was treated casually. Kennedy’s back story seemed to come out of nowhere and it seemed unclear whether we were dealing with a lot more than was led on.

So yes, while I admit that there was a lot going on, I think it’s a book you’d enjoy more if you aren’t looking for a neat ending. Think of it like the show Seinfeld – a show about everything and nothing. It worked for me, but I’d be curious to know what you think. Let me know what you think of it in the comments or on our IG – @twonightstands

Taynement

Fiction, literary fiction

Book Review: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

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“What is a game?” Marx said. “It’s tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It’s the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever.

Sam Masur and Sadie Green met when they were children in a hospital. Sam was there for an accident that killed his mother and left him with a severely broken leg while Sadie was there visiting her sister who was going through chemotherapy. After a big friendship fall out, they don’t speak till they run into each other at a subway platform in Boston where Sam goes to MIT and Sadie to Harvard. As their friendship rekindles in college, a legendary collaboration on the game – ichigo, launches them into gaming stardom. Overnight, Sam and Sadie’s world changes and this brilliant pair become very rich with the gaming industry at their disposal.

“The way to turn an ex-lover into a friend is to never stop loving them, to know that when one phase of a relationship ends it can transform into something else. It is to acknowledge that love is both a constant and a variable at the same time.”

I must say that this is very much a book about video games. It is to the testament of the brilliance of Gabrielle Zevin that I was glued to every word of this book even though I do not know the first thing about video games or the industry surrounding the creation of them. Sam and Sadie’s friendship is intricately wrapped around the playing of video games, talking about them, designing them and promoting them. We are shown the anatomy of a platonic relationship spanning 30 years in which the beginning, the end, the middle and every rebirth revolves around different video games. Because Sam and Sadie are such interesting characters, I was never bored or lost any interest in their world. It made me so fascinated by the gaming industry and the passionate people it seems to attract.

“Sadie, do you see this? This is a persimmon tree! This is my favorite fruit.”
Sam used to say that Marx was the most fortunate person he had ever met – he was lucky with lovers, in business, in looks, in life. But the longer Sadie knew Marx, the more she thought Sam hadn’t truly understood the nature of Marx’s good fortune. Marx was fortunate because he saw everything as if it were a fortuitous bounty. It was impossible to know – were persimmons his favorite fruit, or had they just now become his favorite fruit because there they were, growing in his own backyard? He had certainly never mentioned persimmons before.”

As much as this is a story about Sam and Sadie, this is also a story about all the people in Sam and Sadie’s lives who shaped parts of who they turned out to be. All the characters that revolve around Sam and Sadie’s world are multidimensional and well-developed characters from Marx (Sam’s college roommate) to Dov (Sadie’s college professor) and Sam’s grandparents, Dong Hyun and Bong Cha, who were not the stereotypically Asian parental figures usually presented to us in literature.

“To allow yourself to play with another person is no small risk. It means allowing yourself to be open, to be exposed, to be hurt. It is the human equivalent of the dog rolling on its back—I know you won’t hurt me, even though you can. It is the dog putting its mouth around your hand and never biting down. To play requires trust and love. Many years later, as Sam would controversially say in an interview with the gaming website Kotaku, “There is no more intimate act than play, even sex.” The internet responded: no one who had had good sex would ever say that”

Sam and Sadie are both arrogant, loveable, flawed and absolutely infuriating. The dynamics of their friendship got tiring and repetitive and I wanted to shake some sense into them at some points in the book, but I loved them so much as characters. This is a well written and original novel. I know that this book will stay with me for a long time. I have to put a caveat, if you do not like character driven novels then this book will bore you to death. But if you are like me and enjoy reading about the anatomy of a friendship driving by two flawed characters, then you will not forget this book in a hurry.

“There is no purity to bearing pain alone.”

I gave Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin, 5 stars on Goodreads. Have you read this one? What did you think about it?

Leggy

Chick-Lit, literary fiction, women's fiction

Book Review: The Five-Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand

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Holly Shaw is a popular food blogger. Most of the women in America want to be her or be her friend, especially the women from her hometown in Nantucket. She is married to Matthew, a surgeon and they have a daughter, Caroline. Holly and Matthew’s marriage has been strained as her blogging popularity rose. One morning as Matthew heads out for a conference, he gets into an accident and dies.

Holly gets the idea to host a weekend with four of her best friends from different phases of her life. She also enlists her daughter, Caroline a film major to film the weekend in the hopes of fixing their fractured relationship. And so we meet Tatum, Dru-Ann, Brooke and Holly’s most recent friend who she met online, Gigi, each woman dealing with something major in their life.

I’m new to Elin Hilderbrand and this is only my second book of hers. Hilderbrand writes what could be called beachy/thriller reads all based in Nantucket. With this, she is 2 for 2 for me as I quite enjoyed this one. Listen, I don’t know how realistic to be able to get old and new friends alike at the drop of a hat but hey, let’s suspend imagination necause I do think it’s actually an interesting idea as you never know what you will get when you mix your friends together.

Hilderbrand wrote this book in great detail and you can tell she did her research. She knows her hometown well so not that but the detail in Holly’s dishes and just as a host was top notch. She did a good job making each character their own and they didn’t feel like they were fillers. Even in weaving their relationships, every interaction felt natural and not forced.

Even though the book starts with a death, I found this to be an easy and enjoyable read. In a weird way, it made me nostalgic and made me think back on my friendships over the years. Hilderbrand is supposed to be retiring this year and since this is just my second book of hers, I still have a lot of catching up to do. I definitely will be reaching for her titles in the future.

Taynement

Fiction, Mystery, romance, thriller

Book Review: First Lie Wins by Ashley Elston

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“There’s an old saying: The first lie wins. It’s not referring to the little white kind that tumble out with no thought; it refers to the big one. The one that changes the game. The one that is deliberate. The lie that sets the stage for everything that comes after it. And once the lie is told, it’s what most people believe to be true. The first lie has to be the strongest. The most important. The one that has to be told.”

Evie Porter has the perfect life – a fantastic boyfriend, a big house in a charming small town, new work as a gallerist’s assistant but there’s a problem: Evie does not exist. She is a made up, perfectly crafted character given to her by a mysterious voice on the phone. She has no idea who her employer is even though she has worked for him for over 8 years. Before every job, she gets a delivery that contains what her identity, future location and her mark will be.

Evie takes the time every job to research her new character and location, she is great at her job, that’s why she’s paid the big bucks but why is this particular character of Evie so unnerving for her. Evie is falling in love with her mark, Ryan, and doesn’t understand what this current job is about. She’s spent months building this relationship while waiting for instructions that never come until someone with her original identity, one that she has been protecting for years and hoping to get back to, waltzes into town.

This was my January Book of the Month pick. I really wanted to read a thriller and I think this delivered. The main character is not a stereotypically good character but you find yourself rooting for her as she exists in a morally grey area. This book won’t blow your mind but it is a fun, quick read which is what I was looking for. As we delve more into Evie and Ryan’s relationship, we wonder more and more if Ryan is more than a mark, why has she been placed in his life for several months without further instructions? Why is he always in East Texas on Thursdays everyday unfailingly? Is anyone who you think they are?

This book starts slow but picks up rapidly around the 100 page mark and doesn’t slow down till the end. I guessed both the twist and the fake out from the start. I saw what the end game was going to be so I wasn’t taken in by the fake out but I can see how people wouldn’t see it coming. I’m not the type of reader who can relax and just experience the book, I’m always wondering what the big twist is going to be and I guessed the real identity of the employer pretty early but the fake out almost made me doubt myself. I had already tweeted about figuring it out so when the fake out came, I was like wow, am I going to have to go back to Tayne with my tail between my legs?!

Anyway, if you’re looking for a fun thriller to read, this is the book for you. It reads like a movie. I gave this 3 stars on Goodreads.

Leggy

celebrity memoir, Memoirs

Book Review: Thicker Than Water by Kerry Washington

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Kerry Washington’s memoir was all the buzz last year with the big revelation that she found out her dad was not her biological dad. The book starts with the day she received the text message from her parents letting her know that they needed to talk. And from Kerry sharing her thoughts and wondering what it could be, she walks back on her life starting from her mother’s first marriage before bringing us back to the moment of her finding out.

The choice to do this was the first thing that impressed me about this book because it was a good way to just dive headfirst to the water cooler moment but then guide us through important moments that led us here. Her mother’s first marriage story was quite important as we get to understand how much she longed for a child after suffering a loss.

This book hit all the points of a memoir and she did not shy away from being open. She talks about her parents marriage, her dad’s financial flaws, sexually being abused by another kid and choosing not to reveal his identity, her abortion, falling in love with her husband, eating disorder and much more. Nothing was left unturned. It’s very easy to forget the accomplishments some actors have made in their careers but as she spoke about her work, I was taken down memory lane and was tempted to go back and rewatch all her bodies of work. The woman has an impressive list.

As always, I did this on audio and the actress in her showed in this narration and she made it enjoyable. Because Kerry is generally a private celeb, I can see how this book could be seen as a juicy tell all because most of the stories are new to us. I think it was an honest well written book with her authenticity being the best thing about it. I’d recommend.

Taynement

Book Related Topics

Our 2024 Reading Goals

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Leggy:

Happy New Year! I hope everyone had an amazing Christmas holiday season. If you had asked me right after Christmas, I would have told you that I had a fabulous Christmas, but I got ridiculously sick on the 27th and it completely ruined my holiday. I feel a lot better now but that was rough!

Last year for the first time ever, I did not meet my reading goals for the year. I read 58 books out of my goal of 70! For context, in 2022, I read over 100 books so 2023 was not a great reading year for me at all. I just could not get my head in the game. I switched jobs and suddenly found myself traveling a lot for work and trying to acclimate to a new industry that I’d never worked in before so it was tough to keep all the balls in my life juggling, so I just dropped them and let them fall where they may.

Anyway, this year, I’ve set my Goodreads challenge to 70 books as always and we’ll see where the year takes us! Definitely going to be more consistent with the blog, especially consistent with our Instagram, so follow us on there (nightstands2)! Can’t wait to share all the books we’re reading this year with y’all.

Taynement:

I had a good reading year last year and I think the key was reading mostly books that I enjoyed and anything that was not sparking joy, I did not hesitate to DNF. Naturally, when I enjoy books I tend to read faster which allows me to fit in more books. I also downloaded Libby on my phone which is always with me so now whenever I get a free moment I can read vs. when I used to read on my iPad which I couldn’t take everywhere with me.

So since that worked for me, I am going to keep doing that this year. I always set my goals at 30 books because Goodreads asks me for a number but I am not under any pressure to meet it. I hope to have a healthy amount of black/African authors and also fit in my quota of 1 fantasy/scifi book (maybe I should read the fourth wing).

All in all, we hope everyone has a good reading year in whatever way that looks like for you. Have an amazing year everyone!

Leggy & Taynement