2021 in Review

 

Phew. We did it. Fifty books in fifty-two weeks. I enjoy doing the PopSugar Challenge. This year started rough but smoothed out as time passed.

Here’s a link to my original 100 choices for the challenge. You can see where I didn’t pick either listed, but I managed forty-six titles. How well do we match?

Here’s a link to the fifty titles I included in the blog.

Here’s a link to my List Challenge with all the books I read this year, one hundred and sixty. No kidding. Click and see how many you’ve finished.

Last, here’s a wrap-up of the books that didn’t make the blog.

Once Ghosted, Twice Shy by Alyssa Cole (TBR from 2020). For some reason, I couldn’t get into the story. To my detriment, I didn’t focus enough on the section headings to tell me the dates. The back and forth in time threw me, so I opted not to review it.

The Vine Witch by Luanne G. Smith (Genre Hybrid). I didn’t love this book. The title had some great elements and interesting plot twists. The story sounded like a paranormal suspense novel, like many romances. It’s a good book. Instead, I chose Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (Book Everyone Else Has Read but You). I opted to switch to Lord of Scoundrels for this category to beef up the romance books on my list. Plus, I didn’t want to be the only person in the romance genre who never read it.

Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert (Book about an Artist). I debated quite a bit about including this book. It’s popular, by a POC author, and romance. But the heat level threw me off. One minute it was a sweet romance, and the next, it was very steamy. It was hard to reconcile.

The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory (Book with a Heart on the Cover). Again, I had another popular romance by a POC author. It looked like the author missed some issues, like race. Not that every book with a mixed-race couple has to be about the conflict between their cultures, but I thought she’d touch on it more. Again a good book, but Katie O’Connor’s Cupid’s Charm fit better.

Nine Perfect Strangers by Liane Moriarty (Locked Door Mystery). I’m just going to say I had bad information about the book. It was NOT a locked-door mystery. I was stabby after reading the whole thing to find the group got locked in a room for a hot minute.

Legend in Green Velvet and Naked Once More by Elizabeth Peters (Place I want to Visit and Free Book). Both books felt dated and are by the same author. I wanted to try something fresh. Boyfriend Material was one of my favorite of the year (Place to Visit), and my friend Rose gave me a slew of the Jane Austen mysteries.

The Year of Magical Thinking, ’Til Morning’s Light, and Brokeback Mountain all were included in my “Shortest Book” list. None seemed just right for the blog. I found out after that I grabbed an abridged copy of The Year of Magical Thinking. It’s back on my TBR list.

There were a few others. Meet Cute Diary didn’t work for me. Death Overdue ended up being a re-read. The Unexpected Inheritance of Detective Chopra didn’t work for the category I picked. And Nerd in Shining Armor seemed dated. I had a great time and learned to plan ahead for the 2022 challenge.

There were a ton of other books I wanted to read but never got to them, mostly for the “Longest Book in the TBR List” category. I had House of Leaves, The Witching Hour, and Leviathan Wake in mind, but no go. Short books work better for me, I guess. I started The Mysteries of Udolpho, Looking for Alaska, Spoiler Alert, and The Escape Room. For various reasons, I didn’t finish any of them. (For Spoiler Alert, I have a plot bunny just like it and didn’t want to taint my tale with a better one. LOL)

All in all, an exceptional year of reading. Next week, the new challenge begins!

 

 

 

Book 50 The Christmas Box

 

The Christmas Box by Richard Paul Evans fulfills the category “A Bestseller from the 90s” for the PopSugar 2021 Reading Challenge. I thought the title appropriate for the date of this post. And I’m sorry to end the year on a slightly sour note. Guess I should have chosen a different book.

The Christmas Box enjoyed a unique position of being number one on the New York Times bestseller list for paperback and hardcover at the same time. This happened in 1995.

The book tells the tale of a businessman, his wife, and child moving into a widow’s house. The young couple is struggling with life, work, and the cost of living when they stumble upon a good living situation—in-home companionship and care for an elderly woman. As the main character, Richard, explores the mansion, he discovers a box with letters. He can’t quite figure out what’s up with them. Mary, the elderly woman who owns the house, is an enigma, teasing Richard with questions about the first gift of Christmas.

Okay, I get it. A sweet story of Christmas, with connections to lonely people and building a family that is more than blood. Yup, but the first paragraph put me off. I’m not trying to be a curmudgeon, but to begin the book with “This story is not told enough, so let me write it down for all times.” Um, then the story sounds autobiographical. So the author is concerned we are not retelling his story?

What?

The story is not on the same level as the ’Twas Night Before Christmas or How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Yes, people read and loved it, but it’s a little pretentious to reprimand us for not retelling this tale. I thought it dragged. There was no big moment. There was not a pile of love for Mary. There wasn’t a deep story in its one-hundred-plus pages that made me say, “Oh, my God. Everyone must read this and retell the story.”

I’m not trying to be a Grinch. It was cute, hopeful, and the love was there. But a classic to be retold to the generations—not so much. Plus, all that angel-speak in his dreams. I understand the concept might be part of Mormon beliefs that people become angels at death. I’m not religious and didn’t know this until I researched the book. Perhaps if I had more of a spiritual streak, the book would have spoken to me.

It wasn’t the holiday story for me.

I give The Christmas Box by Richard Paul Evans Four Angel Statues. (It was okay, just pretentious.)

We made it! Fifty books! Next week, I'll have a recap and then plans for next year. Thanks for sticking with me!

 

Book 49 The Love Hypothesis

 

 

The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood fulfilled the category “Book Randomly Chosen from Your TBR List” for the PopSugar 2021 Reading Challenge. I had a whole pile lined up for this one. Then I read this title, and it was a no-brainer which novel to blog about. (And I know, EVERYONE is blogging about it.)

The Love Hypothesis chronicles a story of a Stanford Ph.D. student, Olive Smith, trying to get by. She is overworked, confused by social interactions, and determined to get her area of study out into the world. She’s trying to forward research to catch early cancer signs—information that might have saved her mother. So she’s invested.

She’s also socially challenged. The author does not come right out and say Olive identifies on the spectrum of asexual. But from the character’s actions and feelings, we understood where she fell on the spectrum. Luckily, I have a great source of information at my house about all the different types of genders and levels of sexuality. I had a long conversation with my fifteen-year-old, and afterward, I understood Olive even better.

The story used two great tropes—Enemies-to-Lovers and Fake Dating. The more I read, the deeper and better the tropes worked. Olive’s fake boyfriend, Professor Adam Carlsen, is distant, cold, and withdrawn until we get to spend time with him. By the last quarter of the tale, I realized he’s Darcy. Like Pride and Prejudice, the book is told from the heroine’s point of view. I’d love to hear his side of the story.

The novel built tension with perfection. As the reader, we saw what Olive couldn’t. When the villain reared his head, I was like, “I told you to watch out for that one!” Nothing was overdone, over the top, or shark-jumping. And the sex, when it happened (no spoiler because we knew it would come), was spectacularly hot and satisfying.

The setting and background for the story—college life and technical biology—were presented seamlessly. Even without a basic understanding of biology, I still could have followed the science presented in the novel. Nothing appeared dumbed-down or held over my head with condescension. The author illustrated her experience with Ph.D. programs at large universities flawlessly. She added humor and reality with her knowledge.

This story is what a romance should be. Average (or above average) woman finding that just right match—someone who fulfills her not just physically, but emotionally, intellectually, and mentally. I loved this novel.

I give Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood Five Bunsen Burners Burning Bright.

 

Book 47 Sweet Entanglement

 

Sweet Entanglement by Jean C. Gordon fulfilled the category “Work with Less than 1000 Reviews on Amazon or Goodreads” for the PopSugar 2021 Reading Challenge. Amazon currently has eighty-four reviews with an average of a 4.5-star rating. Goodreads has 125 reviews with 4.35 stars.

Sweet Entanglement is Book Twelve of the Indigo Bay series. But number twelve isn’t an issue as the series is written by several authors. Within this sweet romance series, you can pick up any novel without having to read any other Indigo Bay story. All the books have the same town and some mixing of characters. There are several series within Indigo Bay, including holiday books and a second-chance romance series.

In this title, Ms. Gordon gives us a second-chance romance, a secret baby, and a twist of suspense. Laura Cooper moves to Indigo Bay to live near her mom and get her law career started. Enter Jesse Brewster, her former boyfriend and motocross champion. He inherites the town’s historical mansion and plans to stay to renovate it. Laura is caught in the middle, representing both the town’s interest and her ex’s. Throw on top of that, Jesse’s ex (after Laura) drops off a small child for him to care for—his daughter he knew nothing about. Talk about tension! And with all that, the mansion keeps getting vandalized, too.

This book had everything—a sweet simmering story, hints of a sequel, and tension, tension, tension. I don’t read sweet romances often, but when I do, I know Ms. Gordon will give me a wonderful story. (Yes, I totally binge-read the sequel, and I have a third Indigo Bay by Ms. Gordon queued on my Kindle.)

Let’s talk about heat levels in romance books for a second. My favorite moments in these stories are when the couple finally falls in love. If they close the door to their celebration or not, I don’t care. I just want that happy ending. Other readers do not feel the same way. Sometimes sex in a book will scare off readers. For me, whether I’m reading Jean C. Gordon, KA Mitchell, Kathryn R. Biel, or Autumn Jones Lake, I want the love story, heat or no. What do you think?

I give Sweet Entanglement by Jean C. Gordon Five Walks on the Beach.