I’ve let my blog lapse a bit the last few weeks, but I thought I’d jump back in with a post about what I’ve been reading lately! At one point I was in the middle of seven books, so there’s a lot to talk about.

As it turns out, I was definitely right when I predicted in my October TBR post that I would wind up binging a bunch of romances to recharge from the disaster that was the Kavanaugh hearings. I read three romances in three days, and I feel so much better for it.

The best one was definitely Hurts to Love You by Alisha Rai, the last book in her Forbidden Hearts trilogy. These books aren’t something I would normally gravitate towards–they’re super angsty contemporaries. But I’ve been really impressed by them and generally enjoying them, so of course I had to finish out the trilogy, especially as such a huge fan of Alisha Rai. As it turns out, I think the last one was my favorite in the series! I was really swept up in Eve and Gabe’s relationship and seeing them both evaluate themselves and then change their behavior in order to make their relationship work, plus I loved finding out more of the secrets between the Kanes and the Chandlers, which have been playing out across the entire trilogy.

As for what else I read, The Scandal of it All by Sophie Jordan has been sitting on my shelf for more than a year, so I finally read that. It’s a romance between a widow and her adult stepson’s best friend, and I really enjoyed it! I think it was missing a lot of development in the relationship between the hero and heroine and I felt like we never really saw Graciela fully commit to the relationship until the very end, but the chemistry between her and Colin was intense and had me racing through this book in one sitting.

I also read Counting on a Countess by Eva Leigh, which has the most gorgeous cover. It’s about a lady smuggler and an earl who has a month to get married in order to inherit a vast fortune. I really enjoyed this one too, I just wasn’t as swept up in Kit and Tamsyn’s romance and thought the plot could use some work. Like, if Kit’s friend really wanted him to find love, why did he only give him a month to do it?! But definitely an enjoyable read!

My husband and I are also in the middle of Sleeping Giants by Sylvain Neuvel, which we started listening to on a recent road trip. It’s a super engrossing story about mysterious metal body parts being found around the world and the lengths people will go to to unlock the technology and secrets they hold. Now that we’re back in the city, I think we’ll both wind up finishing the book in kindle format, but we were really enjoying the audiobook and are definitely hooked on this story! Seriously, there are so many mysteries and I have so many questions, and I can’t wait to find out everything that’s going on. I suspect we’ll both be binging the rest of this trilogy this month, though the question is whether to do it in audio or print. I’ve been really enjoying the audiobook, but I can read it so much faster and figure out what’s going on sooner if I stick to the print version. So we’ll see!

I’ve also started Not That Bad edited by Roxane Gay, and am about 100 pages in. It’s definitely an intense read, so I’ve been dipping in and out of this essay collection a fair amount. It’s so interesting to get all of these different perspectives on rape culture, though I will say that generally I’m finding this stories to be a lot more literary or experimental in their writing style than I was expecting or generally prefer. So that’s throwing me off a bit, but I still think this is an incredibly important read.

I’m also about 20 pages in to The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin, so I’m not really sure I can say I’m reading it, but I’ve marked it as currently reading on Goodreads, so we’re going with it. I’m definitely very confused as to what is going on right now, though my understanding is that it takes about 100 pages to get your bearings. I think I’ve just read so many slower books lately that I haven’t felt like I’ve read much of anything, which is part of why I’ve been reluctant to finally pick this up. But maybe now that I’ve binged three romance novels and a good chunk of Sleeping Giants, I’m ready for a bit of a slower read.

Speaking of books marked as currently reading, I’m technically still reading Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan, The First Tycoon by T.J. Stiles, and Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, but I haven’t actually picked them up in the past week or so.

Obviously I should focus on finishing the books I’m in the middle of, but The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy by Mackenzi Lee is sitting on my nightstand and calling my name. I’m super excited for that book and will most likely be picking it up very soon! And Ogre Enchanted comes out next week and I still haven’t started that, so I definitely want to get to that soon. I think that will be another fun, quick read, so maybe I’ll read through both of these before I work my way back to The Fifth Season.

Then there are all of my library loans that just came through. I’m usually pretty good about suspending my holds so I can space out my loans and read them when I’m ready, but there are a few I’ve had on hold for so long and have been meaning to read for ages, so I just let them all get checked out to me at once. I guess we’ll see if I wind up reading them or letting my loans expire. They include The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang, a fantasy I’ve heard nothing but amazing things about; The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, which one of my coworkers recommended and that I think sounds super interesting; A Gentleman Never Keeps Score, Cat Sebastian’s latest release; and Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot, a memoir I’ve been meaning to read since it came out earlier this year. I also have The Girl with the Red Balloon by Katherine Locke checked out as part of the Big Library Read, which sounds like something fun to participate in, but that I’m extra motivated to do because of how much Madalyn at Novel Ink raves about this book. So I really want to read it already!

So yeah, all kinds of reading is going on right now, which is great because I was barely reading anything for a good stretch there. And I’m really excited for next weekend, which is the next Dewey’s 24-hour readathon (sign up here!). I’ve never been able to fully participate because I’ve always had other things going on, but I have no plans this time and think that doing nothing but reading on one of my first days off in a while sounds like an awesome idea, so I want to really commit and try to squeeze as much reading in that day as possible. My husband has already been warned that he won’t be able to drag me anywhere that day, and maybe I’ll get him to participate with me and finish reading The Themis Files or something. Keep an eye out for my tbr soon! And don’t be surprised if it includes a bunch of the books mentioned above.