Year in review 2025

Good riddance to 2025, it was an awful year in so many ways. I don't like having to wake up every morning thinking "Is he dead yet?" and "What other horrible thing has happened now"? Although the world is becoming more of a very poorly plotted dystopian novel every day, means that reading becomes a coping strategy, and I did a LOT of it.

I mostly did mood reading and some reading challenges, mainly to help me pick which books to read every month. I also managed to review almost all the NetGalley ARCs I received, which is a new record. I did the Goodreads and StoryGraph challenges, as always. I also completed the Nowhere Bookshop Bingo, both of the Buzzwords challenges (Title and Cover), the CBR 17 Pie Chart Challenge, and the CBR17 Bingo Challenge. Without being signed up for any formal challenges about it, I've tried to be good about reading diverse books (82 that qualified, in the end) and from my TBR list (68 in total). I also listened to 28 audio books. 

Total books started: 147

DNF-d: 4

New to Me books: 18

Re-reads: 129

Average rating: 4.0

My best reading month was December, because I was off sick from work for most of the month, followed by a two-week vacation, so I managed to finish 18 whole books, six more than in May and November, when I managed 13. April and June were the months I read the fewest books, but even those months, I managed ten, so I am generally very happy with how much reading I got done this year.

My top ten books from 2025:

The Raven Scholar - Antonia Hodgson (I didn't have the words, so this is a friend's review)

The Undercutting of Rosie & Adam - Megan Bannen

In a Rush - Kate Canterbary

Along Came Amor - Alexis Daria

Deep End - Ali Hazelwood

The River Has Roots - Amal El-Mohtar

These Summer Storms - Sarah Maclean

Great Big Beautiful Life - Emily Henry

Mate - Ali Hazelwood (Another well-written review by a friend)

Zomromcom - Olivia Dade (Yet again, saved by the reviewing skills of my friends)

Four books in my top ten were ARCs, so I've been really lucky with those this year, but then again, my worst book of the year was also an ARC. 

My top ten books from before 2025 (in the order they were read):

• The True Love Experience - Christina Lauren
• Tress of the Emerald Sea - Brandon Sanderson
• The Change - Kristen Miller
• Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, vol 3 - Kanehito Yamada and Tsutsaka Abe
• The Thursday Murder Club - Richard Osman
• The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches - Sangu Mandanna
• The Warm Hands of Ghosts - Katherine Arden
• Piranesi - Susanna Clarke
• Den fantastiske bussen (The fantastic bus) - Jakob Martin Strid
• The Long Game - Rachel Reid

My worst books of 2025:

Third worst: Stargate: En julefortelling/Brightly Shining - Ingvild H. Rishøi

Second worst: The Love Haters - Katherine Center (this author's previous novel was in my top 10 for 2024 - how does that even happen?)

Absolute Worst: To Steal from Thieves - M.K. Lobb (didn't even finish it, had to DNF @ 35%)

2024 Year in Review

2024 was a very good reading year for me. I barely did a single reading challenge. Except for the Goodreads and StoryGraph challenges, I only did the Cannonball Sweet 16 challenge, the Nowhere all-year bingo, the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books Summer Romance bingo and the Cannonball Read 16 Bingo. I completed all except the Nowhere books challenge, mainly because by the time I finished the Cannonball Bingo in early November, I wasn't in any sort of mood to read anything because I had to, and so, for the Nowhere challenge, I completed 21 out of 25 prompts (but all the bonus ones), but didn't black out the card.

Since in some previous years, I have been almost obsessed with doing reading challenges, my main goal for this year was mood reading, and it's been so relaxing. I also wanted to read a lot of books on my TBR list and try to read diverse books. I have done well with both of these personal goals.

Total books started: 127

DNF-d: 3
New to Me books: 91
Re-reads: 33

Average rating: 4.21

My best reading month was October, when I completed 16 books, and my worst month was April when I only completed 7 books, some of which were short.

I completed 25 dead tree books, 36 audiobooks and 63 e-books.

I read 68 books that fit in my diversity challenge and 52 books from my TBR.

My top ten books from 2024:
The Rom-Commers - Katherine Center
What Is Love?- Jen Comfort
Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands - Heather Fawcett
Not in Love - Ali Hazelwood
Funny Story - Emily Henry
Just for the Summer - Abby Jimenez
A Sorceress Comes to Call - T. Kingfisher
My Season of Scandal - Julie Anne Long
Queen of Dreams - Kit Rocha
Slow Dance - Rainbow Rowell

My top ten books from before 2024:
The Widow of Rose House - Diana Biller
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi - Shannon Chakraborty
The Secret Service of Tea and Treason - India Holton
Illuminae - Amie Kaufman/Jay Kristoff
Gemina - Amie Kaufman/Jay Kristoff
Obsidio - Amie Kaufman/Jay Kristoff
How to Tame a Wild Rogue - Julie Anne Long
A Taste of Gold and Iron - Alexandra Rowland
Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me - Mariko Tamaki
Butcher & Blackbird - Brynne Weaver

My worst three books:
3. The Pairing - Casey McQuiston
2. The Witches of Vardø - Anya Bergman
1. Before the Coffee Gets Cold - Toshikazu Kawaguchi

Cannonball 16 Sweet Books Challenge:

New: The Widow of Rose House - Diana Biller, En enda natt - Simon Ahrnstedt, Raiders of the Lost Heart - Jo Segura, Delilah Green Doesn't Care - Ashley Herring Blake

Cozy: The Write Escape - Charish Reid, Role Playing - Cathy Yardley, Love, Lies and Cherry Pie - Jackie Lau, Ronja Rövardotter - Astrid Lindgren

Exciting: Canadian Boyfriend - Jenny Holiday, Bride - Ali Hazelwood, The Prisoner's Throne - Holly Black, Funny Story - Emily Henry

Binge: Illuminae, Gemina and Obsidio - Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff, the All the King's Men duology - Kennedy Ryan

My year in review: 2023

Happy New Year! It's unlikely that 2024 will be any better than the horror shows of the previous few, but we can always hope. I've been told I need to be less pessimistic, so let's start the new year with some optimism. May 2024 be better than the year that preceded it. 

In terms of reading, this has been a much better year for me than 2022 (when I was also too generally exhausted to even do a round-up of my reading), so I'm tentatively hoping to read at least as much and to manage my standard 52 reviews, but possibly as many as 104. It took a lot of dedicated review writing in the latter half of December to make my double Cannonball happen. As always, I usually had a fairly sizeable review backlog hanging over me for much of the year, I'm going to try to be better about reviewing as I go along (as I have said every year since the beginning of time, it feels).

I am also going to try to curb my Reading Challenge obsession this year. The occasional challenge to help me make reading lists and make sure I actually go through my ever-expanding TBR will probably be useful, but I'm not going to officially sign up for any, just do the Cannonball-related ones. In 2023, I signed up for and completed 21 different challenges - too many rules to abide by at any given time.

Reading challenges I completed:

1. Single Cannonball - 52 reviews
2. Double Cannonball - an additional 52 reviews, totaling 104
3. Goodreads Reading Challenge
4. The Story Graph Reading Challenge
5. Cannonball Passport Challenge
6. Cannonball Bingo
7. Audiobook Challenge
8. Backlist Reader
9. Book Bingo on My Reader's Journey
10. Colour Coded Challenge
11. Diversity Challenge
12. Finishing the Series
13. Forever Young Adult Reading Challenge
14. Monthly Keyword Challenge
15. Monthly Motif Challenge
16. Mount TBR Reading Challenge
17. Read It Again, Sam
18. Read My Bookshelf
19. Tackle My TBR
20. What's in a Name?
21. Reading Challenge Addict

Thanks to my nifty spreadsheet, which I acquired over on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, it's been a lot easier to track my reading over the past year. I had quite a few DNFs, which I've decided not to count. My total ended up being 122 books, and my lovely spreadsheet also claims I read 42624 pages, which isn't too shabby. It's certainly a lot more than I managed in 2022.

New books read: 97                Re-reads: 25 (includes a lot of books adapted by Graphic Audio)

E-books: 72 (59%)                     Hardback/paperback: 34 (27.8%)                 Audio: 16  (13.1%)

I obviously also acquired a whole lot of books in 2023. 411 in total. 71.5% were e-books, 22.6% were dead tree ones (includes paperbacks, hardbacks, comic books, and manga), and 6.8% were audiobooks. Of the 411, ten were free (I'm very fond of a 3 for 2 offer on books) and five were gifts.

My favourite reads of 2023 (listed in alphabetical order by author, because I don't want the headache of ranking them):

• Anxious People (Folk med ångest) - Fredrik Backman
• The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy - Megan Bannen
• Lessons in Chemistry - Bonnie Garmus
• For Never & Always - Helena Greer
• Love, Theoretically - Ali Hazelwood
• Make You Mine This Christmas - Lizzie Huxley-Jones
• Gender Queer - Maia Kokabe
• The Last Graduate - Naomi Novik
• The Golden Enclaves - Naomi Novik
• Consort of Fire - Kit Rocha

Other notable mentions:

• With the Fire on High - Elizabeth Acevedo
• Magic Tides and Magic Claims - Ilona Andrews
• Georgie, All Along - Kate Clayborn
• A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy - Becky Chambers
• Legendborn - Tracy Deonn
• Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries - Heather Fawcett
• Emily Wilde's Map of the Underworld - Heather Fawcett
• A Lady for a Duke - Alexis Hall
• Check & Mate - Ali Hazelwood
• Happy Place - Emily Henry
• Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute - Talia Hibbert
• Nettle & Bone - T. Kingfisher
• Knockout - Sarah Maclean
• The Marquis Who Mustn't - Courtney Milan
• Miss Buncle's Book - D.E. Stevenson
• A Tempest at Sea - Sherry Thomas
• Network Effect - Martha Wells

After some consideration, I have decided not to list my worst reads of the year, I don't really want to name and shame anyone. Besides, none of the books I read in 2023 were so egregiously bad that I really wanted to write a scathing hate review, some were just a bit underwhelming.