Act Your Age, Eve Brown (The Brown Sisters #3)

Talia Hibbert

Eve Brown is a certified hot mess. No matter how hard she strives to do right, her life always goes horribly wrong—so she's given up trying. But when her personal brand of chaos ruins an expensive wedding (someone had to liberate those poor doves), her parents draw the line. It's time for Eve to grow up and prove herself—even though she's not entirely sure how... Jacob Wayne is in control. Always. The bed and breakfast owner's on a mission to dominate the hospitality industry—and he expects nothing less than perfection. So when a purple-haired tornado of a woman turns up out of the blue to interview for his open chef position, he tells her the brutal truth: not a chance in hell. Then she hits him with her car—supposedly by accident. Yeah, right. Now his arm is broken, his B&B is understaffed, and the dangerously unpredictable Eve is fluttering around, trying to help. Before long, she's infiltrated his work, his kitchen—and his spare bedroom. Jacob hates everything about it. Or rather, he should. Sunny, chaotic Eve is his natural-born nemesis, but the longer these two enemies spend in close quarters, the more their animosity turns into something else. Like Eve, the heat between them is impossible to ignore—and it's melting Jacob's frosty exterior.

I have an eARC of this waiting patiently on my Net Galley shelf and this is the month I'll read it! If you've been living under a book community rock and are unfamiliar with The Brown Sisters series, these are some extraordinarily cute yet smutty romance books that will make you ache in all the best ways. I wasn't smitten with Get A Life, Chloe Brown as I think my expectations for the Fibromyalgia rep was always going to let me down, however, Take A Hint, Dani Brown was perfection. I buddy read it with the gorgeous @m.is.reading and it was a whole heap of fun. Talia Hibbert does a great job at interweaving series topics such as chronic pain, depression, and anxiety within a romance book without making either take a backseat. I'm positive that the Autism rep in this will be no different, and I'll turn the last page with both more knowledge on the illness and a metaphorical tent. It's February, give me all the smut. 

Outlawed
Anna Todd

The day of her wedding, 17 year old Ada's life looks good; she loves her husband, and she loves working as an apprentice to her mother, a respected midwife. But after a year of marriage and no pregnancy, in a town where barren women are routinely hanged as witches, her survival depends on leaving behind everything she knows. She joins up with the notorious Hole in the Wall Gang, a band of outlaws led by a preacher-turned-robber known to all as the Kid. Charismatic, grandiose, and mercurial, the Kid is determined to create a safe haven for outcast women. But to make this dream a reality, the Gang hatches a treacherous plan that may get them all killed. And Ada must decide whether she's willing to risk her life for the possibility of a new kind of future for them all.

It's no secret around here that I'm a sucker for a Reese's bookclub pick, I haven't had the best of luck as I tend to give them either a 3 or 4 stars, never in-between, but I can't seem to not be interested. Do I have the vaguest idea what this book is about? Nope! But that cover is glorious. And it seems like a feminist western..? Which, yes, please, always.

The Vanishing Half

Brit Bennett

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?

I've been on my library's waiting list for this for over 6 months now so I finally sucked it up and just got a digital copy. I read The Mothers by Britt Bennet last year and fell in love with her writing. I was a tad iffy on the commentary on abortions in The Mothers as it felt quite anti-choice, however, I'm interested in what else she has to say and this premise sounds too good to pass up. Here's hoping the hype is justified..?

The Cactus

Sarah Haywood

For Susan Green, messy emotions don't fit into the equation of her perfectly ordered life. She has a flat that is ideal for one, a job that suits her passion for logic, and an "interpersonal arrangement" that provides cultural and other, more intimate, benefits. But suddenly confronted with the loss of her mother and the news that she is about to become a mother herself, Susan's greatest fear is realized. She is losing control. Enter Rob, the dubious but well-meaning friend of her indolent brother. As Susan's due date draws near and her dismantled world falls further into a tailspin, Susan finds an unlikely ally in Rob. She might have a chance at finding real love and learning to love herself, if only she can figure out how to let go.

I was reading this when my Grandma passed away, so naturally, I put this book very far away from me. However, I'm now feeling strong enough to give it another whirl. Again, this is a Reese pick but it's also on my 21 Books I Want To Read In 2021 list. Can we take a moment to appreciate the cover?

Sing, Unburied, Sing

Jesmyn Ward

Jojo and his toddler sister, Kayla, live with their grandparents, Mam and Pop, and the occasional presence of their drug-addicted mother, Leonie, on a farm on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi. Leonie is simultaneously tormented and comforted by visions of her dead brother, which only come to her when she’s high; Mam is dying of cancer; and quiet, steady Pop tries to run the household and teach Jojo how to be a man. When the white father of Leonie’s children is released from prison, she packs her kids and a friend into her car and sets out across the state for Parchman farm, the Mississippi State Penitentiary, on a journey rife with danger and promise.

Do you have a book on your shelves that is incredibly daunting for no good reason? This is that book for me. I think it's partly because of how heavy the synopsis sounds, it makes me expect very dry writing with a slow burning plot. I do want to read this though as everyone I know who has read it, has loved it. I'm torn as to whether I want to physically read it or go with an audiobook. Do you have a recommendation? 

The Book That Matters Most

Ann Hood

Ava’s twenty-five-year marriage has fallen apart, and her two grown children are pursuing their own lives outside of the country. Ava joins a book group, not only for her love of reading but also out of sheer desperation for companionship. The group’s goal throughout the year is for each member to present the book that matters most to them. Ava rediscovers a mysterious book from her childhood—one that helped her through the traumas of the untimely deaths of her sister and mother. Alternating with Ava’s story is that of her troubled daughter Maggie, who, living in Paris, descends into a destructive relationship with an older man. Ava’s mission to find that book and its enigmatic author takes her on a quest that unravels the secrets of her past and offers her and Maggie the chance to remake their lives.

All us bibliophiles love a book about books and I'm hoping this is going to fit that bill perfectly. This cover is extremely boring so I always forget why I want to read it until I reread that premise, so February will be the month! Mother/daughter dynamics in books tend to etch themselves onto my heart, as do books that have a subplot of a group of strangers coming together as a support system.

Homegoing
Yaa Gyasi

Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle's dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast's booming slave trade, and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery. One thread of Homegoing follows Effia's descendants through centuries of warfare in Ghana, as the Fante and Asante nations wrestle with the slave trade and British colonization. The other thread follows Esi and her children into America. From the plantations of the South to the Civil War and the Great Migration, from the coal mines of Pratt City, Alabama, to the jazz clubs and dope houses of twentieth-century Harlem, right up through the present day, Homegoing makes history visceral, and captures, with singular and stunning immediacy, how the memory of captivity came to be inscribed in the soul of a nation.

This has been compared to Girl, Woman, Other so many times which partly hurts my soul as we shouldn't constantly just compare books that have a similar theme BUT this sounds incredible. And intense. I struggle with books that span across generations as remembering characters is quite the challenge for me, alas, I want to read this. I'm amazed at how much depth people say this book has given the under 350 page count. I'm scared, but my expectations are high.

Difficult Women

Roxane Gay

The women in these stories live lives of privilege and of poverty, are in marriages both loving and haunted by past crimes or emotional blackmail. A pair of sisters, grown now, have been inseparable ever since they were abducted together as children, and must negotiate the marriage of one of them. A woman married to a twin pretends not to realize when her husband and his brother impersonate each other. A stripper putting herself through college fends off the advances of an overzealous customer. A black engineer moves to Upper Michigan for a job and faces the malign curiosity of her colleagues and the difficulty of leaving her past behind. From a girls’ fight club to a wealthy subdivision in Florida where neighbors conform, compete, and spy on each other, Gay delivers a wry, beautiful, haunting vision of modern America reminiscent of Merritt Tierce, Jamie Quatro, and Miranda July.

Hunger by Roxane Gay was one of the many memoirs I read last year and I was awed at her ability to write beautifully while still being brutally honest about her experience with body image. I do have Bad Feminist on my shelves, but there's just something about Difficult Women that's appealing to me more. This'll be my non-fiction pick for February. 

What's topping your TBR for February?

I'm going to confess something embarrassing, most of the books on my 'favourites' shelf have only been read once. As a teenager, I was an avid rereader. I vividly remember finishing Shadow Kissed and instantly restarting the same book. (I didn't get out the house much) But as I've gotten older and my TBR list has become more hefty, I have a silly sense of guilt when I debate whether to reread something. It feels like a waste of time, but.. errr.. hello? Reading is meant to be fun! In 2021 I'm making a personal goal to reread some books that have been calling out to be for awhile now. Will they still be my favourites? Who knows! There's only one way to find out..

The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath

This is a 'descent into madness' story revolving around a young woman in the 60's. It's semi biographical with Plath taking heavy inspiration from her own experiences with mental health. There's something about Sylvia Plath's writing that speaks to my heart. It's dark, twisty, but painfully honest. I find myself in her words, which may be a truly awful thing to admit but, yes. This was her only novel ever released and I remember feeling so touched throughout it. It felt like a weighted hand over my heart and I'm both looking forward to giving it a reread and feeling truly darkened by the prospect of reading such a tragic book again.

Everything I Never Told You
Celeste Ng

After a young girl is found dead in a lake, the question arises as to whether she died of suicide. Told through two timelines, we read about the grief the family is experiencing from the loss and we go back to the events that led them to it. This was a truly beautiful book that shattered my heart and clumsily put it back together. Celeste Ng has such a talent for writing about family dynamics that are complicated but ring oh so true to real life. Some people much prefer her second novel Little Fires Everywhere, but for me, Everything I Never Told You is a much more harrowing story. Lydia, the main focus of the story, was a wonderfully written teenage girl who you just wanted to hug. The story is hers, and yet it's told through the other members of the family. It's a really fascinating look at how so many teenagers are almost blanketed by their families own issues. They can get lost in the pain of others. It was a different take on what could've otherwise been a regular 3 star book that focuses on mental health. 

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Taylor Jenkins Reid

Evelyn Hugo is a Hollywood starlet who's always been known for her messy love life - being married seven times does that to a woman. Reaching out a unknown journalist, Evelyn Hugo agrees to a "tell all". Will the world finally learn who her actual true love was? This is a book community darling. Everyone has read it and 99.8% of people love it. Taylor Jenkins Reid is one of my favourite authors and this is an epic novel with a great cast of characters, a compelling story, and is very worthy of a reread. I may go with the audiobook to switch it up, have you listened to this? Would you recommend?

The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Stephen Chbosky

Is anyone surprised that this coming-of-age novel is on this list? I tend to reread this book at least once a year. Charlie's story touches my soul in a way that no other book does. It helped me at a time where I really needed to not feel alone about the state of my mental stability. I recently bought the anniversary addition that has added a new letter at the end, so I'm eagerly anticipating this reread. I can't wait to cry all the tears. If you didn't already know, this book is told through a series of letters where Charlie, the protagonists, works through his trauma of losing his Auntie. In high school he meets a ragtag group of friends who welcome him with open arms. It's about identity, love, depression, abuse, and growth as a teenager. Truly wonderful.

Me Before You
Jojo Moyes

Louisa Clark is struggling to find her way as a 20-something girl who still lives at home. When she gets hired to take care of Will, a man who is confined to a motorized wheelchair after a car accident. Together they form a friendship that pushes both to step outside of their comfort-zones. This book got a lot of backlash because of it's disability rep, which I fully understand. I solely enjoyed it because of Lou's character. She inspired me at a time where my life was drastically changing and I needed some inspiration. For that reason, I want to give it a reread to see if it still holds up as a favourite. 

Love Letters to the Dead
Ava Dellaira 

Laurel is a teenage girl who is struggling with the death of her sister. An assignment in class starts a chain of letters that she obsessively writes to various famous people. This is a complete risk as a reread. I first read this when I was around 13-years-old and was seeking something similar to The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I remember being impressed with the writing and finding the inside not matching the outside as it read more adult than I was expecting. Was 13-year-old me smart enough to know that? Probably not, but there's only one way to find out. 

Are there any books that you're hoping to reread this year? Let me know! 

All bibliophiles make a similar list to this, right? I'm dreading if I'm still alive and reading in 2050 as.. that's a lot of planning. I'm not going into the synopsis of each of these books, instead I'm putting in the link to The StoryGraph so you can go over and see if any of these interest you. SPEAKING OF.. I created a StoryGraph account because we all hate Amazon. Come add me!







1. The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. This is at the top of my TBR as I know I'm going to love it. I desperately want to pick up The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield after Victoria over at WhatVictoriaRead raved about it, but as this one has been on my TBR longer, I'm trying to prioritize. Welp.
2. The Wife by Meg Wolitzer. This will be my first Meg Wolitzer novel! It intrigues me as it's, well, short, but I'm interested in watching the movie.
3. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North. The trope of someone reliving their life over and over always intrigues me (Yes, The Midnight Library by Matt Haig is my favourite), so this has been on my radar for a few years. However, the length always puts me off. 2021 will hopefully be the year that I stop being intimated by TOMEs.
4. Tangerine by Christine Mangan. I tried to read Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier last year but couldn't get into it, I hear that Tangerine has a similar vibe so I'm hoping that it'll be a stepping stone into my love for gothic fiction.
5. There There by Tommy Orange. I tried to read this last year through Libby as an audiobook, but it was not working for me. Since then, I found it at a used bookstore for $2. So, yay! 
6. Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward. This sounds like it's going to be a brutal read but with a great pay off. I feel like I've seen many booktubers haul this but not actually read it.
7. The Cactus by Sarah Haywood. It's already known that I'm trash for a Reese's bookclub pick, despite my complicated history with either giving them 2 or 5 stars. This has the means to be a Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine for me, so fingers crossed.
8. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson. This has a similar plot to The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, only far more daunting because of it's intense size. May be the scariest book on this plot.
9. The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchison. Have you ever wanted to read a book that you know is going to be terrible, but maybe fun terrible? Yup. This is that for me. I feel like it's going to be fast-paced, over-the-top, ridiculous thriller that will keep me invested. 
10. The Quiet Room: A Journey Out of the Torment of Madness by Lori Schiller and Amanda Bennett. Breaking my own rules by including a non-fiction on this list? Yes. As I've mentioned before, me and my husband have a tradition of buying a new book to kick off the new year with. However, after spending far too long in Barnes & Noble without finding anything, I instead decided to instead read a book that I bought last year. 
11. Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswal. Another Reese pick? Yes, but this plot would interest me no matter what. It seems a little like a fictional take on Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi, which is also on my TBR. (So many books, too little time.)
12. Verity by Colleen Hoover. I read two Colleen Hoover novels last year and enjoyed myself immensely. I've been recommend Verity as my next book by the author, so here we are.
13. Often I Am Happy by Jens Christian Grøndahl. I'm making an effort to read shorter books this year, so this fits the bill perfectly. It also sounds very interesting. 
14. The Portable Veblen by Elizabeth Mckenzie. Time to shame myself.. I picked this up because I liked the cover. I didn't even read the synopsis. I rarely do that, but yes, shame on me. So I have to read this to soothe my brain and just hope that I will enjoy it enough to warrant keeping it on my shelf. 
15. Elizabeth Is Missing by Emma Healy. The premise of this vaguely reminds of A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman, which makes it very appealing to me. 
16. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. The only true classic that makes it on this list. I've never read any Virginia Woolf, so this will be my introduction into her writing.
17. Shanghai Girls by Lisa See. This is a huge risk as I truly haven't seen anyone else talk about it. I solely picked it up from a library sale because the cover was gorgeous. I enjoy historical fiction that focuses on females who were ahead of their time, so as a concept the synopsis of this should be right up my street.
18. One Amazing Thing by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. This has sat on my shelves for a few years now, but it was only reading Anxious People by Fredrik Backman last year that bumped it up my TBR list. I'm dubious as to whether it'll be similar, but I crave more of the same so I'm going into this with high hopes.
19. The Shining Girls by Lauren Beunes. After a spell of reading some really bad thrillers in 2020, I fell out of love with the genre. I'm hoping this very original take on a slasher thriller will revive the joy I used to find from the genre. Time hopping serial killer? Final girl who wants revenge? Yes, please.
20. Still Alice by Lisa Genova. I can't put my finger on why this book intrigues me so much, but it's been on my active TBR for literal years now so it's about time that I finally pick it up. 
21. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells. I'm trying to tackle the hella daunting Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge and this is the one that's next on my priority list. This modern classic will either become a favourite, or it will not have aged well and I'll end up cringing my way through it. Yup.

Okay, so I'm switching it up once again! I have never committed to doing a monthly TBR before as I'm a huge mood reader and always felt the need to include 10s of books on TBRs to be taken seriously in the book community. I'm trying to get rid of that negative mental negativity, so here we are. I may just include 3 books on these pasts and that's perfectly okay, however in January I have a decent amount as I'm trying to hit the ground running in January. Unless it's a reread, I will be using the StoryGraph/Goodreads synopsis to talk about the synopsis of each book as I don't want to accidently spoil myself for a plot point like I have done so many times when trying to find my own way to describe the novel. Without further ado, let's delve into my January TBR.

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Punching the Air

Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam

Amal Shahid has always been an artist and a poet. But even in a diverse art school, he’s seen as disruptive and unmotivated by a biased system. Then one fateful night, an altercation in a gentrifying neighborhood escalates into tragedy. “Boys just being boys” turns out to be true only when those boys are white. Suddenly, at just sixteen years old, Amal’s bright future is upended: he is convicted of a crime he didn’t commit and sent to prison. Despair and rage almost sink him until he turns to the refuge of his words, his art. This never should have been his story. But can he change it?

My husband listened to an ARC of this last year and has urged me since to pick it up. I begun to audiobook on December 31st and got to 47% in one sitting. This is undoubtedly a difficult book to listen to. The racism injustice that Amal faces is beyond fathoming. I have no doubt that this will be the first book I finish in 2021. 

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The Quiet Room: A Journey Out of the Torment of Madness
Amanda Bennett and Lori Schiller

At seventeen Lori Schiller was the perfect child -- the only daughter of an affluent, close-knit family. Six years later she made her first suicide attempt, then wandered the streets of New York City dressed in ragged clothes, tormenting voices crying out in her mind. Lori Schiller had entered the horrifying world of full-blown schizophrenia. She began an ordeal of hospitalizations, halfway houses, relapses, more suicide attempts, and constant, withering despair. But against all odds, she survived. Now in this personal account, she tells how she did it, taking us not only into her own shattered world, but drawing on the words of the doctors who treated her and family members who suffered with her.

At the start of a new year, me and my husband BilliamSWN have a tradition of buying a new book to kick off the new year. We were in a bookstore for at least 40 minutes and I couldn't find anything, so to work within the conditions of our plan I chose to pick up The Quiet Room as my first book of the year as I purchased it last January but never got around to reading it. This sounds like everything I want from a non-fiction that's centered around mental health. I haven't seen anyone talk or mention this book within the book community, so hopefully it'll end up being a surprise and I can bring more attention to it. I actually haven't read any non-fiction talking about schizophrenia in my lifetime, so that needs to change. Side-note: how beautiful is this cover?

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The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
Claire North

Some stories cannot be told in just one lifetime. Harry August is on his deathbed. Again. No matter what he does or the decisions he makes, when death comes, Harry always returns to where he began, a child with all the knowledge of a life he has already lived a dozen times before. Nothing ever changes. Until now. As Harry nears the end of his eleventh life, a little girl appears at his bedside. "I nearly missed you, Doctor August," she says. "I need to send a message." This is the story of what Harry does next, and what he did before, and how he tries to save a past he cannot change and a future he cannot allow.

This has been on my TBR for literal ever. I remember when it got released in 2014 and being interested. I hope to finally tackle the TOME in January. This novel is on my 21 Books I Want To Read In 2021 list and I just got the audiobook through Libby, so yay! Perfect timing. I've previously read Claire North's other novel The Sudden Appearance of Hope and enjoyed it. The mix of contemporary and science worked for me.

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Often I Am Happy
Jens Christian Grondahl

Ellinor is seventy. Her husband Georg has just passed away, and she is struck with the need to confide in someone. She addresses Anna, her long-dead best friend, who was also Georg's first wife. Fully aware of the absurdity of speaking to someone who cannot hear her, Ellinor nevertheless finds it meaningful to divulge long-held secrets and burdens of her past: her mother's heartbreaking pride; Ellinor's courtship with her first husband; their seemingly charmed friendship with Anna and Georg; the disastrous ski trip that shattered the two couples' lives.

In 2021 I'm hoping to finally read the shorter books on my TBR. I always put them off as I know I'll fly through them and might feel dissatisfied. However, this little novel sounds incredible. It's giving me A Man Called Ove and Firefly Lane mash-up feel and I'm ready to get my heart broken.

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Binti
Nnedi Okorafor

Her name is Binti, and she is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers who do not share her ways or respect her customs. Knowledge comes at a cost, one that Binti is willing to pay, but her journey will not be easy. The world she seeks to enter has long warred with the Meduse, an alien race that has become the stuff of nightmares. Oomza University has wronged the Meduse, and Binti's stellar travel will bring her within their deadly reach. If Binti hopes to survive the legacy of a war not of her making, she will need both the gifts of her people and the wisdom enshrined within the University, itself - but first she has to make it there, alive.

Another short one! It's almost ridiculous how many times this novella has been put onto my monthly TBR's only to go unread. I have no idea whether I will enjoy this book as sci-fi as a whole isn't my usual genre, but there's only one way to find out!

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All Adults Here
Emma Straub

When Astrid Strick witnesses a school bus accident in the center of town, it jostles loose a repressed memory from her young parenting days decades earlier. Suddenly, Astrid realizes she was not quite the parent she thought she’d been to her three, now-grown children. But to what consequence? Astrid’s youngest son is drifting and unfocused, making parenting mistakes of his own. Her daughter is intentionally pregnant yet struggling to give up her own adolescence. And her eldest seems to measure his adult life according to standards no one else shares. But who gets to decide, so many years later, which long-ago lapses were the ones that mattered? Who decides which apologies really count? It might be that only Astrid’s thirteen-year-old granddaughter and her new friend really understand the courage it takes to tell the truth to the people you love the most.

Did this solely make it into my library holds because of the gorgeous cover..? Yes, but since getting it I've seen an abundance of people compare it to Anxious People, Grown-Ups, and even Normal People. I adored all three of this books so this really is a no brainer. I'm going into this completely blind and hope to be amazed. 

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You Should See Me In A Crown
Leah Johnson

Liz Lighty has always believed she's too black, too poor, too awkward to shine in her small, rich, prom-obsessed midwestern town. But it's okay -- Liz has a plan that will get her out of Campbell, Indiana, forever: attend the uber-elite Pennington College, play in their world-famous orchestra, and become a doctor. But when the financial aid she was counting on unexpectedly falls through, Liz's plans come crashing down until she's reminded of her school's scholarship for prom king and queen. There's nothing Liz wants to do less than endure a gauntlet of social media trolls, catty competitors, and humiliating public events, but despite her devastating fear of the spotlight she's willing to do whatever it takes to get to Pennington. The only thing that makes it halfway bearable is the new girl in school, Mack. She's smart, funny, and just as much of an outsider as Liz. But Mack is also in the running for queen. Will falling for the competition keep Liz from her dreams . . . or make them come true?

I'm so excited for this one! I'm planning on buddy reading it with the flawless @m.is.reading. This YA contemporary has some major buzz surround it in the online book community. Everyone has loved it or at the very least, found it cutesy and worth the read. It was also the first YA pick for the Reese Witherspoon bookclub, which excites me greatly as I'm trash for a "Reese's Pick". The cover is also flawless.

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In An Absent Dream
Seanan McGuire

This fourth entry and prequel tells the story of Lundy, a very serious young girl who would rather study and dream than become a respectable housewife and live up to the expectations of the world around her. As well she should. When she finds a doorway to a world founded on logic and reason, riddles and lies, she thinks she's found her paradise. Alas, everything costs at the goblin market, and when her time there is drawing to a close, she makes the kind of bargain that never plays out well.

This will be my first reread of the year as I'm participating in Kayla from BooksAndLala's Buzzword Reading Challenge. Each month you have a buzzword and January was 'Dream'. I was initially planning on finally picking up Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams by Sylvia Plath but I got a tad confused with dates and had to instead pick up something short and snappy. I've been meaning to reread the entire Wayward Children series to establish what I love about it. I adored this reread! There's something so magical about In An Absent Dream. It reads like a dark fairytale.

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Love Story
Erich Segal

Opposites in nearly every way, Oliver and Jenny are kindred spirits from vastly different worlds. Falling deeply and powerfully, their attraction to one another defies everything they have ever believed—as they share a passion far greater than anything they dreamed possible and explore the wonder of a love that must end too soon. 

This is a really random pick for the month, but we recently signed up for HBO Max and it reminded me that I wanted to watch the movie adaption of this romance classic, but of course, I pledged to read the book first. I'm surprised at how short this novel is (coming in at just over 100 pages). I enjoy a little 'opposites attract' romance, especially from a modern classic. Have you read this or watched the movie adaption? Let me know your thoughts on either!

So there we have my January TBR. Is there anyone on this list that you're hoping to also read soon?