December Wrap Up!

Hello everyone and welcome back to my blog! Happy New Year! I hope everyone had a wonderful time on New Year's Eve and is ready for an excellent year in 2019. Before we focus on the new year though, I have to wrap up the last month of 2018.

In December, I read 8 books and 2 novellas! Adding December's reads, I read 111 books in the year! This is the most I've read in the past three years, and I'm really proud of myself. Here is what I read!

1) Wallbanger by Alice Clayton

Wallbanger was the second Alice Clayton book I read this year, and I liked it a lot more than Nuts, which I read earlier this year. Wallbanger was a ton of fun, and I thought the sex scenes were written very well. 

2) Cold Day in the Sun by Sara Biren

I received an e-arc of Cold Day in the Sun in exchange for an honest review, which will be coming when it is published! Cold Day in the Sun had wonderful feminist themes and I thought the romance was super cute. The book wasn't life changing for me, but it was a solid YA contemporary romance.

3) Listen to Your Heart by Kasie West

Listen to Your Heart is the only audiobook I finished this month, and I really liked it! By the third act, I was completely hooked and hated to pause it. I ended up just sitting in my library staring off into the distance, desperately needing to know what happened next.

4) Beautiful Bombshell by Christina Lauren

Beautiful Bombshell is book 2.5 in the Beautiful series. I wanted to revisit this series at the end of the year, since I read the first three books earlier (Beautiful Bastard, Beautiful Secret, and Beautiful Player). To be honest, I didn't really like this novella that much, it was just a whole bunch of sex with no plot. Also, I read this after my number five, but I got confused on which novella was which, showing that both weren't that memorable at the end of the day.

5) Beautiful Bitch by Christina Lauren

Beautiful Bitch is book 1.5 in the series. I liked this one a bit more than Beautiful Bombshell, because it provided more insight into Chloe and Bennett's relationship, who seemed like the weakest couple after reading the second and third book. While this provided more insight, Chloe and Bennett are still my least favorite couple, not only in this series, but in everything that Christina Lauren has written and that I've read.

6) Lovestruck by Kate Watson

Lovestruck was another e-arc I read in December. You'll be seeing this review when Lovestruck comes out April 2nd. Lovestruck is a novel that follows Kali, the daughter or Eros (or Cupid, as we like to call him). This was a super fun read and posed some really great questions about choice vs. destiny. I did get confused sometimes and wish there was more clarity on how the world worked, but it was really unlike anything I've read, which seems to get harder to do as the years pass!

7) One Tiny Lie by K.A. Tucker

One Tiny Lie is the companion novel to K.A. Tucker's Ten Tiny Breaths, which I loved when I read it all the way back in December of 2015. Three years later, I picked up One Tiny Lie and it was...interesting. I don't particularly like the whole "misunderstood bad boy" trope that much, and unfortunately, the love interest was the epitome of it. Despite that, K.A. Tucker's writing really drew me in.

8) Deklan by Shay Savage

Deklan was a big YIKES for me. I honestly don't know what I was thinking when I picked up this book! Deklan is about a girl who is engaged to be married to a mob boss, but she ends up marrying his body guard, Deklan. And you guessed it...Deklan is a misunderstood bad boy. The book was pretty problematic and I honestly should have just DNF'd it. There's literally a scene where Deklan tells the other MC (whose name I am forgetting) that they aren't equals and that their marriage isn't an equal partnership, and she just accepts this? It kind of changes in the end, but I still felt like they had uneven power. It's going to be a bit before I read something from Shay Savage again.

9) Him by Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy

Okay, I was really on a romance kick in December, but I think Him finally satiated my intense need for steamy romances. Him follows two best friends, Jamie Canning and Ryan Wesley, who are reunited one summer when they both coach at a hockey camp they both attended as teenagers. And what goes down is just so...hot. Yep, that's the only word I can use to describe Him - hot. I enjoyed the book a lot more than I anticipated, and I highly recommend it. 

10) The Raging Ones by Krista and Becca Ritchie

 Y'all...I read three arcs this month? Who am I? I've had The Raging Ones on my Kindle app for what seems like forever, and I'm proud that I actually got around to reading it instead of letting it just lay there forgotten. The Raging Ones follows three protagonists, and while it was difficult to differentiate them at first and had a slow start, I ended up really liking the book. The last act really redeemed the book for me.

Currently Reading!

Right now, I'm making my way through Queen of Air and Darkness by Cassandra Clare. I'm really enjoying it, but some characters have made really stupid decisions, and I just want to shake them. I'm almost 300 pages in at the moment (afternoon of Jan. 1), and I hope to finish it before I go back to school on the 6th. I'm not loving it as much as Lord of Shadows, so it's taking me a bit longer to read.

I'm casually listening to Royally Screwed by Emma Chase. Over my holiday break, I wasn't listening to the audiobook that much. I'm roughly 60 percent of the way through, and while I'm enjoying myself, I'm not loving the book. Listening to erotic romance is a lot different than just reading it, and I definitely didn't listen to it a lot when I was home with my parents. 

Life Updates!

good ol' Charlotte! (link)

So these past couple weeks I've been on winter break, and it was much needed. I was super stressed out by the beginning of December, but now I'm ready to get the semester started again. I am not sure what exactly I'll be reading this semester, but I now there will be some Charlotte Bronte in the mix, and possibly some Dickens. I'm also going to be starting an editorial internship on the 9th, which I really looking forward to. I've already met my bosses in the fall, and they seemed lovely. 

And that was my December! What did you read last month? 

Thanks so much for stopping by and I'll see you soon with another post!

Happy Reading! 

Genni @ Ready, Set, Read!