Weekly Wrap-Up: 12/23 – 1/5

So I took a little break last week with this post. Ya know, ’cause of all of those holidays in a row and all that. But I’m back on schedule!

The last couple of weeks have actually been pretty good, both with my reading and with my posting. Particularly with my posting. And especially with how busy the last couple of weeks have been with all of the holiday stuff going on. I was kinda busy.

But yeah, I’ll stop talking. On with the wrap-up!

Tuesday 12/24: Christmas Eve

I already said it during the last Weekly Wrap-Up I did – but Merry Christmas Eve!! 🦌🎅🔔🕯️ As I do every year, I spent this day hanging up a storm. So many cookies!

Wednesday 12/25: Christmas Day

I didn’t post at all during the rest of the week of the 23rd, unfortunately, so I didn’t really get to say Merry Christmas. So I’m gonna say it now: Merry Christmas!! 🎄🎁❄️🌟 I hope everybody had a great holiday, if you celebrate. Once again, it was super nice to see and spend time with family. It’s always the highlight for me this time of year.

Monday 12/30: Birthstone Book Covers

Last Monday, I participated in my favorite monthly post, Birthstone Book Covers. Birthstone Book Covers is a fun little post created and hosted by Leslie @ Books Are the New Black.

Each month, for the post, you feature book covers that are either the same color of the month’s birthstone or include the color in the title. This month was December, and its birthstones are tanzanite, zircon and turquoise. So the colors are all different shades of blue.

Birthstone Book Covers: December 2024

Tuesday 12/31: New Year’s Eve / End of the Year Book Tag

Tuesday was the last day of 2024. So, to everyone, here’s a belated Happy New Year’s Eve!! 🎇🎆 So, since it was the last day of the year, I decided to do a post that kind of focused on the end of the year (even if it ended up kind of late to do this particular post).

The post I did was the End of the Year Book Tag. It was created by Ariel Bissett over at YouTube. There are six questions, and the tag focuses on reflecting on the past year’s reading, as well as looking forward to future reading.

End of the Year Book Tag

Wednesday 1/1: New Year’s Day / To 2025 Post

Last Wednesday was the first day of 2025! Happy New Year’s Day!! 🥂🍻🕛🎉 I hope that everyone’s had a nice start to the new year so far!

On New Year’s Day, I did my first post of 2025. It was basically what I usually do: a little ruminating on the past year mixed with some of my goals for the coming year.

To 2025: Happy New Year

Saturday 1/4: Summerfall & Homecoming Reviews

On Saturday, I finally got around to posting another book review. Or reviews technically in this case? Whatever. Anyway, it was the first time I posted a book review in close to two weeks.

For the novella I read, Summerfall, I gave it ★★★✯☆. It was the prequel novella to Winterspell by Claire Legrand. And for the short story I read, Homecoming, I rated it ★★★★☆. Homecoming was a sort of extra epilogue to Winterspell.

Summerfall & Homecoming Reviews

Sunday 1/5: December Reading 2024

Yesterday, I posted my monthly reading wrap-up for December 2024. It was thankfully at a reasonable time, this time around. For those who don’t know, monthly wrap-ups are when I go over the books I read over the past month, as well as my stats over on The StoryGraph.

Monthly Wrap-Up: December Reading 2024

Books I Read Last Week

💖🎁 Wrapping It All Up 💖🎁

So yeah, I think I did okay the last couple of weeks with regards to reading and posting. I actually planned to take a bit of a break anyway, as my spouse was off the weeks surrounding the holidays, and I wanted to spend time with them and relax. It was a very nice couple of weeks.

Regarding this coming week, I’m planning to do my first Anticipated New Books Releasing in 2025 post of the year. I’m also gonna do my Yearly Reading Wrap-Up for 2024, as well. As for other posts… I’m not super sure about the rest. Hopefully I’ll do a book review, but who knows what’ll happen.

Concerning the current novels at the top of my TBR… I’m probably gonna end up reading one or more of the books I got as Christmas gifts. I’m not totally sure which one I’m gonna read first, or if I’ll read another after I finish it, but I’m definitely gonna do it. I’m looking forward to reading all of them – it’s all a matter of when I’ll get around to reading them.

Anyway, as always, thank you to everyone for reading, and I hope you all have a wonderful day/night!

See ya ~Mar

Monthly Wrap-Up: December Reading 2024

Yes! I’m posting my December Reading wrap-up for 2024 on a reasonable day in January! It’s not halfway through the freaking month this time!

This past month, my reading was… okay. It could’ve been waayyy better, though, and I’m really hoping to improve it some this month. Like, ugh, December was barely acceptable regarding my reading of books.

Anyway, without further ado, let’s get into my StoryGraph statistics from last month!

December Reading 2024

I read 4 books and 611 pages

😐 MOODS: I had four Moods in December, which was less than I did the month before. As usual, the biggest Mood of the pie was Adventurous, taking up half of the chart. The other Moods were Lighthearted, Funny and Emotional, and they were all the same size slice.

👢 PACE: My books from last month were mostly fast-paced, but with one exception that was slow-paced.

🔢 PAGE NUMBER: Everything I read was between 26 and 253 pages.

📖 FICTION/NONFICTION: It was once again all fiction in December. Per usual.

🎭 GENRES: There were four Genres in the books I read in December. The biggest one as-almost-always usual was Fantasy. The other three Genres were Young Adult, Romance and Manga, and they were all equal on the bar graph.

📄 FORMAT: This particular pie graph is once again wrong. (As it always is.) (I’m too lazy to correct it, also.) Only half of the books I read were physical copies; the other half were digital, though.

⭐ RATING: My median star rating for last month was 4.13. The ratings I gave were between 3.5 stars and 4.5 stars, so yeah.

📉 PAGES READ DAILY: My highest spike of reading occured at the edge of the first half of December, between the 10th and the 14th. I also read during the 30th and 31st, however.

The Books I Read in December

★★★★✯

★★★★✯

★★★✯☆ • my review

★★★★☆ • my review

Wrapping Up the Wrap-Up

So yeah, not super happy about the amount of reading I did in December 2024 regarding novels, but it is what it is. All I can do is try to read more during this month.

There’s at least one book I’m really looking forward to this month, and that I’m also absolutely going to read immediately, so there’s at least one book there. I also got several novels for Christmas that I’m also excited about, and am hopefully going to read some of them in January as well. (I got like six books and two of them are like at least 700+ pages, probably more, so yeah.)

Anyway, as always, thank you for joining me in checking out my StoryGraph stats for my December reading in 2024. Thank you also for reading, and I hope you have an awesome day/night!

See ya ~Mar

Summerfall & Homecoming by Claire Legrand | Book Reviews

That was one thing Rinka had always loved about humans, in the books she had read-like the faeries, they were governed by their hearts, by their passions. Their love of food and beauty, their love of country and home, even their love of love itself.

Summerfall by Claire Legrand

SERIES: Winterspell #0.5

LENGTH: 116 pages

GENRES: Fantasy, Romance, YA, Fiction

PUBLISHER: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

RELEASE DATE: 26 August 2014

BOOK DESCRIPTION:

In this captivating novella, prequel to the upcoming Winterspell, Claire Legrand weaves a story of magic, political intrigue, and forbidden love.

Rinka is a faery, passionate and powerful, determined to maintain the tenuous peace between faeries and humans.

Alban Somerhart is a human, a reluctant king trapped in an arranged marriage, desperate to prevent war.

Their love could save the kingdom of Cane—or shatter it forever.

This entrancing tale sets the stage for the rise of a wicked queen, and the journey of a lifetime for a human girl named Clara…

My Review

“Anise,” Felazita whispered, tucking the blanket more closely around the child. The word dropped from her tongue like the beginning of a dance.

“I’d like to name her Anise.”

So, I finally got around to reading the Winterspell prequel novella. And it was okay. It wasn’t something that I really got into, but it made me appreciate stuff about Winterspell more, and reminded me about stuff I enjoyed about the book.

I wasn’t super into Rinka or Alban or their relationship, but I could understand why they were into each other, and I appreciated the background for the main story. I also liked seeing more faery characters, and it was nice to see faeries as a whole portrayed more sympathetically, as Anise and her cohort just didn’t do that for me in the main installment.

Summerfall really made me realize that one of the things I really enjoyed was the world of Cane and the way magic worked. It was cool to see more of it. I also liked seeing Cane in a more peaceful state, as opposed to the dystopian winter nightmare that it is for essentially the entirety of Winterspell. Aside from the epilogue, of course.

All in all, even though I didn’t really care much for the characters – especially since I already knew what had happened to them before I read it courtesy of the novel sequel – I appreciated a lot of other things this novella had. I also definitely recommend Summerfall to those who read and enjoyed the main story of the novel.

“Clara?” he questioned. His thumb circled softly against her palm, and love swelled in her like the rising sun.

“It will be a long journey,” she agreed, leaning down to kiss him, “but we will make it, together.”

Homecoming by Claire Legrand

BOOK DESCRIPTION: A brief epilogue to Claire Legrand’s YA Nutcracker re-telling, Winterspell. (Available for free download at Claire’s website.)

My Review

Yes, Clara had thought of these things. She had prepared herself to expect differences-an older world, progress made without her, decisions come and gone.

But knowing something and actually seeing it were, she was now finding out, two radically different things.

I don’t have too much to say about Homecoming either. Not only is it even shorter than Summerfall, what with it being a short story as opposed to a novella, but it’s really not anything more than an extra epilogue, as it says on the tin.

It was nice to see all the characters reunite after everyone split off at the end of Winterspell. I also liked seeing how everyone grew as characters apart from one another, as that doesn’t usually happen; especially for an extra epilogue like this. It was really nice to see Cane mostly patched up though, and that was probably the thing I enjoyed the most about this short story.

I definitely recommend this if you enjoyed Winterspell and wanted to see that happy ending that didn’t quite make it into the novel. Especially since it’s free on Claire Legrand’s website. Really, there’s no excuse not to if you’re a fan of the novel.

Anyway, as always, thank you so much for reading, and I hope you have an amazing day/night!

See ya ~Mar

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