2022 Year End Roundup

 

Ah, my friends, we have reached another year’s end. We’ve shared fifty books over 52 weeks. Phew, I’m tired.

Last year, in my final last post, I spoke about all my “extra” reads for the challenge. In 2022, I read many, many more books than our fifty. I’d need half-a-dozen posts to share them all. Instead, I made another List Challenge to show off my reading prowess (or I’m just bragging big time.) My favorite book by far was Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. Wow, what a terrific book. I think my least favorite (that I actually finished) was Wolf Flow. It was… odd. Anyway, I had a great reading year.

Here’s a link to the blog if you want to recheck any of my reviews.

Here’s a link to the original picks I had last January. Boy, was I ambitious! Can you beat my score of 64?

Here are all the books I read for the Challenge (including some doubled prompts).

Here are all the titles I read for the entire year.

So next year…

I wanted to announce now that I will not be doing the PopSugar challenge next year. One prompt for 2023 upset me. Category 10 was “A Romance with a Fat Lead.” OMG, no, thank you. My daughter says I need to be more woke, and we are taking the word back. But I’m not ready to accept that word as complimentary, unoffensive, and something I might call myself. No thanks.

I’ll also mention that the list for 2023 had more than one repeat from another year (6 of them). Several prompts were almost the same as another (“Book Published the Year You Were Born” and “Book Published the Decade You Were Born.” Also, “Book Published in the Spring of 2023” and “Book Published in the Fall of 2023.”)

Instead, I’m changing challenges and formats. I plan to try the “52 Book Club” challenge. These prompts will bring fun titles.

About the format for my reading blog… I love you, my faithful reader, but I can’t blog every week anymore. It’s becoming too much to write 500 words each week, plus reading the book, plus writing and editing novels, oh and my Apps for Writers blog, too. Instead, I’ll post at the end of the month with a summary of my books. I hope you’ll still follow me on this fantastic book journey.

 

Book 50 Love in the ’80s

Love in the ’80s an anthology by nine different romance authors fulfilled the category “Book Set in the Eighties” for the PopSugar 2022 Reading Challenge. There are ten new adult romances in the thousand-page book. I started reading it in December of last year.

The books range through various plots, including best friend’s brother, reunion romance, rock and roll fantasy, and more. I grabbed the ebook, planning to pick a single novel and call it good. But you know me, I read them all.

The first one I picked was a retelling of Can’t Buy Me Love, a movie from 1987 starring Patrick Dempsey. I was a little disappointed at the plot steal. It was original, but very familiar. That’s when I got the bright idea of reading the rest and using it for my last book.

These were quick, cute novellas. Some got details wrong. One book had Madonna appearing too soon. Another took place in the nineties and referred to their life in the late eighties as high school kids. The inconsistencies didn’t take away from the stories. Each held up as a fun, flirty, 80s romance.

Ironically, my favorite was the tale from the 90s, Careless Whisper by Misty Paquette. It was a reunion tale. A group of former high school friends ends up staying in the same house to honor one of the kid’s grandmothers. The woman raised her granddaughter and had a hand in helping with all the kids. When she passes, her will stipulates that they must stay at her house. The heroine of the tale, Gracie, the granddaughter, is not happy. Her ex-best friends and boyfriend are in her face as she grieves. She believed the ex-boyfriend was her one true love until her grandmother told her he got Gracie’s best friend pregnant. She left town and never looked back.

Now she must face all of them and find the truth. The group finds old VHS tapes around the house with clues about what really happened in 1985. The story became so twisted and ugly, I thought for sure the author would never be able to get the couple together. She did, with a huge plot twist. I loved it.

If you’re looking for a nice, long, nostalgic read, get your mixed tapes ready and grab this title. At $1.00 a story, you can’t go wrong.

I give Love in the ’80s by Cassie L Bond, Cambra Hebert, Amber Lynn Natusch. Rebecca Yarros, RK Ryals, Kelly Martin, Rachel Higginson, Lindy Zart, Cameo Renae, and Misty Paquette Four Neon Scrunchies.

 

Book 49 Sweet Tidings

 

Sweet Tidings by Jean C Gordon fulfilled the category “A Different Book by an Author You Read in 2021” for the PopSugar 2022 Reading Challenge. Last year, I read Sweet Horizons and Sweet Entanglement by Ms. Gordon. I love her Indigo Bay books.

Sweet Tiding is a holiday book which is why I left it for this week. The new mayor of Indigo Bay, Amanda Strickland, is looking for a perfect holiday for her small coastal town. She’s got all the decorations and activities planned. She wants splash and excitement for her gala and fundraiser. She enlists her friend, Eric Slade, a Hollywood hunk.

The two opt to create a pretend romance to generate a stir in the small town of Indigo Bay. Eric’s star power and the hint of a new relationship have the press all in a tizzy. But what happens when they both start to feel something but are afraid to tell the other? When the romance starts to become real, neither is ready to hold their heart out, regardless of the Christmas cheer.

I love a friends-to-lovers romance. The story is complicated by image. Eric must maintain his super cool actor mode, and Amanda feels she should be the soul of professionalism as the mayor. It doesn’t help that Eric is dealing with his estranged son and a costar who’s a little publicity crazy. The small-town setting helps create a cozy atmosphere for these two unlikely people to come together. I got such warm fuzzies from this book!

Ms. Gordon has several other books in the Indigo Bay series. Well, it’s not just a series. It’s almost an imprint. Various authors have come together to create these wonderful stories in a coastal town. Series are usually six to twelve books. You can grab the original Indigo Bay Sweet Romances, Indigo Bay Christmas, or Indigo Bay Second Chance Romances. All are sweet, beach reads. Perfect for a getaway this winter. Plus, you have time before the holidays to grab all six Christmas stories.

I give Sweet Tidings by Jean C Gordon Five Sets of Holiday Lights—the twinkly kind.

 

Book 48 Wolf Flow

 

Wolf Flow by KW Jeter fulfilled the category “Book with a Palindromic Title” for the PopSugar 2022 Reading Challenge. A palindrome is a phrase that reads the same forward and backward. For example, Taco Cat, Party Trap, and Wolf Flow.

This was not my favorite category. Titles were tough to come by. My husband shooed me away from Seveneves by Neal Stephenson. He didn’t think I’d enjoy it as the ending was a little ridiculous. He knows how stabby I get with bad endings. I had a few others on the list, but nothing caught my eye. I grabbed Wolf Flow in paper and slogged through.

The story starts with a body dump. That caught my attention. Especially since the body wasn’t dead yet. Mike, a doctor selling drugs on the side, is dumped in the desert and left to die. Luckily, a good Samaritan trucker stops and takes him somewhere to recover. Mike refuses medical attention, though his injuries are severe. The trucker places him in a deserted health spa and leaves him. That intrigued me, living near Saratoga Springs and all the history behind the springs. The spa is an abandoned building, but nothing to help our Mike.

Or is there?

Mike has a series of vivid dreams featuring the spa in its heyday. The dreams are so real, Mike thinks there’s something more. What follows is an odd flow of story about Mike trying to survive, the trucker’s son trying to help him, Mike’s girlfriend coming to the rescue, and the bad guys trying to end Mike.

I had no idea what I was reading. It seemed like a survival story, then maybe gangsters/mafia, then a redemption story. But none of those categories fit.

The book was published in 1992. By the time I got to the end, the genre clicked. This title is an 80s/90s slasher film, I mean, novel. It’s written in the mode of Stephen King with odd characters, no real hero, and horrific, fantastic events. Recently, I watched Event Horizon (1997) with Hubby, and the genre of Wolf Flow finally became clear. We didn’t have the element of space, but we did have a slow build to gruesome events. The cheese factor for both was high.

So, spoiler, the water from the spa was transformative. It could heal almost any injury, but it drove the drinker mad. And not just any kind of mad. The drinker wanted to do sick experiments on people. They used the water to heal their “patients” from vivisection and other operations and push the human body beyond its limits.

Blood and gore filled the last chapters of the book, and all the empathy I had for Mike died quickly. I don’t like books with no hero or person to root for. I don’t love books where the protagonist ends up the villain for no other reason than bad choices and circumstances. But there’s no way I’m reading another palindromic title before the end of the month. so…

I give Wolf Flow by KW Jeter Three Bottles of Magic Water and a warning to NOT drink them.

 

Book 47 Eat Your Heart Out

Eat Your Heart Out by Shirley Goldberg fulfill the category “Book with Cutlery on the Cover for the PopSugar 2023 Reading Challenge. I worked hard on this one. I consulted Shirley personally to verify a knife sat on the cutting board on the cover.

I read several books for the category. The first one was a Dexter title, and I already posted about it. I understood the character better by reading rather than watching the show because I got into Dexter’s head. On the show, I saw the smile of the exquisite Michael C. Hall and not the tension behind it. The second novel I tried to read for this category (and I say tried because I did not finish it) was Choke by Chuck Palahniuk. It was hard to read. I haven’t read many books by him, save Fight Club and Damned. I’ll be honest. I didn’t understand Fight Club on the page, but I loved Damned. Choke grossed me out, and I’m an avid horror fan. I’ve read almost every Stephen King and Clive Barker, who is even grosser. I could not finish Choke. 

Lucky for me, my friend Shirley’s book was on sale, and I noticed there was a knife on the cover. I grabbed it and read it in a flash. 

Eat Your Heart Out is a culinary romance. Unfortunately, Ms. Goldberg did not give us any recipes, and I promise to harass her for all our sake. The story is a romance between two thirty-something. It was great to pick up a romance that wasn’t about twenty-year-olds finding their way. These two people are teachers, grownups with proper jobs. Alex recently had gastric bypass surgery and is working hard to get his life and his body in shape. Dana lost out on a great job to her ex-boyfriend, who broke up with her over text. Both have a lot on their plate (pun intended) in this friends-to-lovers romance.

I loved watching the build between these two. The slow realization that they needed each other, they wanted each other, and they wanted to be together had me on the edge of my seat. I wanted to yell at them! But they were friends, and they couldn’t do that. He feared all Dana saw was his former fat self. She viewed him as a colleague. Look what happened the last time she dated a coworker; the man stole her job. The novel had great stuff about exercising, learning to listen to yourself, and the wonderful food. I was hungry throughout the entire book.

The two try dating other people with terrible results. Not to mention their barracuda of a principal driving them crazy. Of course, they discover real romance in the end. The couple ends up together. It was satisfying to see two people struggling with body, work, and personal issues find someone who understood them.

I give Eat Your Heart Out by Shirley Goldberg Five Gourmet Dinners—your treat!

This was the second in Ms. Goldberg’s Starting Over series. The first book, Middle Ageish, is on sale for $0.99, and the third, A Little Bit of Lust, arrives on Dec. 7.

 

Book 46 The Paper Magician

 

The Paper Magician by Charlie N. Holmberg fulfilled the category “Book Set in Victorian Times” for the PopSugar 2022 Reading Challenge. The Victorian era is from June 1837 to January 1901. This story almost qualifies as it takes place later in 1901. I’m counting it.

I read another book for the prompt, but I can’t remember the plot as I read it a year ago. PopSugar drops their list on December 1, and I read House of Shadows by Darcy Coats and enjoyed it. It’s so completely gothic. A young woman is forced to marry and move into a house that does not want her. Literally. Her groom’s new family does not want her there, but the house doesn’t either. What follows is a great haunted house, Victorian gothic tale with tons of ghosts and romance. But at this point, I can’t give you any more details.

I opted to read another for the prompt as I had only a few titles left on the list. I accidentally read the entire series, save one.

Oops.

The Paper Magician spoke to me in an odd way. Here’s what it’s about. Victorian England has magicians. People with the skill can convert man-made materials into spells. Disciplines include paper, rubber, plastic, metal (alloys), fire, and glass. Then someone realized that people are man-made! Uh, oh. And humans became a material, too. These excisioners (as they are called) are pure evil, having to kill to bond to their material.

The story follows Ceony Twill as she starts her training as a paper magician. She had hoped to be a metal magician and work charms on locks, jewelry, etc. No one wants paper. On the surface, it appears boring and useless. Ceony, with her unique memory (almost photographic), learns differently through a series of events that no apprentice should experience.

Her paper master is attacked, and his heart is ripped out by an excisioner. Ceony must step up and save her master using only her skill with paper, defeat the evil excisioner, and live through it all.

The first book was a fun romp through this new magical realm. The author did an excellent job setting up their rules of magic—but not completely. I liked the idea of only being able to use manufactured things instead of the elements. But the magicians could do amazing things with just paper or a piece of glass. I’m not sure all the magic was completely thought through with the world-building. But it worked (if you didn’t overthink it).

I liked that Ceony was not perfect. She was arrogant, hot-headed, and real. She wasn’t some perfect specimen of either womanhood or magicianship. She was a real girl who made rash decisions based on her emotions, as you would expect a twenty-year-old to do. Even for all her snottiness, I loved her. She tries, she thinks, she acts.

As I mentioned, I read the whole series. I loved it for the magic and the characters. The entire world seemed not complete. There was little explanation for why rubber buttons on your shoes can make you go faster, but no one ever tried paper wings on the shoes. The spells and magic seemed random and arbitrary. Of course, it could’ve been a device of the author, using a young woman who might not know all the details. I’ve read many intricate fantasy words for YA, such as Harry Potter, The Immortal Nicolas Flamel, The Infernal Devices. Those books have a solid backdrop for their worlds and book. The Paper Magician series needed a little more development on the magic rules and how it affects the people. BUT it was such a fun romp that I didn’t care. The series inspired me to create my own story, not in the same world but something similar.

I give The Paper Magician (along with the rest of the series, The Glass Magician, and the Master Magician) by Charlie N. Holmberg Four Paper Cranes to deliver this message.