2025
reading retrospect
so, listen — at the end of 2024, i started reading more romance and by 2025 i'd fallen headfirst into the romance vortex. i used to think romance books were a bit silly, but heck, i spent a year inhaling romance novels, kicking my little feet and grinning like a madwoman.
this year's favourites: first-time caller by b.k. borison, the favorites by layne fargo, atmosphere by taylor jenkins reid, and grave matter by karina halle. and i'll add heated rivalry by rachel reid to the list. i also can't stop thinking about christy climenhage's the midnight project.
i also read quite a bit of karin slaughter's bibliography, and honestly? i still don't know whether i like her books or not. most of them are sitting there without a rating, because parts of the plot were so disturbing that my brain refused to assign a number.
total books read: 165
total pages read: 57251
average pages per book: 347
average rating: 3.95
| Title | Rating |
|---|---|
| Love on the Brain | |
| The Love Hypothesis | |
| Funny Story | |
| Love, Theoretically | |
| Finlay Donovan Is Killing It | |
| I Who Have Never Known Men | |
| Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop | |
| Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers | |
| The Seven Year Slip | |
| A Novel Love Story | |
| Geekerella | |
| Love and Other Words | |
| The Plot Twist | |
| Deep End | |
| We Used to Live Here | |
| Horrorstör | |
| They Never Learn | |
| Thank You for Listening | |
| First-Time Caller | |
| Below Zero | |
| Check & Mate | |
| The Favorites | |
| How to End a Love Story | |
| You, Again | |
| Under One Roof | |
| Lovelight Farms | |
| In The Weeds | |
| Famous Last Words | |
| Not in Love | |
| Comfort Me With Apples | |
| Killers of a Certain Age | |
| Everyone in the Group Chat Dies | |
| Don't Swipe Right | |
| Stuck with You | |
| Finlay Donovan Jumps the Gun | |
| Finlay Donovan Knocks 'Em Dead | |
| Part of Your World | |
| Finlay Donovan Digs Her Own Grave | |
| Finlay Donovan Rolls the Dice | |
| The Vanishing Stair | |
| Truly Devious | |
| The Hand on the Wall | |
| Nine Liars | |
| The Box in the Woods | |
| Sunrise on the Reaping | |
| Home Is Where the Bodies Are | |
| Business Casual | |
| Mixed Signals | |
| Blonde Hair, Blue Eyes | |
| Pretty Girls | |
| Daisy Darker | |
| The Second Chance Year | |
| Just for the Summer | |
| Kills Well with Others | |
| Pieces of Her | |
| Promise Me Sunshine | |
| Maybe This Time | |
| The Bodyguard | |
| Take Me Home | |
| Vera Wong's Guide to Snooping (on a Dead Man) | |
| Out On a Limb | |
| This Book Will Bury Me | |
| The Inheritance Games | |
| The Maid | |
| The Midnight Feast | |
| Yours Truly | |
| The Happy Ever After Playlist | |
| The Rom-Commers | |
| Happiness Falls | |
| Sweet Talk | |
| Passion Project | |
| The Hawthorne Legacy | |
| The Final Gambit | |
| People We Meet on Vacation | |
| Great Big Beautiful Life | |
| The Dead Romantics | |
| The Exception to the Rule | |
| With Any Luck | |
| Malibu Rising | |
| The Paradise Problem | |
| Beg, Borrow, or Steal | |
| Strange Pictures | |
| Julie Chan Is Dead | |
| The Three Lives of Cate Kay | |
| Book Lovers | |
| The Dollhouse Academy | |
| The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo | |
| Love and Other Conspiracies | |
| Beach Read | |
| The Husbands | |
| Problematic Summer Romance | |
| One-Star Romance | |
| Mister Magic | |
| Atmosphere | |
| The Unmapping | |
| Time Loops & Meet Cutes | |
| All Rhodes Lead Here | |
| Two Can Play | |
| Rock Paper Scissors | |
| The Night We Lost Him | |
| Every Summer After | |
| All That Life Can Afford | |
| Battle of the Bookstores | |
| Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything | |
| Beaches, Bungalows & Burglaries | |
| Deserts, Driving, & Derelicts | |
| Forests, Fishing & Forgery | |
| Christmas, Criminals, and Campers | |
| Motorhomes, Maps, & Murder | |
| Canyons, Caravans, & Cadavers | |
| Made for You | |
| Why We Love (and Hate) Twilight | |
| Love Letters to a Serial Killer | |
| The Outlier | |
| Life's Too Short | |
| This Summer Will Be Different | |
| Whoever You Are, Honey | |
| Mrs. Quinn's Rise to Fame | |
| You Will Never Be Me | |
| Like Mother, Like Daughter | |
| The Friend Zone | |
| Grave Matter | |
| Say You'll Remember Me | |
| Such a Bad Influence | |
| The Ex-Girlfriend Murder Club | |
| False Witness | |
| The Good Daughter | |
| A Serial Killer's Guide to Marriage | |
| Meet Me at the Lake | |
| The Villain Edit | |
| Sex, Lies, and Online Dating | |
| So Thirsty | |
| The Return | |
| The Lost Bookshop | |
| Cackle | |
| Black Sheep | |
| The Dead Husband Cookbook | |
| Blob: A Love Story | |
| Expiration Dates | |
| The Last Widow | |
| Triptych | |
| She's a Lamb! | |
| Fractured | |
| Icebreaker | |
| Blindsighted | |
| Undone | |
| Broken | |
| Fallen | |
| Criminal | |
| Unseen | |
| Such Sharp Teeth | |
| How to Kill Men and Get Away With It | |
| Play Nice | |
| My Oxford Year | |
| PS: I Hate You | |
| All This and More | |
| If It Makes You Happy | |
| The Midnight Project | |
| In a Holidaze | |
| Good Spirits | |
| One Golden Summer | |
| Cruel Winter with You | |
| Slow Dance | |
| Game Changer | |
| Heated Rivalry |