Susan’s Book Blog

I’m starting to get into holiday reads now that we’re halfway through December. These are a few I read last year and I loved all three!  🎄 In a Holidaze is a trippy and magical time loop romance with a cozy cabin setting and big happy family vibes.  🎄 The Holiday Swap is a sweet Hallmark-style identical twin life swap with bakery goodness.  🎄 The Geek Who Saved Christmas is a sweet ‘n fluffy grumpy/sunshine enemy neighbors-to-lovers after-40 romance. I highly recommend all three if you’re looking for some cozy holiday reading!  ❤️💚 What’s on your holiday to-read list, if you have one? (I’m hoping to get to The Plight Before Christmas and A Merry Little Meet Cute.)

  Stuffed by K. Sterling If you don’t want the magic of Christmas forever sullied by images of a horny Santa Claus who brings tidings of joy and three-ways, stop right here.  This was utterly bonkers, but brilliant. I was NOT expecting what this turned out to be. I went from What the hell am I reading, to OMG THAT IS SO SWEET IM GONNA DIE. This is in turns ridiculous (in the best way), sexy (read: absolutely filthy), and incredibly sweet and heartfelt. The tone is largely tongue-in-cheek and chock full of corn and cheese - until it gets seriously (and rather unexpectedly) sincere. I don’t know how Sterling pulled this off but it WORKS. It uses every porny cliché out there but doesn’t take itself seriously, which I think is precisely why it works.  A hilarious prologue sets the stage for a series of vignettes in which Santa grants people’s Christmas wishes. There are sexy shenanigans in them all but each of the stories has a very sweet, heartfelt happy ending. (Also? Santa...

 2022 was a year where I spent a great deal of time reading and reviewing ARCs (advance reader copies). I didn’t always get all the books I requested (Edelweiss is particularly brutal) but I did get approved for a truly amazing selection of great books.  Pictured below are most of the ARCs I received this year from NetGalley. [NetGalley only; I didn’t include the one I was sent via Edelweiss ( You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty ) or the one I got directly from an author ( Daniel Cabot Puts Down Roots ).] All told, if my counting is right, I left reviews for a total of 30 books in 2022. I DNF’d (Did Not Finish) a total of 5 of them. I’m hoping to pull back on how many I request in the coming year because reading and reviewing on a deadline, no matter how much time I’m given, becomes like work and I’ve found that reading obligations put me in a reading slump. I’m much too much of a mood reader to be able to read and review to someone else’s timeline.  If you request ...

  📚  Fave Reads of 2022 Countdown  📚   🥁   🥁   🥁   🥁   🥁 #1   Something Fabulous   &  A Lady For a Duke  by Alexis Hall  I grouped these two together because I don’t know if one deserves to be ranked above the other. For me, these books are Alexis Hall doing the best work of his career. They’re very different books - SF is a hilarious, over-the-top love letter to Regency romances while ALFaD actually IS a Regency romance. (ALFaD is profoundly beautiful. And it has a declaration of love in it that rivals Darcy’s for Elizabeth Bennett.) But both books exhibit everything Hall excels at and in the most entertaining ways.  3️⃣  2️⃣  1️⃣  🎊 What did you think of my Top Ten (or thirteen) choices? Have you read any of them? Will they be on your TBR for 2023? What are some of your favorites this year?

📚 Fave Reads of 2022 Countdown 📚  #2 Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo This might actually be the first horror novel I’ve ever read and it absolutely blew me away. The writing was subtle and masterful. It was so atmospheric you could almost smell the dirt and feel the humidity in the air. The characters were so believable and well drawn it made the supernatural elements even scarier because it all felt so real. I want to read more by Lee Mandelo!!!! 

  📚 Fave Reads of 2022 Countdown  📚   #3  The Scottish Boy by Alex de Campi  Ugh. I loved this so much. Everything about it was  🤌🏼🤌🏼🤌🏼 K nights, tournaments, chivalry, ethics, secrets… The angst, the longing, oh it was exquisite. It was 500 pages but I was sad when it was over because I wanted more.  My full review of The Scottish Boy can be found here . 

  📚 Fave Reads of 2022 Countdown 📚  #4 Heated Rivalry and  The Long Game by Rachel Reid  If you don’t know Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov by now, what are you even doing with your life? Go discover Rachel Reid’s genius already. These and the other two books in the Game Changer series I’ve read so far have been the most amazing, addicting, compulsively readable spicy fluffy romances I have ever read. I NEED MORE. (I put these two together in one place because the books are an inseparable pair in my mind. They must be together. Like Shane & Ilya.)

  📚 Fave Reads of 2022 Countdown 📚   #5 A Taste of Gold and Iron by Alexandra Rowland  A cinnamon roll prince and his cinnamon roll bodyguard fall for each other in a slow burn mystery/romance set in a long-ago middle eastern-style fantasy world. I read this one back in August and I still think (daydream, internally scream) about it practically daily. There are kaftans and doors and hinge pins and JUST READ IT OKAY  My full review of A Taste of Gold and Iron can be found here . 

  📚 Fave Reads of 2022 Countdown 📚  #6 The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer A mind-bending, thrilling, character-driven dystopian space odyssey that will leave you with a broken but mended heart and an existential crisis. Not just one of my personal favorites but also one of the best books I read all year.

📚 Fave Reads of 2022 Countdown 📚  #7 You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi  Just a beautifully written story about surviving grief and finding love again with loads of drama thrown in. Feminist, queer, and stunning. I’d never read anything by Akwaeke Emezi (they/them) before but this definitely made me want to try some of their other books.  *Books pictured: UK cover (left), US cover (right) You can find my full review of You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty  here .

  📚 Fave Reads of 2022 Countdown 📚   #8 The Bodyguard by Katherine Center  This was sweet, swoony, funny, and just everything you could want in a romance all pulled together with excellent writing. Aspects of the MC Hannah’s backstory hit home for me with this one and made it that much more impactful but the plot is legitimately interesting and the characters are fantastic. This feels to me like an excellent example of the best of the Romance genre.  You can find my full review of The Bodyguard here . 

  📚 Fave Reads of 2022 Countdown 📚  #9 So This is Ever After by FT Lukens I will never not recommend this book. This is a Forever Favorite. It was one of my first reads of 2022 and I still love it so much. An Idiots to lovers/soulmates queer romance that is absolutely hilarious and starts the story at The End. Arek is a Chosen One figure in this D&D-inspired medieval fairy tale where shenanigans and romance and hilarity ensue. Just read it, it’s fabulous.  You can find my full review of So This is Ever After here .