2021 Wrap Up

 And now, the time has come to wrap up the year of 2021. I have mentioned this before, but I have really enjoyed keeping up with my reviews and statistics. This was the first year that I had really pushed myself to do so and can't wait to see how everything turns out. I will keep my stats in a similar order as my monthly wrap ups, but I have a lot more charts from my data that I'm excited for! Since there's a lot to get through, lets get started!

2021

I read 258 books for a total of 73,301 pages

💗 I averaged 1.03 days per book

💗 The average page count per book was 283.02

💗 I read 32 books under 100 pages, 35 in the 100s,  46 in the 200s, 121 in the 300s, 21 in the 400s and 4 in the 500s. I also had 1 book is DNF'd

💗 130 of the books I read were specifically for clubs and/or readathons

💗 74 of my books were diverse
💗 I read 85 new authors
💗 I reread 21 books

💗 I owned 54 of the books in paperback and added 147 books to my wish-list (of which a number have already been purchased)

💗 I read 50 books in paperback, 204 in eBook, 4 in audiobook and 1 was a web comic

💗 I read 2 books published in the 1970s, 3 book in the 1980s, 12 books in the 1990s, 28 books in the 2000s, 124 books in the 2010s and 90 books in the 2020s

💗 My average rating was 4.36

🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎 - 119 books
🍎🍎🍎🍎 - 117 books
🍎🍎🍎 - 19 books
🍎🍎 - 3 books
DNF - 1 book

💗 63 of the books I read were Contemporary, 28 were Dark, 26 were Fantasy, 87 were Historical, 18 were Paranormal, 11 were Sci-Fi and 6 were Sports Romance. I also read 20 Urban Fantasies.

💗 Usually I would list books read next, but instead I'll link to my monthly wrap ups. If you are looking for something specific feel free to use the tag word cloud in the side bar.

💗 For the last bullet point in my wrap ups, I tend to go over my favorites and disappointments. I'm going into 2022 with as much positivity as possible, so I'll leave the out the disappointments for the year. However, next Tuesday I'm going to be doing a special post for my favorites. I've created three brackets for the year, one of contemporary, one for sci-fi/paranormal/fantasy and one for historical romances. I'll be filling out my brackets and struggling to find my favorite books (it's going to be tough). If you are interested in using brackets yourself, I have them linked with previews on my instagram. When my favorites post goes up, there will be links to the brackets.

I am so proud of myself that I stuck with this blog for a full year and have stayed caught up on reviewing every book I've read. I'm really happy to have found a lot of new authors and loved looking at all my stats. It'll be even more interesting when I can compare them to this year's stats and see how my reading tastes evolve! I also had a lot of fun participating in a lot more readathons and enjoyed the challenges I participated in that made me stretch outside my normal reads. I picked up mafia and dark romance for the first time, which is crazy! I also got a lot more into fantasy romance over paranormal and was surprised to see how little I read of one my go-to genres. Or at least it was a go-to.

I hope you had a great reading year as well and are looking forward to what's to come. Most of my wrap up for the year have been posted, but we still have my favorites of 2021. I'm planning on posting it next Wednesday the 12th and will have something a little different! Stay tuned for that!

How was your reading last year?

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

Romance Takeover Readathon TBR

Update: Wrap Up is posted!

 It's time for the first readathon of 2022! Crystal, Jenn, Riley and Bree are hosting the next round of the  Romance Takeover Readathon. It'll run next weekend, from Friday January 14th through Monday the 17th. I like that they are doing a 4 day weekend this time. Once again we get a create your own bingo board! Here are the two boards and prompt lists.

This will be the first time I take part in this readathon. I am excited for the option to create your bingo board again. With it just being over a weekend I went for the smaller bingo board and varied up my options so I can meet some easier (I already have one done - follow all the hosts!). Below is the bingo board I created. I will be using books to cover as many prompts as possible. Below my board will be my idea list/tbr!

💙 For new release my mind immediately goes to the newest Clecanian book that should come out on the 12th, Using Fejo. The series is by Victoria Aveline and is one of my favorite sci-fi series!

💙 I also never got around to Jackie Lau first traditionally published book Donut Fall in Love. It would count for POC author, romance I didn't get to, 5-star prediction and romance I didn't get to in 2021 at the very least. She also released a surprise novella A Very Beery New Year around Christmas for her Cider Bar Sisters series that I want to read!

💙 Another new release option would be Stacy Reid's latest book in her Sinful Wallflowers series, Scoundrel of Her Own. This would cover new release, historical romance, POC author and 5-star prediction.

💙 Another option that would cover quite a few prompts would be the Rake Appreciation January book, Ravishing the Heiress by Sherry Thomas. This is the second book in her Fitzugh Trilogy, but I'm not sure if I'll read the first book before this one. Anyways, it can cover historical romance, poc author and author you've never read.

💙 For small town romance, I have a couple options. One would be to continue my reread of Jill Shalvis's Lucky Harbor series. While it would cover small town, since it's a reread I don't think it'd cover much more.

💙 Also for small town I was thinking of finally starting the Miles Family series by Claire Kingsley. That would cover a few more prompts than Jill Shalvis, but I also think that they are a little longer.

💙 Another small town option I'm thinking of is Drive Me Wild by Melanie Harlow. She would be a new author for me and I've heard great things about her books and more specifically the Bellamy Creek series. I now that small town option would cover even more prompts.

There are more templates on their instagrams including a currently reading, tbr and mini review. I am super excited to be kind of get to mood read and do what I want. I'm also hoping to double up on some prompts for Winter's Kiss as well. I made my board by picking 9 prompts then using a number generator. I didn't want to make it too easy on myself. Now that the holidays are over, I think I can get back to my 3 books a weekend pace and hopefully I can pick 3 that'll give me at least a bingo if not a full blackout. I'll be updating in my instagram stories over the weekend, so follow me there if you want to see what I'm ready while it happens!

Will you be participating in the Romance Takeover Readathon?

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

2022 - January, February & March Releases

 Happy Friday!

This is the first time I'm doing a post like this, but I wanted to share some books that I'm excited for that are to be released soon. I have started following more Independent authors though, and they tend to not announce until right before release. There will be a mix of books I have pre-ordered or that are on my radar. I'll go ahead and list them out in per month and then by date. Just a little disclaimer, these are always subject to change. Heck, there's already been three changes to books I have preordered since I've just started writing down ideas a couple weeks ago. Okay, let's get into it!

January 2022

📚 Jan 1: Digging Up Love by Chandra Blumberg [Book 1 in the Taste of Love series]

📚 Jan 12: Using Fejo by Victoria Aveline [Book 5 in the Clecanian series]

📚 Jan 25: The Family You Make by Jill Shalvis [Book 1 in the Sunrise Cove series]
Barbarian Alien by Ruby Dixon [Book 2 in the Ice Planet Barbarians (this is a recover and traditional publication of her series that was independently published previously)]
Munro by Kresley Cole [Book 18 in the Immortals After Dark series]
A Letter to Three Witches by Elizabeth Bass
Bound to Fall by Pamela Clare [Book 10 in the Colorado High Country series]

📚 Jan 27: Twisted Hate by Ana Huang [Book 3 in her Twisted series]

February 2022

📚 Feb 1: Broken Chains by Demelza Carlton [Book 1 of the Heart of Stone series]

📚 Feb 8: Not the Witch You Wed by April Asher

📚 Feb 15: Fated Blades by Ilona Andrews [Book 3 in the Kinsmen series (this is the paperback release; the eBook was published last year)]
The Player Hater by Sara Ney [Book 1 in the Accidentally in Love series]

March 2022

📚 March 1: Big Duke Energy Anthology [Book 1 in the Season of Sin Anthology Collection]
A Brush With Love by Mazey Eddings

📚 March 8: Crowbones by Anne Bishop [Book 8 in The Others series]
If You Ask Me by Libby Hubscher

📚 March 15: Dating Dr. Dil by Nisha Sharma [Book 1 in the If Shakespeare was an Auntie series]
Ten Trends to Seduce Your Bestfriend by Penny Reid [standalone]

📚 March 29: A Relentless Rake by Anna Harrington [Book 4 in the Lords of the Armory series]
How to Be a Wallflower by Eloisa James [Book 1 in the Woud-Be Wallflowers series]
The Dragon's Bride by Katee Robert [Book 1 in A Deal With A Demon series]
Beauty and the Baller by Ilsa Madden-Mills

📚 TBD: Book 4 in Elsie Silver's Gold Rush Ranch series

Hoo boy, there's a lot of books I'm interested in that are coming out. Especially in March. I don't know how quickly I'll get to a lot of these after release, but there's a lot I'm excited for. There's a couple I need to get caught up in the series before reading. I didn't feel like I had that many, but when I typed them all out in a list, it's a lot. Hopefully we won't see too many release date changes.

Are there any books coming out in the first quarter that you are looking forward to reading?

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

December 2021 Wrap Up

Surprisingly my December reads was higher than I expected. I was stressing out about getting presents made, but I wasn't as bad as I thought. I was able to get some good reading after Christmas and pack in a few reads that last week! I had a lot of fun participating in the few readathons that happened and am really looking forward to digging into Winter's Kiss this next couple months. I feel like I'm going to go crazy the next couple weeks and only read. I usually ramble a little bit more before getting to my stats, but we have a lot of wrapping up to do this week, so let's get through December!

December 2021

19 books read for 4,578 pages

💗 I averaged 0.84 book per day
💗 The average page count per book was 240.95
💗 I read 4 books under 100 pages, 1 in the 100s, 8 in the 200s, 5 in the 300s and 1 in the 400s
💗 9 of the books I read specifically for clubs and/or readathons

💗 6 of my books had diversity

💗 I read 5 new authors
💗 I reread 2 books

💗 I previously owned 9 of the books in paperback and added 7 to my wish-list

💗 I read 9 books in paperback and 10 in eBook

💗 I read 14 books published in the 2010s and 5 in the 2020s

💗 My average rating was 4.47
🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎 - 11 books
🍎🍎🍎🍎 - 6 books
🍎🍎🍎 - 2 books

💗 5 of the books I read were historical, 5 were contemporary, 2 were paranormal and 2 were sports romances. I also read 5 urban fantasy.

1. Magic Rises by Ilona Andrews 🍎🍎🍎🍎

2. Magic Steals by Ilona Andrews 🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎

3. Magic Breaks by Ilona Andrews 🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎

4. Tempting Mr. Weatherstone by Vivienne Lorret 🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎

5. Daring Miss Danvers by Vivienne Lorret 🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎

6. Prequel to Magic Shifts by Ilona Andrews 🍎🍎🍎🍎

7. Kate & Curran Texts, Dabwaha by Ilona Andrews 🍎🍎🍎🍎

8. My American Duchess by Eloisa James 🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎

9. Any Rogue Will Do by Bethany Bennett 🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎

10. Loving the Mountain Man by Adriana Anders 🍎🍎🍎🍎

11. The Front Runner by Elsie Silver 🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎

12. One Naughty Christmas Night by Janet Berry 🍎🍎🍎

13. Mister Hockey by Lia Riley 🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎

14. Head Coach by Lia Riley 🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎

15. All I Want For Christmas Is A Cowboy by Jessica Clare 🍎🍎🍎🍎

16. Pleasures of Christmas Past by Lexi Post 🍎🍎🍎

17. Walking in a Witchy Wonderland by Juliette Cross 🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎

18. Dear Ava by Ilsa Madden-Mills 🍎🍎🍎🍎🍎

19. Broken Miles by Claire Kingsley 🍎🍎🍎🍎

💗 I had a pretty good reading month, especially with the Historical Romance Readathon. I read a lot of great historicals that really hit the spot. It's a little hard to pick a favorite of the month, but I think I'd have to go with The Front Runner and Any Rogue Will Do. They both just blew me away and I can't wait to read more from both authors! I also really loved finally get to Walking in a Witchy Wonderland and it just increased my excitement for Always Practice Safe Hex. My most disappointing is probably my 3-star read, One Naughty Christmas Night. I didn't expect too much going in, but it still didn't quite hit all the notes I was needing.

I can't wait to see how the stats look for the whole year. Look for that to be posted on Wednesday! I'm super intrigued to see what my stats end up looking like for the year and how things break down. 2021 was the first year I went really nerd with my reading and I'm so intrigued to look at all the stats! Also keep an eye out for Quarter 1 releases on Friday and my 2021 Favorites next Tuesday. I created some brackets to help me decide per genre and am looking forward to filling them out!

How did your reading go in December?

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

Charts: Decades, Genres, Pages, Ratings

2022 Updates!

 Happy New Year!

I hope you had a great end of the year for 2021 and many wonderful things come to you in 2022. Before we start getting into my reading wrap ups for December and 2021, I wanted to do a little update for things that I'll be changing in 2022.

First off, scheduling. This can be in flux, but I am going to stick to wrap ups, tbrs and other info dump posts going up on Tuesday and Thursdays. If I start to get backed up on reviews, I might also post them on the weekends. At the very least this will keep reviews for MWF. Not since I have a lot of wrap up stuff, the reviews will be slimmer this week, but next week we'll get back to my new schedule. I tend to read a lot more in late winter and spring, so it might change slightly, but I'm going to try to go with that moving forward.

As for posts, I mainly want to keep this blog for reviews and my readathon wrap ups. I've thought about moving to instagram or using reels or something, but I just like being able to write my thoughts down. It really helps me with my reviews and it's something that's more accessible for me at this point. However, I am going to try to do more book tags. Maybe one every other month or so, but I mainly want to use them for when I slow down a little. I also want to look at doing new release posts for each quarter. I have been more aware this past year of newer releases and am hoping to stay more on top of new releases where I'm caught up. I thought about starting to do ARCs, but I read so much now and have so many backlists I'd like to get through, I don't know if I want to start doing ARC reviews, but we'll see what happens. If you didn't know, ARC stands for Advanced Reader Copy and usually sent out before release for reviews.

As for my ratings, I started using 1/2 stars at times throughout the year and am officially going to use 1/2-stars moving forward. I'm not sure how I'll be doing my apples, maybe the green will count as a half star? I guess when I get to my first 1/2-star review I'll have to figure it out. Also changing in my statistics area is genres. Last year I had dark and sports and contemporary all separate. This year I'm going to put everything under contemporary. Then I'll do a secondary breakdown of the contemporaries I read. I'll be able to adjust as we go, but right now I have the sub-sub-genres as Dark, New Adult, Rom-Com, Small Town and Sports. I am also going to be tracking how books are published. I have three options, traditional, small publisher and independent. I think the extra breakdown in these stats will be fun and I'm looking forward to see how it looks each month and over the year.

For now that's the most obvious changes. If there's anything you have thoughts about or want me to extrapolate on, let me know! I have updated my google form that I use to track my books and made a copy for you to use if you'd like. I love using it because I can get all the responses in google sheets and play with it from there. If you'd like to see my stats list just let me know and I can pass along a copy of it as well! For a little layout, I have a screenshot of my Stats page (yes I have every month and genre color coded)!

I'm really excited to see how the changes will work this year and how the extra data I'm going to collect will factor in to my reading enjoyment. Just a little sneak peek for what's coming over the next couple weeks: I plan on posting my December 2021 Wrap Up, 2021 Wrap Up, 2022 Quarter 1 releases and 2021 favorites. I'm sure the 2022 Heaving Bosoms' Reading Embrace list will be up soon, so there'll probably be a tbr/idea list posted for that later this month. We also have the Romance Take Over Readathon happening in over the weekend of the 14th so I'll have my tbr for that up later this week as well!

Are you changing your reading tracking this year?

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎