The month of the gobbling til you wobble is finally over and we can now focus fully on December and all things Christmas-y. Yay!
November brought the end of baseball season and a lot of sickness for our family. We're grateful to finally be on the mend, but it was a rough three weeks with all six of us taking turns being sick.
For Thanksgiving, we all laid low yet still managed to cook for an army. We watched Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, as usual, then just spent time together. Black Friday was spent grabbing too many deals at Nebraska Furniture Mart and telling the kids to "forget they saw this toy" because "you're not getting it until Christmas" - the downside to having young kids and no one to watch them! I am proud to say that we are finished Christmas shopping - except for one or two things for nieces and nephews - and I'm mostly finished wrapping so that we can just focus on fun for December!
We also went to a Christmas tree farm and chopped down our own tree then came home and decorated it while watching Miracle on 34th Street (the Mara Wilson version). Our elf, Sparkles, also came back to visit and has been up to some fun shenanigans!
Not much reading got done at the beginning of the month because I was too exhausted to function but I ended up with 8 books read: 6 ebooks and 2 paperbacks.
I started off the month with a paperback version of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. I've read this one about 4 times now and it never gets old. I recently purchased the whole set and plan to work my way through, so I had to start with book one again. Can you believe I've never read past book 3? *Gasp!*
Next up was a novella that I won from a Bookstagram giveaway. It was the Traveling Book Giveaway featuring Dina Husseini's novella, iNtEnSe. Super cool concept! The book is going to travel to different Bookstagrammers for the next year and we all sign it and it will return to Dina in October of 2023. It was a super short and, dare I say, intense read.
My first ebook of the month was Emily Giffin's Meant to Be. I have a friend who has read every one of Giffin's books and we chatted about Meant to Be when it came out in May, so I've had my eye on it for a while. It was my first by the author and I really knew nothing about her so I didn't know what I was getting into writing style-wise. However, I did know that Meant to Be was loosely based on JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bessette and I was here for it! You can see my mini review about this one here. I gave this one 4 stars.
Next was Loving the Wind by Crissi Langwell. This one was completely random. I was searching for free Kindle books on Amazon, as one usually does (no? just me?), and came across this beautiful cover and had to read the description. Now, fantasy or fairy tale retellings aren't usually my go-to, but this one is the story of Tiger Lily before Peter Pan and it was only $0.99, so I was intrigued. I gave it a 3.5-star rating. There wasn't any spice but was a great coming-of-age story of a badass heroine and a perfect read for young adult girls.
Then I decided it was time for some Christmas vibes up in here. It wasn't even Thanksgiving just yet, and I do like to give each holiday its due time, but I needed some Hallmark vibes to get me out of the funk I was in from our whole family being sick. I had signed up for a book tour with @katieandbreypa for Christmas in Silverwood by Dorothy Dreyer so I decided to get that read over with. This was published on November 9, 2021, so it wasn't an ARC but a book that will be getting hype in December. The tour is next month so I'll post my review as a separate blog post, but let's just say it was a super cute read.
Keeping with the Christmas theme, I then moved to an ARC of Meghan Quinn's Resting Scrooge Face. I love me some Meghan Quinn, she's hilarious, and this one did not disappoint. You can see my full review here. I gave this one 4 stars.
I signed up for another December book tour with @katieandbreypa (ambitious much?) so I also decided to read that one before it got too late. It was an ARC of Sugar Coated Lies by Tara Gallina, which is releasing on December 9, 2022. I'll be posting my full review on that one as well. Let's just say Daire = book boyfriend goals!
Last but not least, I wanted to fit in another novella before the month ended, so I went with The Mistletoe Bet by Marin Moore. I'm not sure exactly where I saw this one mentioned but it was in some Facebook book group and the description seemed good. It did not disappoint and I definitely want to explore more books by Marin Moore now. Her writing reminds me of Meghan Quinn. I gave this one a 4-star rating too and will also be posting a full review in December.
Overall, it was a great month! I caught some good Cyber Monday Kindle deals - Carrie Soto is Back, A Court of Thorns and Ruin, and A Court of Mist and Fury - and some Daily Deals along the way - Gone With the Wind, Totally Folked, and Lovelight Farms. I had started three more books but didn't finish in time so obvi they don't count - an ARC of The Naughty and Nice Clause by Kate Callaghan, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and Untying the Knot by Meghan Quinn.
Looking forward to seeing what December brings and then, oh my gosh, it's 2023!
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