Animal gives this 5/5 woofs for it‘s usefulness as an ad hoc pillow, and I give it 5/5 for being a very cute holiday read exactly like I‘ve come to expect from Jenny Bayliss. It doesn‘t have tons of substance, but the characters (almost) all feel warm and the setting is perfect for this sort of light holiday read.

Thank you so much for this (not so) little box of #naughtylistholidayswap treasures, @KT1432 ! I haven‘t read any of these authors before, so I‘m especially excited about the opportunity to discover some new favorites!

I had medium expectations due to “Lovelight Farms”being just okay for me, but this was really neat! I liked the romance, and the twist on the “traditional” ghost of Christmas past lore a lot, but found the way everything comes together in the end to be the most pleasing part overall.

Thank you so much for the amazing #jolabokaflodswap @MaleficentBookDragon —both of these look like great fun, and I‘m very excited about the chocolate orange!

This is pretty cute overall, but there are some details earlier like a mention of a really consequential summer that are never given clear context and boy, was I bothered. For being a holiday romance, though, it does get leeway.

What‘s better than receiving one holiday book swap in the mail?! Receiving two in the same day! Thank you, @MaleficentBookDragon and @KT1432 for the amazing-looking packages! Also special shoutout to my coworker with the little brown bag from our work book exchange! #naughtylistholidayswap #jolabokaflodswap

Swaps have been relinquished to the postal elves! #NaughtyListHolidaySwap #JolabokaflodSwap

This was a cute little holiday read, but very little happened in it (which was less true for Pumpkin Spice and Everything Nice). What did happen, though, was the author realizing that you can get away with putting a kiss or two in your book and still have it be completely PG.

Pretty cute, definitely PG (not honestly even sure it qualifies as “romance”) YA read! I gotta say, though, I‘m very confused by the amount of adult-driven hype it got earlier in the year.

This was a super cute fall read! It‘s very YA romance, but the conflicts are believable and believably resolved, which is not always the case in that genre. I think teens and adults will love this one! Animal also gives it 5/5 woofs for being a pillow that matches him 😂

Very cute, mostly closed-door, cozy fantasy romance. The stakes are super low if you know the genre (as usual honestly), but the story is entertaining and easy to read! The only drawback for me is how hard the author goes at “MUST leave breadcrumbs for a potential sequel” by the end.

I liked it a lot, but I gotta say: this is not a YA book, it‘s just New Adult in a funny outfit. I could have done with Margeaux‘s motivations/character being laid out more clearly, but it was a fun read nonetheless!

It‘s a cute lil‘ romance with a pretty low level of spice on the one hand, and a comedy about (mostly) benign ghosts on the other. I liked it pretty well, but I do wish it leaned a little spooker.

A super fun read for anyone who grew up loving Buffy and Scooby Doo! It‘s sort of a family drama first and foremost, but with a good ol‘ cursed bloodline and vampires. Just lots of fun overall.

Pretty good, but not very scary at all. The denouement and what follows it is a little bit too soft for me as a lover of hardcore horror, but I would definitely still recommend it for folks looking to explore the genre!

A pretty great read by a local-to-me author! I don‘t think I‘d call it cozy horror at all, just regular horror, but that honestly makes me like it more. The ending was slightly confusing, but not in a way that detracted anything at all.

A pretty fun, albeit slightly confusing (what‘s up with those rooms?!) read! It‘s definitely YA, and it shows, but it‘s enjoyable nonetheless.

You see how this dog is asleep? That‘s an accurate portrayal of what this book does to people. It‘s a fun premise, but it just does not hit the horror buttons except for two instances of pretty mild gore. It‘s sort of “How to Sell a Haunted House” goes feminist, except it‘s not even really very feminist…

It‘s alright, very classic no-spice-beyond-the-bare-minimum contemporary romance, but really nothing too exciting. The cast is a bit too large, perhaps, and Joss was a super confusing character for me until the denouement.

Academia is hell, literally, in this one and I loved it! My only critique was that I got hung up ever so terribly on Professor Grimes being a famed wartime (WWII presumably magician) and still not sounding particularly old in the ‘80s descriptions.

So…which flavor of the misprint did y‘all get? 😂 Or, if you got a non-misprinted edition, where‘s it from?

It‘s fine, but specifically when said with the intonation of a 15-year girl. It‘s neither good, nor bad, it just sort of is and I wish Qureshi would have committed harder to writing either romance or fantasy, because it‘s just goofy how the dragons are seemingly modeled on dogs. Also, it does not need to be one of those “and now for the next couple” romance series, the universe is not believable enough for that.

I did not like The Ministry of Time or The Midnight Library (the most advertised read alikes), so my hopes were lower than a final-round limbo pole, but darn it, this is great! It‘s all of the things I wanted from the other two, and the twists are fun, albeit predictable. The ending could be less cutesy, but 10/10 otherwise.

This is the 1st Maas book out of the 9 I‘ve now read that I genuinely enjoyed. But darn, it should not take until the 5th book in a series to feel invested…also, there definitely are some plot choices that feel weaker than they should given the build-up. P.S. peep those lil toe beans!

What a pleasant surprise! I was genuinely expecting the stakes to be too low given the whole “every character is already dead” premise, but Marie sure found a way to make me care. Yes, it‘s obvious YA fare, but well-executed nonetheless.

This was quite fun, and thankfully does not read in a way that forces you to actively consider the inspiration. I especially enjoyed the sassy deofols, and the dark humor throughout.

Finally got around to this one! It‘s a lot of fun, but unfortunately fails to deliver on the horror aspects of the first title. The plot is also a bit thinner, and some aspects of the magic aren‘t very solidly constructed.

Just read it, folks. It‘s basically “grimdark, but for the ladies” and I loved it tons.

What better company could a gal want on a comfy Saturday night (also present is husband and his book).

This was unexpectedly great! It‘s funny (decidedly on purpose, not due to poor writing) both in terms of the plot and imagery, and the romance isn‘t cringy at all despite the husband being a part-time horse.

This one‘s almost a 5/5, but the reasons everything happened in the earlier timeline are just a little bit too petty for the sense of danger to ever truly build and figuring out who the “villain” (a term I use very loosely) in the current timeline is was a little bit too easy. Overall, I just wanted the emotions to be punchier, I think—especially the bittersweetness of youth gone slightly wrong.

This one‘s middling, but also the best thing I‘ve read by Schwab whose style is perhaps just not for me. I wish there was more ending, and much less beginning, or maybe just less fluff in general since the whole thing ended up feeling oddly like reading an anime filler episode.

This was excellent! Not ultimately super scary, but such a great exploration of toxic family dynamics!

Almost as fun as the first one, but with a lot more—honestly welcome—philosophical musings on what it means to be sort of immortal. If you like irreverent, self-aware, and slightly silly fantasy, this one‘s for you!

I was excited for this, but it turned out to be a weirdly laborious read. Not enough happens, the characters are too static/develop in ways that aren‘t dramatic enough, and I just felt like Wiswell doesn‘t quite make the claims about monstrosity that he seems to think he does.

I enjoyed “Starter Villain” a whole bunch, so my expectations were very high…they sadly went mostly unmet, though. The KPS is a neat idea, and all of the Sci-Fi references peppered throughout were fun, but it weirdly felt like this wanted very badly to be a short story rather than a little novel.

This is so good, especially in terms of how it straddles the line between fantasy and horror. I read it at breakfast, I read it driving back from a Germany shopping trip…in short: it came everywhere for 3 days. The only downside is that now I‘m mad I‘ll have to wait until I‘m back from seeing my mom in Denmark to get the sequel (I bring all the books I read overseas because they‘re silly expensive here).

What a weird, fun, read! The ending fell a little flat for me as I felt there were too many untied threads, but I‘d still recommend it to anyone who is looking for a slightly unusual mystery!

Given the premise I expected something a bit silly, but it‘s actually a pretty serious book—and a good one at that! I loved the ethical questions raised throughout, and the ending twist was super neat. It‘s also a lil‘ spicy, but not gratuitously so, which is nice to see in a current new adult release.

It‘s basically the TV show “Succession” with magic and some interesting stylistic choices; pretty entertaining, though!

The Hunger Games are a pretty integral part of Millenial culture, so really this one needs no explanation. Still as good now as it was 15 years ago, though.

This was excellent! It‘s not really about the central mystery as much as it‘s an examination of the relationship between the “haves” and “have-nots” of small communities.

Good book + good pup = excellent Sunday evening.

It‘s cute, but that‘s about it.

This was so good, my first true 5/5 stars of 2025. I especially love how clearly the fictional communities derive from the real Vikings and Anglo-Saxons, and how the ending plays out.

I was ALL in for the first 85%, but oh boy…that twist…I just could not. It felt lazy and overtly silly and it didn‘t do very much to resolve the plot in a satisfactory manner. It went from a book I‘d consider “serious” YA to “is this an 8th grade writing exercise and we‘ve hit the word count?” so shockingly I‘m not sure I‘ll ever recover.

How is the twist of this one somehow simultaneously the smartest and dumbest plot choice ever? It‘s wild.

This is really dumb, but also really funny. That‘s all.

EURGH, am I glad it‘s over. I had to walk away and read a whole other book in the middle of this one, and while I usually enjoy Klune it was just not for me at all. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn‘t abstract from why Art is in her physical form (which makes every cute thing she does AWFUL), and the “gay subplot” was awkwardly done. This is thematically like if “Cerulean Sea” was written by toddlers and it just felt so hammy in the end.

I haven‘t read any of Aster‘s books other than this one (forthcoming for 3/25), but I might have to! Her writing style is fun, and she manages to stay away from some of the most common clichés in modern romance while also providing the sort of comfortable predictability I personally want when reading this genre.