2025 Year Reading Wrap-Up

During this past year, I read a total of 96 books, 26,896 pages.

Top 5 Moods:

1. Adventurous (42 books)

2. Emotional (31 books)

3. Funny (22 books)

4. Mysterious (13 books)

5. Reflective (8 books)

Top 5 Genres:

1. Fantasy (32 books)

2. Romance (30 books)

3. Young Adult (25 books)

4. Manga (20 books)

5. Middle Grade (17 books)

   
   

88% of my reads were fiction, while the other 12% were nonfiction.

Oldies, but Goodies...

My Rereads that I Read Every Year or Almost Every Year:

1. The Lunar Chronicles

2. Jane Austen's novels

3. The Lord of the Rings

Top Authors Read:

1. Mizuho Kusanagi (Yona of the Dawn) (12 volumes)

2. Gordon Korman (11 books)

(Too many tied for third place)

Best nonfiction book:

Since my nonfiction reads were fewer than in previous years, I really only had one good read, but even that "good" read was quite depressing...

Chinese Cinderella: The True Story of an Unwanted Daughter by Adeline Yen Mah - So good, but very, very sad. I almost cried soooo many times. This was a heartbreaking read, but it was well-written. She is a great storyteller.

Before we get into the top 5 fiction books, here are a couple of honorable mentions:

• I've read The Lord of the Rings trilogy every year for the past few years, and recently discovered that there are audiobooks narrated by Andy Serkis, so I decided to give them a try - Beautiful narrating! Enjoyed every minute of it. Every voice was done so well, and I even listened to some of the songs, which is surprising, since I usually skip or skim through them.

  
  

• Knight Owl by Christopher Denise - This was a cute little picture book about an owl who attends "Knight School". So adorable!

  
  

Top 5 Fiction Books:

5th place: Two stories that I read back to back, take up this spot. Over the summer, I decided to finally read two classics that take place during summer time. Both of these books I have been wanting to read since I was a kid, and well, I finally got around to reading both of them this year. Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene and Summer of the Monkeys by Wilson Rawls. They were good. Sad. Trigger warnings on the first one for sure.

4th place: A Heart Worth Stealing by Joanna Barker. This was a clean Regency romance/cozy mystery. None of the twists surprised me, but twists never do, so I can't be a good judge of this aspect. LOL But I thought it was cute, but <<spoiler alert!>> my suspension of belief was taken aback when two unmarried individuals kiss several times. (gasp in Regency England? Does no one understand Regency customs? facepalm) But besides the kissing, it was actually a cute, cozy mystery.

3rd place: Snow & Rose by Emily Winfield Martin - This middle grade novel is a retelling of Snow White and Rose Red, which I actually haven't read before. (I need to get on that...) This was absolutely charming. It reads like a fairy tale, and the illustrations are lovely!

2nd place: Alone by Megan E. Freeman - This a verse novel about survival. Maddie, a twelve-year-old, wakes up after spending the night at her grandparents apartment alone, she finds the whole town has been evacuated. No power, no internet, no way to reach her either of her divorced parents or anyone else. She must learn to survive on her own. Seriously, such a good book! I gobbled it up in a manner of hours. (It is a verse novel too, so it really flew by for me.) So good! The companion novel, Away, is okay. Fun style with the different perspectives told in various ways, but not nearly as good as Alone.

1st Place: Still Star-Crossed by Melinda Taub - I devoured this book! It caught me quite by surprise, really. I think the title is a little misleading. It sounds almost like Juliet and Romeo have another shot, but no, that is not what this novel is about, and I am all for it. Instead, it is about the fallout, what happens after the curtain closes on the deaths of Romeo and Juliet and the truce that is made between their fathers. Just because the fathers make a truce to end the feud, this does little to quell the animosity long held between the families. With the younger ones in the families angered by the recent deaths, fights still erupt on the streets of Verona. In an effort to finally put an end to the feud, Prince Escalus (I hate him) decides to force the two families to come together through a marriage alliance. Enter Rosaline, Juliet's cousin, and Benvolio Montague... two people who would rather not wed each other... and decide to work together to end the feud so they don't have to marry. So, this book had me at first page with its "Dramatis Personae", the cast of characters that we would find at the beginning of any of Shakespeare's plays, and from there, it only got better. The book was divided into several parts, each with a quote from a different Shakespeare play— Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and of course, Romeo and Juliet. I seriously loved this book! The author has such a love of Shakespeare's works, it really comes through this book. The dialogue is on point. It sounds like a Shakespeare play and has that same wit and humor. There were a few things I was like, 'This might be a tad over-the-top or unrealistic.' But then, I would remember an instance where Shakespeare had done a similar thing, and so I ended up just enjoying it. I enjoyed it so much I bought it hardcover, audiobook, and e-book. (Yes, yes, I did need it in every format...) (There are some things that might be triggering... so, you may want to look that up in advance if you decide to read it.)

I have this book to thank for also kick-starting me into a Shakespeare phase that I've been going through sporadically over the year and am continuing into this year... So, far, I've read/reread:

• Romeo and Juliet

• a retelling of Twelfth Night that had a cool premise but was huge letdown to me. sigh (I will not list the title here as I do not wish to speak bad about it.)

• Twelfth Night LOL

• Much Ado About Nothing

• A Midsummer Night's Dream

• As You Like It

And that is a wrap!