Week of December 1, 2025

I’m writing this from Boise, Idaho as I’m out here visiting my oldest daughter Maddie and we’re visiting wedding venues. She’s recently engaged and the process has officially started! This will be the first wedding for our family and we can’t wait, honestly. She has a specific vision in mind for what she wants and we spent today well north of the city in the snow looking at a beautiful area to see if it might be what she’s looking for. We’ll see how it all plays out!

As much as flying around the country isn’t ideal at this time of year, I don’t mind flying as much as I used to because I get lots of reading done while I’m on the plane. On the flight out here, I finished the one audio book that I had started about a week ago, and I made a serious dent in another book as well. I watch everyone around me flipping from show to show on their iPads or watching multiple movies and I forget how much time really passes as I’m reading. For me, the time flies. To each their own!

Thanks for joining me this week! Let’s dive in!

1. The Change, by Kirsten Miller ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

   This was a really interesting book. Definitely not my usual genre, this was more of a fantasy, sci/fi, murder/mystery sort of book. But it focused on 3 women heading into that mystical realm of menopause and how they channel “the change” for good. Nessa hears voices from teenage girls who have gone missing at the hands of the men who make the rules. Harriett left her high powered advertising career (and her cheating husband) when the powers that be (men) decided that her voice wasn’t as important as theirs was (side note: it was.) And Jo, having battled with her own body every single month since puberty, finally came to terms with the fact that the world wasn’t going to listen to women so she created a safe space for women to rage apart from men. These three women, guided by Nessa’s gift of hearing the voices that call to her, take it upon themselves to figure out which of the vile men in their town is killing these girls and bring them to justice when the police (all male) decide that there simply isn’t a problem at all.

   Ultimately, this book is about women who are 100% fed up with the society that men created and bring about solutions to problems that men created for women. There are some really odd sections of the book, but also some really interesting sections, too. This was an unusual take on feminism and a unique spin on a murder mystery for sure.

2. The Sunny Side, by Lily Morton. ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

   Last week I read a book by Lily Morton and I loved it. I love the British snark and I wanted more, so I picked up this book. The main character Jonas was a very serious character so the snark was at a minimum with him. His love interest, Dean, was less serious, but snark wasn’t his specialty. Still, though, the banter was charming and the two of them were lovely together. Their romance was inevitable from the start, it seemed, and the two of them fit well together. Dean’s ability to blend seamlessly with Jonas’s daughter Ruby was probably what truly won him over in the end, and that was fun to see. This was a cute book.

3. Maybe One Day, Catherine Bybee ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

   I’ve been waiting for this one. This was the 5th and final book in The D’Angelo’s series, and this one was about Mari, the matriarch of the family. Widowed for 10 years already at age 55, Mari raised her kids and stayed in the family home and dutifully ran the family restaurant and never thought of remarrying. Her best friend, however, is now divorced and very ready to move on with her life, and convinced Mari to join her on a singles cruise. Good friend that she is, she goes along. On this cruise she meets James, who is also grudgingly forced onto the cruise by his ex-wife and daughters. He has no intention of dating. But they actually like spending time together. A lot. It’s a very cute book about second chances and taking a leap of faith, and it was a very solid ending to thei series.

4. The Shots You Take, by Rachel Reid ⭐️⭐️.5

   After starting to watch Heated Rivalry this past week, I decided to try another book by Rachel Reid. This one was on audio book, and it was… ok. I’m never sure if it’s the fact that I’m listening on audio that makes the story feel long and repetitive or whether that’s actually the story. This one felt a little tedious to me, so I have to say I didn’t love it. Riley was angry for a lot of the book, understandably I suppose. And Adam took ages to finally come out to him and express his feelings outright. It just took so long for the story to unfold that I wanted to speed it along - the process was inevitable, it just took too long to happen in my opinion. Her HR series is much better.

5. French Fancy, by Lily Morton ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

   This is the snark I was looking for! Pip is everything. He’s ALL of the British snark - he’s just delightful. This is part II of The Model Agency series - part I was Jonas and Dean’s story in #2 above - and this was just what I wanted. Olivier is Jonas’ brother who lives in Paris and Pip is Jonas’ assistant in London, and the two meet (and hook up) anonymously. But then they end up spending time together again in France while Pip is recovering from an illness at Jonas and Olivier’s house there, and the two end up becoming enamored with each other. But their banter is top tier. Pip is just over the top.

6. Game Changer, by Rachel Reid ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

   Finally this week, I had to re-read this book after watching episode 3 of ‘Heated Rivalry’ on HBO Max. I first read it in April of this year, and I liked it enough to launch me into reading the entire series. But considering that Scott and Kip got an entire episode to themselves, I felt it was worth a re-visit. As for the episode, I didn’t like it nearly as much as I liked Ilya and Shane’s episodes, but I understand the desire to give them some airtime - it’s their happy ending that creates the basis for the basis of book 6 of the series. But I digress…

   As for this book, I do like the way these two come together, and I like the struggle that they go through as Scott decides whether to pursue a life “out” or stay hidden away. Their conversations about these struggles felt very true to life (as much as I would know about it) and I appreciated it very much.

That’s it for this week! As always, you can keep up with all of my reading on my Goodreads if you want to. https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/12921106-karen

Love, Karen