Week of December 29, 2025

Happy New Year, everyone!

We had a wonderful New Year’s celebration at the beach with friends this year. We had a nice dinner out while we watched fireworks on the beach, and then spent New Year’s Day watching football, playing Sequence, and laughing. It was a great send off to 2025 and a fun way to welcome in what we hope will be a happy, healthy new year.

Does anyone have a reading goal set for this year? If anyone listened to our Let Me Call My Mom podcast this week, you may have heard Tori and me talk about my reading goal. Or rather, I should call it my reading limit. A goal is really something you set when you’re trying to encourage yourself to do more of something - in my case, with reading, I’m actually trying to do a little less. I’m trying to set a goal surrounding movement and I’d like to cover 100 miles a month of structured movement. But as for reading, I’d like to cut back to about 4 books per week as opposed to last year’s average of 6-7 books per week. I’ll try to pick up more audio books and listen while I incorporate more movement into my days, and I’ll utilize my walking pad with my iPad on a stand in front of it at home during the colder months if I want to read at home. But the goal is to keep moving - I officially have no excuses.

For 2026, I figured I’d try something new with this newsletter. Rather than simply summarize each book I read each week, I’d rather talk a little about one book that resonated with me or about a reading topic that seems interesting to me. I’ll write out the titles of the books I read weekly, but I’m not going to go into any depth about them unless they are a favorite or are standouts in one way or another.

Here are the books from the week:

1. After Hours Lecture, by Kimberly Knight ⭐️⭐️⭐️

2.  The Pool Boy, by Nikki Sloane ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

3. Stealing Sawyer, by Samantha Christy ⭐️⭐️

4. That One Moment, by C.S. Autumn ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

5. Love By Design, by Kate Hawthorne ⭐️⭐️⭐️

6. Keep My Heart, by Allie Everhart ⭐️⭐️⭐️

I also started an audiobook this past week while I was driving to New Jersey for New Year’s Eve. It’s Saint by Sierra Simone, and the main narration is done by Jacob Morgan, whose voice I just love. I could listen to him read the phone book and it would be amazing. I’ve read Priest in this same book series and I found that one to be more smut than plot. But I’m absolutely loving this book so far. I’m about 1/3 of the way through it right now, and the juxtaposition between the spiritual and the secular worlds in this story is so irreverent and jarring, I’m finding it fascinating. I don’t have a full review of it yet, but I actually had to rewind and listen to chapter 15 twice while I was driving today. In this chapter, Elijah, who was jilted by Aiden when he left to join a monastery, asks Aiden something to the effect of: “Who gets to do this? Who gets to leave the world and just remove themselves from daily living and focus solely on their own pursuits? And you think you came here to be a better person, but sequestering yourself in a monastery so you can become a better person means nothing if your good works only happen behind these four walls.” Aiden thought he was doing what he was called to do by joining this monastic order and in this chapter he feels that Elijah is calling him selfish for following this calling, despite him having given away all his material wealth prior to joining this brotherhood. It was a really eye opening perspective to hear. I absolutely love when a work of fiction can raise a point or topic that I’ve never considered before and makes me think about something in an entirely new way, and this chapter did that for me. I’ll have to revisit this book in more depth when I finish it, but I’m really liking the deeper thoughts that it’s raising for me personally.

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