Week of January 26, 2026

I love the term “crash out.” It’s so appropriate and feels more cathartic than “meltdown” or “throwing a tantrum” or whatever else you want to call the extreme emotional outbursts that sometimes catch you by surprise. I’m leading with this because I started the week with a good old-fashioned crash out on Monday morning. Tori and I were getting ready to record our podcast and I was having technological difficulties and I was indeed crashing out in the truest sense of the word. I thought it was going to completely derail my week but I got it out of my system, talked it out with her, on camera no less, and went about my day. All is well. But sometimes, that’s really what you need - just erupt and let it out!

I’ve gotten my listening privileges back on Spotify finally so I picked up where I left off listening to Saint by Sierra Simone, and wow, I am just adoring this book. I know a lot of my reaction to the book is actually to the narration by Jacob Morgan - his voice is like melted chocolate, especially when he flips from the character Aiden over to the character of Elijah. His voice gets a little deeper and a little rougher and it’s just different enough to create two entirely separate men speaking to you. And I’m at a part of the book where they’re in France traveling between monasteries and he throws a lot of French accents into the mix and it’s just perfection to listen to. There’s absolutely no way I would be enjoying the book this much if I were reading it myself on my Kindle. But again, I’m so enjoying the awakening that Aiden is finding as he’s going through his monastic training while being confronted with Elijah, the only man he’s really ever loved in his life. The book takes a really deep dive into the secular and spiritual in such an interesting way, and it’s not something I ever thought I’d find compelling, but I really do! I’m absolutely loving it and I’ll honestly miss this book when it’s finished. I think I’m going to have to buy this one for my permanent listening library.

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

1. The Night We Fell, by E.M. Lindsey ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

2. Read Me, by Lauren Connolly ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

3. Jilted, by L.A. Witt ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

4. Shield Of Sparrows, by Devney Perry ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

5. Salvaged Heart, by D.G. Holloway ⭐️⭐️⭐️

6. Hell Creek Boys, by Atreus Rosewood ⭐️⭐️⭐️

7. Sky Full Of Stars, by Chris Reilly ⭐️⭐️⭐️

I veered off course this week with Shield Of Sparrows and I really enjoyed this book a lot. I love when a book catches me by surprise, and this one did. As I mentioned last week, sometimes I have trouble staying involved in a book when it doesn’t dive right into my preferred romance genre. This one doesn’t at all, but I didn’t have any difficulty staying interested. The characters of Odessa and The Guardian grabbed me and held on to keep me reading. Having read several other books by Devney Perry and none of them were remotely in the romantasy genre, this was definitely not the norm for either the author or for me. This one gave me Fourth Wing vibes without the dragons, and it was giving Nesta energy while she was training with Cassian. It was the slowest of slow burns, and the tension between The Guardian and Odessa was very good. Was it as good? Not really, no. I felt like the depth of the world that was built up in the ACOTAR series was far greater than in this book, but it held my attention for sure. I’m already looking forward to the second book in the series which comes out in April of this year. It was a good diversion from my usual.

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