Week of October 6, 2025

As of this writing, I have 91 books left to read to hit my goal of reading 350 books in the year and I have 80 days left to do it. It’s not looking good. I’m way off my pace this fall. Yes, I’ve had a lot on my plate and these past few weeks have been low weeks for me so I’m off track a bit. I don’t like not hitting goals that I set for myself, but honestly, 350 books in a year is kind of ridiculous, isn’t it? So I think I’ll survive if I don’t hit that one. But I will try.

We’ve spent the majority of this week in New Jersey, taking some walks on the beach and enjoying the fall weather here while Ross recovers from his surgery. He’s feeling so much better and as you’re reading this we’re back in PA now as a nor-easter is hitting the Jersey shore. We broke up our drive from NJ to PA with a nice long stop in Philadelphia to spend time with our daughter Tori and her boyfriend Zak at their house in the city and we had a great day with them. They’re headed to Florida this week for a little R&R so it was nice to catch up with them for a few hours before they head out on their vacation.

And I’m back on TikTok after a month long self-imposed blackout. I wanted to take a break from doom scrolling for a bit and I’m surprised it lasted as long as it did. Yay me! But interestingly, I also found that I kind of struggled to find books that I could sink my teeth into while I was off of TikTok. Maybe that’s why my numbers fell for a while? It seems that I really do find a lot of interesting reads on there and I kind of missed it. So a lot of the books that I read this week (#s 2, 4 and 6 in fact) were all from authors that I heard about through TikTok. Those three books all happen to be MM romance books and I tore through them this week, so it seems that is the genre that really is my guilty pleasure. If that’s not your thing, feel free to skip those.

• As always, here’s my rating scale for your information:

  ⭐️ Did not like this book, would not recommend. Lots of errors, plot holes, not worth the effort to read, most likely didn’t finish. But I’m giving this author a single star for making the effort to publish a book. Not everyone’s even gotten that far, so yay for you.

  ⭐️⭐️ Didn’t really like it, multiple issues with style, plot, syntax or characters. Most likely forced myself to finish it. Would consider other books by the same author but I might have to be convinced.

  ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Enjoyed the book. Perhaps there were issues with plot or style but it was an enjoyable read. I could see recommending it if it were of a specific genre or trope or series. Most of what I read could easily fall into this category and I’d be a happy camper.

  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ This was a good book. Like a really good book. I will think about this book when I’m finished, and there’s a really good chance I’ll buy it for my personal library if it was a KU read. I’d recommend it to other readers of the same genre or trope. I’ll definitely search out other books by this author, probably as soon as I’m finished reading.

  ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Wow. Just wow. Amazing book, amazing story. If there were flaws in the book I’m completely overlooking them because in my mind the book was sheer perfection. I didn’t want the book to end and I’m immediately adding it to my favorites and my re-read pile. And if there’s an audio version I might have to buy that, too. I have a book hangover, I miss the characters, and I feel actual, physical loss in my life when this book is finished.

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

Book #1 this week was Love Among Vines, by Madison Score, and I gave it ⭐️⭐️⭐️.5. It was a KU book, not a long read and nothing too out of the ordinary. It’s a contemporary romance with an average amount of spice. Jade is an artist attending her ex’s wedding as part of the wedding party because her ex is marrying her best friend (no thank you!) and they go to a winery. At the winery, she sees Rett, the owner, and is immediately smitten. In fact her artist “block” seems to be immediately clearing up upon seeing him. See where this is going? Yes, relatively predictable. They end up meeting, fake dating, and everything you think is going to happen does happen. It’s cute, but very predictable.

Book #2 was Sweat by Jonah Yorke and I gave it a solid ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. I loved this one. It was a KU book, MM romance, with a lot of spice. I love the damaged characters and these boys were both struggling with their sexuality, with figuring out their futures, with life in general, and I loved that they ended up turning to each other for strength when they needed it. The thing I found most interesting about this book, however, was that this was a male author — probably 95% of the books I read are by female authors, even if the subject matter has nothing to do with their authentic experience. And I was astonished at the amount of criticism that this book received, from female readers, about how misogynistic it was and how “awful” the female characters in the book are. I found that really interesting. I think the beauty of reading fiction is that the worlds created in the books can be anything and no two are alike because the world around us is so amazingly diverse. The author is allowed to create the world they want. And if this male author is drawing on his personal experience in any way to create these beautiful and sensitive male characters, I would think that some of their depth had to come from a variety of females in the authors’ life. To think that females need to only be portrayed in a positive light is disingenuous and I found that odd. Women, just like men, can have biases that are deeply rooted and are hard to overcome. Yes, some of these female characters were tough to read and were homophobic. But I’ve read dozens of books where male characters were homophobic - that’s acceptable because women wrote the books? I don’t get that. Anyway, I really enjoyed the book, but I didn’t really like the response to it. There’s another book in the series coming out, and I look forward to reading more from this author.

Book #3 was My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout and I gotta say, I didn’t get this at all. I’ll give it ⭐️⭐️. This is a Pulitzer Prize winning book? I’m not sure why, honestly. This is like watching some of the movies that win the Academy Award for best picture and you finish it and you say to yourself, “what did I just watch?” Yeah, it was like that. The writing was completely disjointed, the chapters were all over the place, there was zero continuity in the story. This was supposedly a really deep and intense story about a completely dysfunctional family and yet we never really find out what the dysfunction is. There are hints at physical abuse, hints at psychological abuse, a story of Lucy being locked in a pickup truck with a snake, a story of her father forcing her brother to dress in their mothers clothes and chasing him through the streets and beating him. There is poverty, yes. But I wanted more, so much more, from this story. Lucy wasn’t a developed character. During the time she was in the hospital and her mother was with her, there was no depth, no discussion. I suppose that was the point - that was never their relationship, it never would be, and yes, that was sad. But then to have Lucy cry out for her ‘mommy’ just all felt very bizarre to me. I just couldn’t wrap my head around this book. Maybe someone needs to convince me that this was worthy of a Pulitzer because I didn’t see it at all.

Book #4 this week was Something Real by Nellie Christine, another new author for me. This was another solid read in my eyes, ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️, although the way it was written left a little to be desired. By that I mean it was somewhat disjointed, and it was easy to lose track of who was talking at any given time. This is a multiple POV story, but it doesn’t go chapter by chapter, it often went line by line. So following the thoughts was tough. But for some reason it didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would. This was a KU book that I heard about on on TikTok, a MM romance, good spice, and it was very enjoyable. The MMCs Grayson and Elijah were both well developed in this book and their dynamic was perfect. Elijah was the cynical “I don’t believe in love” type who has no kissing and no repeat hook-up rules for his dating life and thinks he’ll skate through life just fine that way. Grayson has already been hurt by love so he’s not looking to get involved with anyone but he’s miserable alone. They meet by accident when Grayson loses his phone and Elijah finds it and returns it to him, and the spark is struck. Fate brings them together again a few days later and Elijah realizes he’s willing to break all his rules for Grayson. It’s actually a charming story, and I enjoyed it a lot.

I jumped immediately into book #5, The Summer Getaway by Susan Mallery. I’m giving this a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5 rating. This is the third book of hers I’ve read and I liked this one very much. This had a great family dynamic to it, lots of mother/daughter relationship conflict and resolution which I can very much relate to. Although it seemed that Harlow (the daughter) caught on to and resolved her issues awfully quickly in the book, but hey, it’s fiction. I enjoyed this story a lot and Robyn, the FMC, was a very likable character. A large portion of this story is set in Santa Barbara, CA, which holds a special place in my heart personally, so that always draws me into a book, too. I liked hating Robyn’s exes, I liked loving Robyn’s great aunt, I liked falling for Mason, I liked seeing Robyn mother her adult children, and I liked Robyn find her path in life post-divorce. It’s always cathartic to see a mature FMC find herself and this was a good one. The side plot of Robyn’s boss Mindy and her constant stupidity was almost unnecessary and complicated the story a bit, but didn’t detract too much from the true family aspect of the book. Overall, a great read.

And I finished up the week with book #6, Win You Over, by C.S. Autumn. This was a low angst MM romance book by another new-to-me author. I’ll give this a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rating, although I suppose that’s kind of generous. It was a cute book. It won’t win any literature awards, the characters are good not great, the story is compelling enough to want to root for them. It all works. Cute read.

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