Monthly Wrap-Up: December 2024

I debated about doing a monthly wrap-up for December as I did an end of the year one which included some of the great books I read in December. But, there were many other good ones which didn’t get any love in that post and I just wanted to give them a shout out as well.

According to good reads I read 20 books, but two of them were more like short stories and there were several novellas, so page wise I was within my more normal 16 books total. Why am I doing math? I don’t know, but anyways, there were many good books no matter their length that I just wanted to mention.

ARCs I read

I only read three ARCs this month and all of them were pretty solid reads. I really enjoyed two of them and the third was a decent thriller.

Tell Me What You Did has a solid premise, a podcaster who gets people to admit their crimes on her podcast, is stalked by one of them. It got a bit bogged down in the middle, but overall was a good book.

A Midwinter Murder was a fun cozy mystery that took place in an english manor house at Christmas. It was actually the newest book in a long series, but it was my first. It was fun and cozy and I might just pick up the first book soon.

Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales is the third and I think final book in the Emily Wilde series. I enjoyed it, but it was still missing a bit of something to really make me love it. Still I look forward to seeing what the author writes next.

Reading Challenge Books

I already talked about all of these in my Challenge update which you can read here if you want. I did enjoy all of these but, Everyone This Christmas was my favorite of the group and the only one I reviewed.

Favorite Reads

Swordheart is maybe my favorite by this author so far. It was funny, and cozy and I just loved the characters. I also listened to some of the audiobook and thought that was great as well.

Cast Iron is sort of the last book in the Enzo Files series. There is one more book featuring Enzo but it is unrelated to the series as a whole. I really enjoyed this one and it had me on the edge of my seat for a lot of it.

Faeries Never Lie was my last book of the month. It is a short story collection all about the fae. I enjoyed most of the stories but really liked Holly Black’s story about how Vivi and Heather got together.

Favorite Audiobooks

I only listened to 4 1/2 books this month but they were all very good. These three were the ones that stood out the most.

The Heart of the World was the final book in the duology and I just loved that it had a full cast of narrators. It really made the story come alive.

Impossible Creatures was a very sweet middle grade book that I really enjoyed. It had two great main characters and some wonderful creatures.

A Midwinter Murder was an audiobook arc that I really enjoyed. The narrator did a great job bringing all of her characters to life with different voices and accents for them. It was a delight to listen to.