This year, I decided to create a reading journal in order to be a little more creative with how I track my reading progress throughout the year. Every month, I like to create a main page where I can track some of the books I wanted to read, some data on the books I am reading, and other important information (such as library due dates) for the month.
Below, I have a TikTok that I made which shows my February main page set-up:
There are several parts which I included on my main page for February.
TBR
For my TBR, I always include the books which I list on my blog’s monthly TBR. This month, Lore Olympus: Volume Two, The True Love Experiment, and Secretly Yours are on my TBR. Since it’s February, I wanted to pick some romance books which would be perfect to read around Valentine’s Day. I have already read the second volume of Lore Olympus and I’m currently reading Secretly Yours!
Reading Calendar Tracker
I included a reading calendar tracker on my January spread. I really liked seeing my pattern of reading. However, this month, I wanted to create more contrast between the different amounts of pages. Last month, the colors were very similar and it was hard to tell if I chose the correct color when filling in the calendar. I liked how using so many different shades of red helped me pull in different shades of red throughout the page.
Print/Digital Tracker
Typically, I read most or all of my books digitally during the year. However, this year, I have been making a point to visit my in-person library more often. As a result, I have been reading more physical copies of books. Last month, I had a tie between physical and digital copies of books. I can’t wait to see how this month ends up!
Library Due Dates
While this doesn’t include all of the books I’ve checked out from the library, I typically pick books for this list based on my first library trip of the month, or any books leftover from the previous month.
New Releases
The last part of this monthly spread is the new releases section. This section was hard for me to plan out and I redid it many times. I do like how the end result looks like a ring!
One of my reading goals for 2023 was to visit my library more frequently, rather than just borrowing books from the virtual library. While I do prefer reading books on a device, I have noticed that my physical library has more of the books on my TBR than the virtual library, so I decided to request some books that have been sitting on my TBR so that I could finally read them. Here are five books that I recently borrowed from my physical library location and the virtual branch:
I was excited that my library had a copy of The Stolen Heir available right after its release… and there was no wait! The Stolen Heir was the first book that I borrowed from the library in 2023. The Stolen Heir is the first book in a duology which occurs after The Cruel Prince series. This duology follows a teenage Oak who recruits Lady Suren from the mortal realm to rescue his imprisoned father. I read The Stolen Heir back in January. For me, The Stolen Heir was too plot-driven in comparison to the original series, although it has an interesting premise which could make the second novel in the duology more successful.
Ship Wrecked was the first book which I borrowed from Cloud Library, the virtual system which my library uses. I have borrowed this book in the past, but I didn’t read until I re-checked it out this year. Ship Wrecked is the third book in the Spoiler Alert series, which follows two co-stars as they film a popular television series on an isolated island. While I think Olivia Dade’s covers and synopses usually draw me in, I usually find her pacing to be inconsistent. Unfortunately, I had similar issues with Ship Wrecked.
Every Summer After by Carley Fortune
Every Summer After was the next book that I checked out from my library. Every Summer After has been on my TBR and I have been waiting for it to come onto the virtual library. However, I recently read Love & Other Words by Christina Lauren, which Every Summer After is frequently compared to online. As a result, I didn’t want to wait to read it any longer so I could read these two books close together in order to see the comparisons. Every Summer After follows Persephone “Percy” Fraser when he returns to a lake town where she spent her summers as a teenager, in order to attend a family friend’s funeral. There, she runs into Sam, the boy next door. Since this book is so hyped, I was expecting this to be a five star read, and while I like some aspects of this novel, the last act wasn’t my favorite as it seemed inconsistent with the rest of the book.
The Happily Ever After Playlist by Abby Jimenez
The Happily Ever After Playlist was one of the books that I have borrowed from the library in February, but have not read yet. I have read two books by Abby Jimenez and loved them, so I wanted to read her two other books currently published before her new book releases later this year. From the description, this book seems to be about a woman who lost her fiancé and then finds a lost dog who connects her with a famous musician. Abby Jimenez writes such excellent realistic relationships and this book seems like it will address many real life topics, so I definitely looked forward to reading this book during February.
The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake
Last year, I read mostly contemporary books, so I’ve been wanting to pick up more fantasy novels in 2023. I’ve frequently seen The Atlas Six online, with people either loving it or hating it. I don’t have much an idea of what this book is about besides the synopsis, but when I saw this familiar title on my library’s website, I decided to check it out. It looks like The Atlas Six is about six magicians who want to be initiated into an academic society, but only five will make the cut. With this book, I am interested to see where my feelings will fall.
What books have you recently borrowed from the library?
This year, I decided to create a reading journal in order to be a little more creative with how I track my reading progress throughout the year. In January, I posted some of my set-up pages which I included at the beginning of my journal in order to give an overview of my year. Every month, I plan to give updates on what my pages look like for the month.
Below, I have included my video from TikTok where I showed all of the pages which I created in January:
Every month, I would like to do a monthly overview where I track different statistics, list books on my TBR, and document other important information (such as new releases). For January, I did a blue, mint green, and purple color scheme to go with the cold temperatures in January. While I really liked my calendar, next month, I plan to put a larger difference between the colors in the key so it is easier to differentiate how much I read in a day. One of my goals this year is to check more books out of the library, so I created a graph to document my progress.
The American Roommate Experiment by Elena Armas
I had so much fun creating my first book spread! The cover of at first, I was going to stick with my January theme colors throughout the month, but I decided that I liked it much better when I leaned into the colors on the cover of the book. The American Roommate Experiment is pink and blue, so those were the colors that I utilized. That being said, in later spreads, I started to include a song that I associate with the book, which I didn’t do for The American Roommate Experiment. I thought it would be fun to make a playlist at the end of the year. Even though it isn’t documented on the page, I plan to use Dancing Queen by ABBA.
Love & Other Words by Christina Lauren
With Love & Other Words, I started to develop some consistency. For each book spread. I want to include a synopsis, statistics, a review, and likes/dislikes. I feel like these mini-reviews and lists help me when writing longer reviews for my blog. With this spread, I decided to start including a song with the book. This song, like many others this month, is by Taylor Swift. My goal in February is to include more artists for my end-of-the-year playlist.
Ship Wrecked by Olivia Dade
Ship Wrecked was one of my easier to spreads to complete. After finishing the first two layouts, I had a pretty good idea of the pattern I wanted to follow with Ship Wrecked. I also liked how the cover of Ship Wrecked brought in a different color palette than my previous two designs.
The Stolen Heir by Holly Black
The Stolen Heir is probably one of my favorite spreads of the month. On this page, I started to experiment with more textures and different layouts. I also liked how this page had a different color scheme than many of my other spreads, which tend to be more colorful. For this page, it was hard to narrow down which quotes I wanted to use since Holly Black often has several stand-out quotes in her works.
Lore Olympus, Volume One by Rachel Smythe
My Lore Olympus spread is definitely my favorite for January. Like with The Stolen Heir, I started to experiment with a different layout and including more embellishments. I liked adding a flower theme because I thought it was a nice nod to Persephone, the main protagonist of the series.
Every Summer After by Carley Fortune
Every Summer After was one of the hardest layouts for me to make this month! I had to keep moving around different parts of the layout until I came up with one that I liked. I was very excited to find pierogi clip art on Etsy to reference the restaurant in the book.
First, let’s see if I finished my January TBR. Here were the books that I wanted to read in January (any books with reviews will be linked to the book’s title):
The Stolen Heir by Holly Black
Lore Olympus, Volume One by Rachel Smythe
Love & Other Words by Christina Lauren
During January, I managed to read all of the books on my TBR! Overall, my reading experiences with my January TBR books were positive. I rated The Stolen Heir as three stars, Lore Olympus as four stars, and Love & Other Words as 3.5 stars. Out of the three, Lore Olympus was my favorite.
Now onto my picks for February:
Lore Olympus, Volume Two by Rachel Smythe
I really enjoyed reading Lore Olympus Volume One in January so I hope to continue reading the series in February. It is my goal to read at least three graphic novels in 2023, so this will keep track of my goal. I have previously read most of this series on WebToon, where it was originally published, but I don’t remember all of the details. I am hoping this volume has more interactions between Persephone and Hades compared to the first volume.
Secretly Yours by Tessa Bailey
I’m not a huge Tessa Bailey fan. However, this seems like it could be a fun, quick read for the time around Valentine’s Day. This book will be the first book in a new duology by Tessa Bailey. It doesn’t surprise me that she is releasing a new duology after the success of It Happened One Summer. That duology was only average for me, so I’m hoping that I will like this duology better than her previous one. Secretly Yours appears to be an opposites attract/childhood friends romance which takes place at a vineyard.
The True Love Experiment by Christina Lauren*
I received an e-ARC of The True Love Experiment via NetGalley. Even though this book won’t be released until May, I like to read books that I receive on NetGalley quickly in order to keep my review rating high on the website. I am also excited to read this in January during the premiere of The Bachelor. I’m not too invested in the current Bachelor season so far, but the synopsis of this book has a similar feel as it focuses on a filmmaker who casts a romance author as the new lead for a reality dating show.
What books do you plan to read in February?
*ARC was obtained via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
This month, I started off the year strong by reading the most books that I have read in a month in quite awhile. This month, I focused on reading one new release, as well as some other books which have been on my TBR. Overall, I would describe my reading month as average. While I didn’t have any one star books, I didn’t have any five star books either. Additionally, I found some books that I was really excited to read were too hyped up for me before I read them. Below, I included some of my monthly reading statistics:
Books Read: 6
Number of Pages Read: 2,222 pages
Average Rating: 3 stars
Now, onto the books! Any book with a review will be linked to the book’s title.
I was not a huge fan of the debut book by Elena Armas, The Spanish Love Deception, but I hoped to see a decrease in the amount of cringeworthy scenes and dialogue in comparison to the author’s first book. Unfortunately, many of the aspects which I did not enjoy from the first book which I read by Elena Armas also appeared in The American Roommate Experiment. I found the characters to be inconsistent, the plot to be repetitive, and the dialogue to be incredibly cringeworthy. I have The American Roommate Experiment 2.5 out of 5 stars.
Love & Other Words by Christina Lauren
While Christina Lauren can be hit-or-miss for me, I went into Love & Other Words with high expectations because this book is extremely popular. While there were some elements that this story that I enjoyed, such as the dual timeline, the ending brought down my rating. At the end of the book, there is a major plot point which occurs, but then the story ends too quickly to process the emotional impact of that reveal. Since this event caused the two love interests to stop speaking for around a decade, I think this aspect of the plot needed more of a resolution. I gave Love & Other Words 3.5 out of 5 stars.
Ship Wrecked by Olivia Dade
I want to love books by Olivia Dade, but they often fall flat for me. Unfortunately, my experience with Ship Wrecked as similar to my experiences reading the first two books in the Spoiler Alert series. While I did enjoy the characters in this novel, particularly Maria, the female protagonist, there were several aspects which I did not enjoy. The pacing of this novel is off and would have benefitted from a different structure, such as a dual timeline, to keep up the energy throughout the story. Additionally, while I liked the characters, I didn’t fully believe in their relationship, which I need to be in order to enjoy a romance book. I gave Ship Wrecked 2.5 out of 5 stars.
I was a huge fan of The Cruel Prince series, so I was hopeful to enjoy The Stolen Heir. However, I was also wary because sometimes series continuation books can lack the magic of the original series. I think The Stolen Heir has the potential to have an interesting conclusion in the second book of the duology, but the first book wasn’t interesting enough on its own. The Cruel Prince is a character-driven story which focuses on court politics. Additionally, it possesses many twists and turns. The Stolen Heir, on the other hand, was primarily adventure-driven with one predictable twist at the end of the story. While it was a decent book, it didn’t live up to the original series for me. I gave The Stolen Heir 3 out of 5 stars.
I’m a huge fan of the Lore Olympus series so I enjoyed re-reading the first 25 episodes which are featured in the first published book of the series. For me, the major standout for Lore Olympus is the beautiful artwork which uses color beautifully. That being said, the story itself featured in the first book feels incomplete as it ends with many unfinished plot points. I give Lore Olympus, Volume One four out of five stars.
Every Summer After by Carley Fortune
I was eager to read Every Summer After as I recently read Love & Other Words which often draw many comparisons from readers. Plot-wise and story structure-wise, I did find Every Summer After and Love & Other Words to have striking similarities, which I will detail in an upcoming Battle of the Books post. That being said, I did enjoy the realistic characters in Every Summer After as well as the writing style. However, I found the beginning to move slowly and I wasn’t a huge fan of the twist at the end of the novel, as it seemed very inconsistent with the characters inside the novel, despite the heavy foreshadowing. I give Every Summer After four out of five stars.
Favorite Book: Every Summer After
Least Favorite Book: The American Roommate Experiment / Ship Wrecked
This year, I read 39 books, which was over my reading goal of 24 books. Overall, I enjoyed many of the books that I read in 2022, especially some of the series that I read. Here’s everything that I read in 2022 (any book with a review will be linked to the book’s title):
The Wall of Winnipeg by Mariana Zapata
An Offer from a Gentleman by Julia Quinn (read 2x)
Goodreads provides a good general sense of your reading year. I have been logging my Goodreads Challenge since 2016 and I always look forward to seeing my statistics at the end of the year. Here are my statistics for 2022:
Looking at my statistics, one thing that I immediately notice is the pages read. I recently did my StoryGraph wrap-up and I noticed that StoryGraph and Goodreads each counted a different total number of pages that I read. I think this falls on me though: I don’t pay particular attention to which edition I select when I mark a book as read. Different editions can have a different number of pages, so this is most likely the reasons these numbers differ. Either way, I was happy to surpass my reading goal of 24 books by reading 39 books during 2022!
This year I read three novellas, each written by Ali Hazelwood, so I suspected that one of these books would rank as my shortest book this year.As for the longest book, I read many Sarah J. Maas books so I assumed one of them would take the title. However, I wasn’t sure iif it would be Kingdom of Ash or a book in the Crescent City series. Since I typically read books around 429 pages according to Goodreads, it’s interesting to see that my longest book of the year was twice as large as books that I normally read.
The A Court of Thorns of Roses series has made a resurgence due to BookTok, so it makes since that it was the most shelved book out of the books that I read this year. I haven’t heard much surrounding Josh and Gemma Make a Baby on social media, so it isn’t too surprising to see it as one of my least shelved books this year.
Like I mentioned earlier, I am never surprised to see an A Court of Thorns and Roses book on my list due to its resurgence in popularity. As a result, it doesn’t surprise me that A Court of Mist and Fury was the highest rated out of books that I read as A Court of Mist and Fury is typically regarded as the favorite books by fans of the series.
StoryGraph has quickly become one of my favorite book tracking websites as it does provide statistics available year round as opposed to only during an end of the year review. I like how StoryGraph uses a lot of stats besides numbers of books or page numbers to give a better sense of the style of books that you read in a year, for example, by tracking the moods and pacing of books that you read. Here are my statistics for 2022:
During 2022, I set my reading goal at 24 books so I would need to average at least 2 books per month. I was happy to surpass my reading goal by reading 39 books this year. Looking at my goal, it made me decide to try and read 36 books in 2023, so I need to read on average three books per month. I believe I met my reading goal back in June, so I read more books in the first half of the year than in the second half of the year.
Looking at my reading moods is one of my favorite features on StoryGraph and I always find it to be extremely accurate when I review the books that I read in a year. It doesn’t surprise me that lighthearted is the biggest part of my graph. Most of the books which I read this year would be classified as romance or romantic comedy, so it makes sense that it makes up the largest part of my graph. I am also not surprised emotional is a large part of my graph. I prefer contemporary romance books that do have an “emotional” element. Additionally, I read a lot of Sarah J. Maas books this year, which also have many emotional scenes. I do believe reading many Sarah J. Maas books can be attributed to adventurous and dark being on my graph. I read every book from the Throne of Glass series this year which is a huge adventure with several dark elements.
As for pacing, I definitely agree with my results. Slow is my smallest part of my graph, which I think it probably related to The Wall of Winnipeg by Mariana Zapata is the slowest of slow burn romances. For the “fast” part of the graph, I feel like this is probably due to reading three of Ali Hazelwood’s novellas released this year which were only a little over one hundred pages each, so the plots moved quickly. For pacing, I would say reading books at a medium pace are my favorite, so I am not surprised to see that as my largest category.
My page number stats are a little different than usual due to the types of books that I read this year. My largest category is typically 300-499, however, it usually occupies more of my graph. Like I mentioned earlier, I read many Sarah J. Maas books this year and her books can easily tip over 500 pages, so I think that accounts for a large portion of the 500+ category. Also, as I mentioned earlier, I read three novellas by Ali Hazelwood, which most likely accounts for the less than 300 pages category.
Recently, I discussed my most read authors of the year on my blog. While I knew I read a lot of Sarah J. Maas this year, I didn’t quite realize how much I read by Sarah J. Maas this year. In 2022, I read all of the books in the Throne of Glass series (except for book one), both Crescent City books, and I reread some books in the A Court of Thorns and Roses series. That being said, I am still shocked that I read double the number of books compared to the second author on my list. One of the authors on this list that really surprises me is Ali Hazelwood. I wasn’t a huge fan of her debut book, The Love Hypothesis, but I wanted to see if I enjoyed her other books. I would say my favorite by Ali Hazelwood this year was Love on the Brain, her second full-length novels, which appears on my favorites list of 2022.
Like I mentioned earlier, romance is typically my most read genre, so it doesn’t surprise me that it is the highest read genre for 2022. Looking at these statistics, I think this probably takes some sub-genres in account to because romance looks to be about 37 books. I did read 39 books in all, but I wouldn’t necessarily classify each book that I read into that genre. For example, the Throne of Glass series, does have romance, but I would primarily classify that series as fantasy.
This statistic isn’t necessarily accurate for me as I didn’t add some of my early reads of the year until March. This year, I want to make sure I am adding books and updating them frequently on StoryGraph to get the most accurate data for this category. However, I do like to see the trends of this graph, which is accurate to my reading year as I did read more books and pages in the beginning of the year compared to the end of the year.
I really like how StoryGraph incorporated these statistics into the end of the year review. I always like to look at new-to-me authors, so it was interesting to see that nine of the books that I read this year were by authors that I hadn’t read in the past. I also found it interesting that 30 books that I read were part of a series. I have noticed recently there has been in an increase ins contemporary companion series, so combined with fantasy series that I read this year, it made my total higher than I was normally expect.
I knew Sarah J. Maas would have my longest book of the year, but I wasn’t sure if it would be Kingdom of Ash or one of the Crescent City books. It’s hard to believe that my longest book of the year and my shortest book of the year accounted for a little over 1,000 pages of my 17,000 pages read!
A new year means new books to read! Here are the three books that I hope to read in January:
The Stolen Heir by Holly Black
The Stolen Heir is the first book in a new duology by Holly Black which follows some characters originally introduced in The Cruel Prince. This duology will take place eight years after the ending of The Queen of Nothing and follows Suren, who was the child queen of the Court of Teeth, after she escaped to the human world. However, Suren soon is tracked down, but is saved by Prince Oak, who was Jude’s younger brother in the original series.
Overall, I really enjoyed the The Cruel Prince series, although I was slightly disappointed by the final book in the series. That being said, the first two books in that series ended up on my favorites list, so I’m hoping The Stolen Heir will fall more in line with those books. That being said, there’s always some nervousness when a new book is released in a series long after the original, as readers don’t want it to ruin the original series. Regardless, I am very curious about this book and I hope to read it when it is released early in the new year.
Lore Olympus Volume One by Rachel Smythe
Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe is a graphic novel retelling of Hades and Persephone which has a more modern setting. I read some of Lore Olympus on WebToons, where it was originally published, and absolutely loved it. I really love Rachel Smythe’s drawing style and her use of colors throughout the story. When I saw it was published in book form, I knew that I had to add it to my collection. This book features the first 25 episodes of the online comic, as well as a short story exclusive to the print addition, so I’m excited to reread this story which I love and see some new content.
Love & Other Words by Christina Lauren
I have been disappointed with Christina Lauren’s recent releases, however I have heard a lot of positive reviews for Love & Other Words. I have also heard many comparisons between this book and Every Summer After by Carley Fortune, which I also hope to read in 2023. Love & Other Words follows Macy and Elliot, who have a second chance romance. Some reservations that I have with this book is that it is told in different time lines to show their past relationship and the current interactions and the second chance romance trope, and this type of writing and this trope aren’t always my favorite to read.
Recently, I discussed my reading goals for 2023. Today, I will be discussing my blog goals for 2023. Here are my top four goals:
Goal #1: Complete Blogentine’s Day.
My first goal for my blog in 2023 is doing Blogentine’s Day. In the past, I have written fourteen posts for the first fourteen days of February. I didn’t do Blogentine’s Day this past year, but it is something that I have always enjoyed writing for my blog. I have already started planning out my posts for Blogentine’s Day, so I’m hoping that my early planning will make writing that many posts at the beginning of the year less stressful.
Goal #2: Complete Blogmas.
On my blog, Blogmas lasts all 31 days of December. I am almost finished with Blogmas this year and it was so much fun to review recent books that I’ve read and to reflect on my reading this past year. Like with Blogentine’s Day, Blogmas can take a lot of planning. I didn’t plan as early as I typically do this year, so I had to do a lot of writing during the month of December, which can add a lot of pressure since it is such a busy time of the year. As a result, it is my goal to start planning this month-long celebration on my blog a little sooner than I did this year.
Goal #3: Keep up with monthly TBRs and reading wrap-ups.
In the past on my blog, I loved doing monthly TBRs and wrap-ups to keep track of what I read each month and to reflect on whether or not I stuck to my TBR. How many books I read in a month can greatly fluctuate, so even if it isn’t monthly wrap-ups, I at least want to do seasonal wrap-ups of books that I have read.
Goal #4: Review more types of media.
So many books are being turned into movies during 2023 that I want to start reviewing more types of media aside from books on my blog. I love watching book-to-movie, or more often now, books-to-streaming series, so I would love to write comparisons between books and movies as well as reviewing the books and media content separately.
Beauty and the Bean Boots 