What I Read in January

I finished 5 books in January 2025, which is a little less than average for the year but feels like a good start, since I normally binge a bunch during summer.

The first was Cleat Cute by Meryl Wilsner - finished it on New Year’s Day. I guess if everyone started the year with lesbian soccer smut the world would be pretty different. This was cute and fun and very graphic. When I started branching out to read some smutty romance, this was recommended a bunch, and it was on hold for months. It goes along with a lot of tropes, subverts a few, and has a good time along the way. There was a big “I can’t belive she’s going to do this” moment toward the end that ended up fine. If you like soccer and/or lesbians and are into very detailed sex scenes, you’ll love this. Otherwise you probably will not finish the first few chapters.

I read The Perfect Couple by Elin Hilderbrand as a mystery, without realizing it was part of a romance series, or that it was out as a Netflix show. It was fine. It wasn’t a great mystery, and a month after finishing it I remember almost nothing about what happened, but I enjoyed reading it.

I really don’t read this much romance, especially all at once, but sometimes that’s how the holds list works at the library. I finished Emily Henry’s Funny Story next. This is almost a parody in how tropey it is, but there was enough unexpected stuff to keep it interesting, and some of the supporting characters were really fun. This is candy, but I enjoyed it.

I got What The Woods Took by Courtney Gould as a “read this in the Kindle app instead of scrolling” book, and ended up really enjoying it. More queer coming of age horror stories with interesting monsters, please.

I didn’t finish anything else for over a week. I have a lot of things in progress, the inauguration happened, I got a Steam Deck and started playing more games.

Eleanor picked up The Mist as her Christmas book. I hadn’t read it in 20 years or so, so I re-read it as bedtime reading. I had forgotten most of the details, and it felt like it was as good as I remember. If it’s been a while, I recommend going back to early King, some really good stuff there.

That’s it for January. I have 9 technically in progress, but a few of those are stalled. I should have 5 of them finished in the first week or two of February, so next month’s post should have more to it.