Month: January 2025

25 Books In 2025
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25 Books In 2025

kerrimcbooknerd9 Comments

Hello, reader!

We’re into the second week of 2025 and I haven’t spoken a word about any of my 2025 reading goals. Mostly because I’m trying to go into this year putting as little pressure on my reading life as possible! In that direction, slumps lie, ya know what I mean? Going into the year struggling with a reading slump already feels like not the best time to start making demands of myself when it comes to books.

I do, however, love me a list and, while I was on leave from work for a minor surgery, I decided to make a spreadsheet of all the unread books that I own. I was bored and stuck at home and it seemed like a great idea. That task revealed that I have 375 books that I physically own that I haven’t read! That… feels like a lot 😅 So I decided that I needed to set at least own reading goal in 2025 and that was to read more of my owned TBR instead of getting distracted by flashy, new things.

In the spirit of this goal (and because it’s one of the challenges in my Little Inklings Design planner), I’ve decided that I’m going to do the 25 Books In 2025 reading challenge! And every book on my list is going to be a book from my owned TBR. All the books on my list were chosen at random by using a number generator and my spreadsheet, so there is no rhyme or reason to this at all, haha. Still, I’m excited for all the picks and happy to bring down the, frankly, ridiculous number of unread books that I own.

That being said, let me share which 25 books I’ll be attempting to read in 2025!

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Book Review: Missing Clarissa by Ripley Jones
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Book Review: Missing Clarissa by Ripley Jones

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Title: Missing Clarissa
Author: Ripley Jones
Publisher: Wednesday Books
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Age Group: Young Adult
Content/Trigger Warnings: Physical abuse, violence, sexual assault, sexual harassment, panic attacks/disorder
Book Links: Bookshop::B&N::Amazon::Goodreads

In a gripping novel perfect for fans of Sadie and A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, two best friends start a true crime podcast—only to realize they may have helped a killer in the process.

In August of 1999, dazzlingly popular cheerleader Clarissa Campbell disappears from a party in the woods outside the rural town of Oreville, Washington and is never seen again. The police question her friends, teachers, and the adults who knew her—who all have something to hide. And thanks to Clarissa’s beauty, the mystery captures the attention of the nation. But with no leads and no body, the case soon grows cold. Despite the efforts of internet sleuths and true-crime aficionados, Clarissa is never found—dead or alive.

Over twenty years later, Oreville high-school juniors and best friends Blair and Cameron start a true crime podcast, determined to unravel the story of what—or who—happened to this rural urban legend. In the process they uncover a nest of dirty small-town secrets, the sordid truth of Clarissa’s relationship with her charismatic boyfriend, and a high school art teacher turned small-town figurehead who had a very good reason for wanting Clarissa dead. Such a good reason, in fact, that they might have to make him the highlight of their next episode…

But does an ugly history with a missing girl make him guilty of murder? Or are two teenage girls about to destroy the life of an innocent man—and help the true killer walk free?

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My Top 5 Reads of 2024
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My Top 5 Reads of 2024

kerrimcbooknerd4 Comments

Hello, reader!

We have rolled into 2025 and that means it’s time to look back at my reading from 2024. Quite honestly, I found myself hitting another slump in the summer time just like I did in 2023. Here’s hoping this is not a trend because summer used to be one of my favorite seasons for reading! That being said, I didn’t read nearly as much as I was hoping to in 2024. So, as the year was coming to an end, I couldn’t see myself doing a bunch of individual end-of-year posts but I still wanted to talk about my favorite reads from the past year. Thus this post was born!

Here’s a quick overview of how my reading year went in 2024:

That’s quite the drop from 2023, when I read 86 books, but I also spent most of the first few months in a reading slump and then most of the summer in a similar slump 😅 So over 50 books isn’t half bad! I think I only got that many under my belt because I really started embracing audiobooks in 2024. The fact that I found earbuds that actually fit my tiny, baby ears helped with that, haha. Seriously, though, a good audiobook can elevate a story so much and I’m happy I’ve jumped on this particular train.

The format I’ve kind of stopped loving, though, are e-books. I don’t know what it is, but e-books and I are not grooving these days. I don’t like reading on my phone or my Kindle nearly as much as I used to and I think that it’s because I tend to get a headache even if I’ve only been reading for thirty minutes. My old lady eyes are not loving screens lately so now most of my reads are either physical (still the favorite!) or audiobooks. I don’t know if that will be changing anytime soon, but I’m not ready to give up on e-books all together.

Top 5 Reads of 2024

But enough rambling about my lackluster reading year! Though it was less than I wanted and though it felt very “meh” overall, I had five books that stood out and made me fall in love with reading all over again. All but one are fantasy and the outlier is science fiction. So maybe I should head back to my roots and wallow in my favorite genre for 2025 😂

(I’m not gonna do that because that’s how you miss great reads!)

These books are the ones that reminded me why I love reading and, for that, they deserve a shout out! Here, in no particular order, are my Top 5 Reads of 2024!

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WWW Wednesday: January 1st, 2025
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WWW Wednesday: January 1st, 2025

kerrimcbooknerd3 Comments

It’s time for another WWW Wednesday! This is a bookish meme hosted by Taking on a World of Words where bloggers answer the 3 Ws:

  1. What are you currently reading?
  2. What did you recently finish reading?
  3. What do you think you’ll read next?

If you’d like to learn more about any of these books, click on the cover to be taken to the Goodreads page.

Current Reads

  • No One Can Know by Kate Alice Marshall: We’re beginning 2025 with some dark reads, y’all. I got this book from Book of the Month in December… of 2023, heh. One of my goals this year is to try and read down my BotM backlog so it seemed appropriate to kick my reading year off with one! I know nothing about this book because I like to go into mystery/thrillers that way. But I’ve read the first few chapters and, yup, this is gonna be dark. There’s already been blood and bodies! I’m loving the writing, so I’m excited to continue with this one.
  • The Indifferent Stars Above by Daniel James Brown: To get myself back into the reading groove, I’ve joined a couple of book clubs over on Fable. Also, I have a Fable account now, I guess, haha. I keep taste-testing all these reading trackers (my poor, neglected Storygraph…) because there has to be something better than Goodreads, right? Anyways, one of the book clubs I joined is called the Weirdo Book Club and this book is the pick for January. Didn’t think I’d start off the year reading a non-fiction but the fact that it’s about the Donner Party feels very me. Hmm… that’s a worrying statement 😂 So far, I’m loving the writing because it doesn’t read like a textbook.
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