WWW Wednesday: January 15th, 2025

January 15, 2025 kerrimcbooknerd4 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:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
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

Babylonia by Costanza Casati: I just started this historical fiction novel, but I can already tell I’m going to enjoy it. It starts with our main character grifting a man out of some gold in exchange for her helping to save his life. Get that coin, girl! I’m loving the writing style, the setting, and the interesting characters. I’m excited to keep reading! It seems like it’s going to bloody and political and right up my alley.
One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig: I’m re-reading this fantasy novel as a part of another Fable book club. I had forgotten how much I loved this story! The atmosphere, the characters, the hint of romance… it’s really scratching a lot of my itches. The audiobook is pretty great, as well, so I’m glad I decided to go that route with my re-read. I see myself reading the sequel in the very near future.

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book reviews

Book Review: The Ferryman by Justin Cronin

January 13, 2025 kerrimcbooknerdLeave a comment

Title: The Ferryman
Author: Justin Cronin
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Genre: Science Fiction/Dystopian
Age Group: Adult
Content/Trigger Warnings: Graphic violence, child death, parental loss, grief, trauma, blood, assault
Book Links: Bookshop::B&N::Amazon::Goodreads

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Passage comes a riveting standalone novel about a group of survivors on a hidden island utopia–where the truth isn’t what it seems.

Founded by a mysterious genius, the archipelago of Prospera lies hidden from the horrors of a deteriorating outside world. In this island paradise, Prospera’s lucky citizens enjoy long, fulfilling lives until the monitors embedded in their forearms, meant to measure their physical health and psychological well-being, fall below 10 percent. Then they retire themselves, embarking on a ferry ride to the island known as the Nursery, where their failing bodies are renewed, their memories are wiped clean, and they are readied to restart life afresh.

Proctor Bennett, of the Department of Social Contracts, has a satisfying career as a ferryman, gently shepherding people through the retirement process–and, when necessary, enforcing it. But all is not well with Proctor. For one thing, he’s been dreaming–which is supposed to be impossible in Prospera. For another, his monitor percentage has begun to drop alarmingly fast. And then comes the day he is summoned to retire his own father, who gives him a disturbing and cryptic message before being wrestled onto the ferry.

Meanwhile, something is stirring. The Support Staff, ordinary men and women who provide the labor to keep Prospera running, have begun to question their place in the social order. Unrest is building, and there are rumors spreading of a resistance group–known as “Arrivalists”–who may be fomenting revolution.

Soon Proctor finds himself questioning everything he once believed, entangled with a much bigger cause than he realized–and on a desperate mission to uncover the truth.

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First Lines Friday: January 10th, 2025

January 10, 2025 kerrimcbooknerd1 Comment

First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines? If you want to make your own post, feel free to use or edit the banner above, and follow the rules below:

Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open to the first page
Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first
Finally… reveal the book!

If you’re using Twitter, don’t forget to use #FirstLinesFridays!

Hello, reader!

It’s time for my first First Lines Friday of 2025! I miss doing this particular bookish meme because I do love a guessing game. This week, I’m featuring one of my current reads that has proven to be quite the ride. It’s a thriller that has completely sucked me in and I’m so eager to see how it ends.

Now, let’s see if the first lines will be intriguing enough to pull you in, as well.

The Line(s):

“She looks at the body of her mother, sprawled in the hallway. If she turns her head, she will see her father, slumped in his chair by the fireplace in the next room, one fingertip still touching the side of a glass in which his whiskey, the ice long melted, still sits.”

The Build Up:

The Reveal:

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bookmark chat

25 Books In 2025

January 8, 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!

The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein – Goodreads::StoryGraph
Caliban’s War by James S.A. Corey – Goodreads::StoryGraph
Child of the Dream by Sharon Robinson – Goodreads::StoryGraph
A Deal with the Elf King by Elise Kova – Goodreads::StoryGraph
Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender – Goodreads::StoryGraph

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book reviews

Book Review: Missing Clarissa by Ripley Jones

January 6, 2025 kerrimcbooknerdLeave a comment

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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book discussion · bookmark chat

My Top 5 Reads of 2024

January 4, 2025January 4, 2025 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.

WWW Wednesday: January 1st, 2025

January 1, 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:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
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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5 on my tbr

#5OnMyTBR – 2024 Titles You Didn’t Get To

December 30, 2024 kerrimcbooknerd2 Comments

#5OnMyTBR is a bookish meme hosted by E. @ Local Bee Hunter’s Nook where you chose five books from your to-be-read pile that fit that week’s theme. If you’d like more info, head over to the announcement post!

Hello, reader!

I hope everyone is enjoying their holidays. This is a weird time of year where I’m still working (yay, healthcare) but the world feels like it’s in a liminal space, haha. It’s also a time to reflect on the year that has past, which lends itself well to this week’s 5 On My TBR theme. We’re talking all about books I meant to read in 2024. There were… a lot of books I meant to read this past year that never got picked up, so I’m deciding to focus on five 2024 releases that I really wanted to read, but never did. Trust me, even that reduced list could go on for ages 😅😂

That being said, let’s dive in!

#1. The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

I got this book from Book of the Month Club because of two reasons. Number one, I kept seeing this book everywhere! People were talking about this one all over the bookish internet and I jumped on the hype train. Number two, I love the cover. I mean… look at it! It just gives off a dark, woodsy vibe that has me intrigued. And, according to the synopsis, this will be a “thrilling drama”, and I need more thrilling reads in my life right now. Count me in!

#2. Wisteria by Adalyn Grace

I’ve found recently that YA fantasy is very hit or miss for me. I either fall in love with the story or can barely force myself through the book. Which, hey, I’m 42 so decidedly not the target audience. But this series? This series has absolutely captured my imagination. It’s a combination of beautiful writing, fascinating characters, and love stories that don’t make me want to roll my eyes. I’m eager to give this one a read and finish out the series.

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bbnya spotlight

BBNYA Semi-Finalist Spotlight 2024: Wrath of the Land by Oli Jacobs

December 4, 2024 kerrimcbooknerdLeave a comment

Hello, reader!

Today on the blog, I’m helping the Book Bloggers’ Novel of the Year Award (BBNYA) spotlight all the books that made it to the semi-finals! We had an incredible line up of novels in 2024, which was very exciting for me as a panelist. My TBR grew exponentially just from reading my assigned excerpts! So, even though I didn’t delve into every semi-finalist, they all deserve a shout-out because the competition was tough this year.

But what is BBNYA, exactly? It is a yearly competition where book bloggers from all over the world read and score books written by indie authors, ending with 16 finalists and one overall winner. It’s a way to celebrate indie novels, which don’t get nearly enough love, and hopefully bring more attention to indie authors and indie publishing in general.

If you want some more information about BBNYA, check out the BBNYA Website https://www.bbnya.com/ or take a peek over on Twitter @BBNYA_Official. BBNYA is brought to you in association with the @Foliosociety (if you love beautiful books, you NEED to check out their website!) and the book blogger support group @The_WriteReads.

Our final spotlight is shining on a horror novel that sounds eerie: Wrath of the Land by Oli Jacobs!