Happy Wednesday, book friends! I was off work on Monday to handle life maintenance after a long weekend of hiking and relaxing with a friend. In my imagination, the trip would be part long hikes, part eating delicious food, and part reading quietly in a new location. 

In reality, we did the first two things but wound up playing a game called Trash Pandas, then watching the entire first season of Emily in Paris instead. That show is a bonkers train wreck yet somehow very entertaining. 

I did a bit of light reading in the mornings, which was kind of weird without Azula there to snuggle with me, but otherwise not much reading happened this weekend. 

Our trip wound up being exactly what I needed regardless. Time with your best and oldest friend almost always is. 

Even if we didn’t spend as much time reading as we have on previous trips, I still had plenty of driving time to finish a few audiobooks. So, a net positive reading weekend regardless! 

(Full disclosure: Links to specific books are Bookshop.org affiliate links). 

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Recent Reads

I finally finished Jasmine Guillory’s modern Beauty and the Beast retelling, By the Book. If the fact that it took me well over a month to listen to didn’t clue you in, this one did not work for me. I finished it because I thought it satisfied one of the Read Harder challenge prompts, but when I went to tick off the box, I realized I’d misremembered. Ugh. You can read my full review of why it didn’t work for me here: “By the Book” Isn’t My Fairy Tale Ending.

In a somewhat shameless effort to catch up on my Goodreads goal, I grabbed a novella I knew I could finish on the drive for my next audio pick. The Sweetest Connection is the third book in an airport novella series by Denise Williams. I really enjoyed her other book, The Fastest Way to Fall, so I knew I needed to read this friends-to-lovers story. 

As far as romance novellas go, I liked this one pretty well. The pacing felt right, and the moves between past and present allowed the tension and relationship to build pretty effectively for the small amount of space a novella affords. I’m not sure if I’ll read the other two books in the series, since I went in hard by starting with my genre krytptonite. But, we’ll see how I’m feeling when my next audiobook credit rolls around!

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Current Reads

Not much has changed here, save that I don’t have a current audiobook listen anymore. I’m still theoretically reading Witchcraft Therapy and Radical Radiance, though not making a ton of headway. I also started Initiated: Memoir of a Witch while away on my trip. The cover is just so gorgeous, I couldn’t resist picking it up any longer even if my nonfiction dance card is quite full. 

Fiction wise, I’m still working through two different romances, No Funny Business (contemporary) and A Lady for a Duke (regency). I’m enjoying both of them, but I’ve been busy with other things the last week so haven’t had much time or drive to read. 

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Up Next & On to You

I think I’ve got quite enough books going at the moment, so I’m not even remotely ready to think about what’s next! Not to mention, we’re approaching the release date for the new Sims 4 expansion, High School Years, so I’m being realistic about where my time will go once that drops. 

What about you, book friends? What have you been reading lately, and how is it treating you? 

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