Things are getting a bit more active on my blog, there’s a five star review of Legendborn if you missed it and I rounded up a selection of 2021 releases for the first of my Popsugar Reading Challenge inspired posts. Next week, afrofuturism!

I’ve been reading festively this week and am writing this in a sequinned Christmas jumper and antlers on my head with Christmas songs in the background. Yup, I’m not letting a pandemic get in the way of festive cheer! Had my office party today which was really just an hour off work to chat on Teams whilst having a drink.

Scully the Labrador in winter woods

I read Alice Oseman’s This Winter which is the perfect book to read if you sometimes feel like the holidays are just too much to cope with. It’s set before Solitaire and is Charlie’s first Christmas after being diagnosed with an eating disorder. With a serious message but overall extremely sweet, I recommend the new edition which Alice has illustrated.

Then I read Someday at Christmas by Lizzie Byron, Tanya Byrne’s adult romance pen name. This is a great body positive romance without it being about that, it’s warm and fuzzy just as you’d want a festive romance. The premise is really quite relevant with the demise of the high street lately, a department store is struggling to stay afloat and the grandson steps in to try and turn things round. The main character works at a make-up counter, so there is a lot about make-up which I kinda skipped over, but otherwise it was exactly the type of read I like at this time of year.

Now I’m reading Adam Kay’s Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas which is making me laugh, even if sometimes in a morbid way. Once I’m done with that I think I’m going to start with next year’s review copies, which seem to have started arriving all of a sudden.