20 Young Adult Books Still on My Spring 2026 Reading List

YA Books Still on My Spring 2025 Reading List

20 Young Adult Books Still on My Spring 2026 Reading List

This spring has been an incredibly rough season. From personal tragedy to unexpected home repairs, I feel like nothing in my life has gone as planned. Reading-wise, I’m way behind. There’s just no other way to say it. It takes me longer to read a book right now, and some things are just too hard to read in the aftermath of losing my dad.

These are the books I agreed to review this spring and just haven’t been able to get to yet. I want to read all of them. (I’m pretty careful about what I accept for review.) … Continue reading

April 2026 Reading Recap

April 2026 Reading Recap

April 2026 Reading Recap block

This month began with services for my dad’s passing and our first Easter without him. Every day is still strange, like we’re navigating around unexpected holes he used to fill. The cat continues to hold on– we’re having real success with his medications at the moment. Fingers crossed that we’ll make it at least through the end of the school year with him feeling well. Truthfully, we’ll enjoy every good day he can give us before we say another painful goodbye.

In terms of my reading life, by the end of the month, I felt much more in the swing of things. I’m still reading much more slowly than usual, but catching up as best I can with the reviews I promised. I’ll have a spring reading list post up soon, and at … Continue reading

March 2026 Reading Recap

March 2026 Reading Recap

March 2026 Reading Recap

Trigger warning: pet illness and death of a parent.

Well, March started out peacefully, but it really went out with a bang for my family. On March 21, we spent the day at the emergency vet with a very sick cat, who we learned has cancer. We brought him home with the intention of trying to keep him comfortable for a few days while we said goodbye. Within a couple of days, he was responding well to the medication and doing a lot better.

And then my dad passed away suddenly that Monday night.

Our household is perhaps a little bit unusual in that it includes my parents, my partner, … Continue reading

February 2026 Reading Recap

February 2026 Reading Recap

February 2026 Reading Recap

LOL. After a couple of months of perfectly timed recap posts, here I am, nearing the end of March, finally looking back at what I read in February. Falling behind was bound to happen eventually.

February was a busy month. I ended up starting a new job, which has required some reorganizing in the other areas of my life. It’s been really cool, though. Prior to this, I worked primarily from home doing freelance writing. This puts me in an office and in connection with a lot of people for 10-15 hours per week. The change in what’s required of me in terms of social energy has taken some time to acclimate to, but I find I really enjoy the work. I’m also enjoying connecting with … Continue reading

November 2025 Reading Recap

November 2025 Reading Recap

November 2025 Reading Recap

LOOK AT THIS. It’s the last day of November, and I’m posting a monthly reading recap. Cue the choir and toss the confetti because this is probably never going to happen again. Ha!

I feel pretty proud of my reading this month. While I did not come close to October’s 28 books, I read 20 titles, which still feels pretty good. I read over 4000 pages and listened to almost 36 hours of audiobooks. It was a great month.

I started the month really behind on books I’d committed to review. As of my writing this, I’ve got one more book to review that came out in October and one more … Continue reading

Summer 2025 Backlist Reading Check-in and Life Update

Summer 2025 Backlist Reading Check-in

Summer 2025 Backlist Reading Check-in and Life Update

Summer is always an odd season for my reading life. Since I do most of my reading in the evenings, it never seems to me like summer will change all that much, but somehow, it does. This summer I had the added complication of having surgery early in June. It sounded like the recovery would be pretty quick and easy, but my experience didn’t quite line up with my expectations there, either.

Which mostly meant that I read far fewer books in June than I anticipated. That was okay, though. It was good to slow down. I made up for lost time in July.

I’ve continued … Continue reading