Hello There,

Been a while hasn’t it? I had a lot of questions to answer for myself and in order to do so I had to take a bit of a break.

Now, I’m super excited to tell you that I’m back and feel more set up and ready to create and the first thing I did was take stock of my goals for 2025 and see how far I’d gotten. I wanted to hit 50 youtube subscribers, I’m at 47, so I feel pretty good about that honestly.

I wanted to read 80 books this year, and so far I’m crushing that with 110 books, but this number is still really low compared to the two previous years, but this year had a LOT more DNF’s than the previous two. Not sure if that means the books I’m picking up haven’t been for me, or if I’ve been lower on patience than usual…

I did a 25 for 25, and wanted to read books that I own, because at last count, we were at 500 unread novels in my home. Which doesn’t really bother me? but kind of annoys me, because my read books are in the closet to make room for the unread books, and I haven’t really touched them. At the middle of November, I was at 16 books, and thought it was something I was going to be able to complete.

So I did a whole video talking about the amount of books I needed in order to complete this quest, which was wrong because I had the count at 13 and it was really 16, so you win some and ya lose some.

The first three books that I needed to read were Clown in A Cornfield by Adam Cesare (Which I attempted to read 2 times this year, 3rd times the charm!) I also annotated it, without tabs, and I really enjoyed the experience, I can see myself annotating more in the future for sure. I gave it 🥕🥕🥕.75, unsure if I will continue the series or not (there are 4 novels).

Essentially at the same time, I finished The Wrong Chemistry by Carolyn Keene. I was so excited to get another Case Files off my shelves, but GOD Ned gets on my last nerve. I gave this one 🥕🥕🥕 I enjoyed it, but literally I wanted to drop Ned off a cliff. I also completed the audiobook of Alias Emma by Ava Glass, which was a spy thriller. Something I generally don’t read, but I did enjoy my time, I’m not sure if I would be continuing the series or not, I would up giving it 🥕🥕🥕.25. This brings me up to 19 books out of 25.

After realizing my counting error, I went back to my TBR and reworked it a bit, removed books that would take me over, and DNF’ed one that I knew just wasn’t going to be for me. The next round of books I started are: Undead Girl Gang by Lily Anderson, this book has been on my shelf for a LONG TIME, and I just realized that its the same author as Showstopper (which was an arc I was dying to read.) Are You Sara? by S. C. Lalli. I’m annotating this novel, and I’m currently 120 pages in. Rounding out this list is Fierce Fairytales by Nikita Gill, a poetry collection.

At the same time, I’m currently listening to West Heart Kill by Dann McDorman, which is another book on my 25 owned books TBR, and an arc releasing on the 20th of January; Fruit of the Flesh by I.V. Ophelia. I’ll probably finish that this week as I’m 74% in. I’m enjoying my time so far, but it’s different from what I expected.

With less than a week left in the month of December, I’m unsure if I’ll be able to complete any more novels on the December Scramble but I am extremely excited to see where reading takes me in 2026. I’ve gotten some ideas together for the new year and once I have that finalized I can’t wait to share them with you.

Are you looking forward to reading anything in 2026? Any changes in your reading goals for the new year? Tell me about it below!

Until Next Time,

Gabs

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