I do this post every year. Every year I look back at how hopeful I was, how excited I was to get to all these books and every year I disappoint myself hahaha. Let’s look at what I did manage to read from my 2023 list. Now 9/24 ain’t bad.

If you would like to read the 2023 list beforehand – you can read it here >>>

If you would like to read my list of 2024 hopefuls – you can read it here >>>

I am going to categorise this post into 3 parts.

• Books I have read
• Books I haven’t read but still want to
• Books I haven’t read and no longer want to

Books I Have Read

Rating: 4 stars

Thoughts: A lot of people did not enjoy this book and while I definitely agree it is one of her more far-fetched, suspend your disbelief stories – I really enjoyed it!

Rating: 4 stars

Thoughts: Overall, a solid end to a solid series. Unfortunately, the ending was spoiled for me on TikTok so this book didn’t impact me as much as it should of.

Rating: DNF

Thoughts: So turns out we all knew it was one of his weaker novels and I have to agree. While the world was super interesting and I enjoyed the conversations on politics and religion. The pacing was just so incredibly slow that I was just so bored!

Rating: 4 stars

Thoughts: So my original goal was to read both volumes but I am still counting volume 1 towards this. Overall, I loved Nausicaa as a character, I loved the art-style but I found the story to be a bit confusing sometimes.

Thoughts: 5 stars!

Rating: The second book I read this year! Such an incredible book Janice Hallett literally doesn’t miss. Every book of hers is gold! I was up until 1am reading this book as I needed to know how it ended and I couldn’t face doing a whole day of work before finding out!

Rating: 3 stars

Thoughts: This was an interesting read for me as I had previously listened to a radio dramatisation of the novel so I was enjoying reading the original work and seeing how the two differed.

Rating: 3 stars

Thoughts: This was a very average read for me. Due to how popular it was I was really excited to see what all the hype was about. But the whole story felt very surface level. I just wanted more from this story.

Rating: 5 stars!

Thoughts: My friend Morgan has asked me to read this book for the entire year I have known them. I also want to use this moment to formally apologising to Morgan for taking a whole year to read this amazing book. I understand the hype completely. This book deserves all the praise!

Ratings: 5 stars!

Thoughts: Another book that I can’t believe it took me so long to read. BookTwitter and BookTok did not LIE when they said how amazing this book was. The layers to the story, the characters, the chemistry, the fight scenes. UGHHHH it was amazing!

Books I Haven’t Read but Still Want To

Plot for Book 1: An orphan’s life is harsh—and often short—in the mysterious island city of Camorr. But young Locke Lamora dodges death and slavery, becoming a thief under the tutelage of a gifted con artist. As leader of the band of light-fingered brothers known as the Gentleman Bastards, Locke is soon infamous, fooling even the underworld’s most feared ruler. But in the shadows lurks someone still more ambitious and deadly. Faced with a bloody coup that threatens to destroy everyone and everything that holds meaning in his mercenary life, Locke vows to beat the enemy at his own brutal game—or die trying.

I was really hoping to get to this book this year but unfortunately I just didn’t round to it. I think due to the sheer size of the book I just wanted to find the right time to read it.

Plot of Book 1: The Alexandrian Society, caretakers of lost knowledge from the greatest civilizations of antiquity, are the foremost secret society of magical academicians in the world. Those who earn a place among the Alexandrians will secure a life of wealth, power, and prestige beyond their wildest dreams, and each decade, only the six most uniquely talented magicians are selected to be considered for initiation. Enter the latest round of six: Libby Rhodes and Nico de Varona, unwilling halves of an unfathomable whole, who exert uncanny control over every element of physicality. Reina Mori, a naturalist, who can intuit the language of life itself. Parisa Kamali, a telepath who can traverse the depths of the subconscious, navigating worlds inside the human mind. Callum Nova, an empath easily mistaken for a manipulative illusionist, who can influence the intimate workings of a person’s inner self. Finally, there is Tristan Caine, who can see through illusions to a new structure of reality—an ability so rare that neither he nor his peers can fully grasp its implications. When the candidates are recruited by the mysterious Atlas Blakely, they are told they will have one year to qualify for initiation, during which time they will be permitted preliminary access to the Society’s archives and judged based on their contributions to various subjects of impossibility: time and space, luck and thought, life and death. Five, they are told, will be initiated. One will be eliminated. The six potential initiates will fight to survive the next year of their lives, and if they can prove themselves to be the best among their rivals, most of them will.

Another book I was desperately hoping to read. I ended up reading a completely different Olivie Blake book this year. I think because I found The Atlas Six to be a bit heavy due to the complexity of the story I was trying to find the right time to read it.

Plot for Book 1: The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that can battle the mecha aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall. It doesn’t matter that the girls often die from the mental strain.  When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it’s to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister’s death. But she gets her vengeance in a way nobody expected—she kills him through the psychic link between pilots and emerges from the cockpit unscathed. She is labeled an Iron Widow, a much-feared and much-silenced kind of female pilot who can sacrifice boys to power up Chrysalises instead.​ To tame her unnerving yet invaluable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest and most controversial male pilot in Huaxia​. But now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower so easily. She will miss no opportunity to leverage their combined might and infamy to survive attempt after attempt on her life, until she can figure out exactly why the pilot system works in its misogynist way—and stop more girls from being sacrificed.

So this was a book that I was SO EXCITED for! And this time round it wasn’t down to me just not picking up the book. The author and the publisher decided to push back the publication date from August 2023 to April 2024 which I truly understand why.

Plot for Book 1: At the dawn of their adolescence, on the eve of the summer solstice, four young girls–Helena, Leonie, Niamh and Elle–took the oath to join Her Majesty’s Royal Coven, established by Queen Elizabeth I as a covert government department. Now, decades later, the witch community is still reeling from a civil war and Helena is now the reigning High Priestess of the organization. Yet Helena is the only one of her friend group still enmeshed in the stale bureaucracy of HMRC. Elle is trying to pretend she’s a normal housewife, and Niamh has become a country vet, using her powers to heal sick animals. In what Helena perceives as the deepest betrayal, Leonie has defected to start her own more inclusive and intersectional coven, Diaspora. And now Helena has a bigger problem. A young warlock of extraordinary capabilities has been captured by authorities and seems to threaten the very existence of HMRC. With conflicting beliefs over the best course of action, the four friends must decide where their loyalties lie: with preserving tradition, or doing what is right.

I loved the first book but didn’t get time to read The Shadow Cabinet but Harper Voyager have just announced a prequel to the series focusing on Anne Boleyn which seems super exciting!!! I love historical fantasy!

Plot: One Thursday afternoon in the seniors’ center, a decade-old cold case –their favorite kind– leads the Thursday Murder Club to a local news legend and a murder with no body and no answers. A new foe they call “Viking”, wants Elizabeth to kill former KGB chief Viktor, or he will kill her sweet best friend Joyce. Activist marked for death Ron and psychiatrist Ibrahim chase clues for Viking’s identity, and investigate mob-queen prisoner from last book.

While I didn’t get round to reading it this year I do plan on part audio-booking part reading this in January this year!

Plot: Long ago, following a cataclysm called “The Rupture,” the world was shattered into many floating celestial islands. Known now as Arks, each has developed in distinct ways; each seems to possess its own unique relationship to time, such that nowadays vastly different worlds exist, together but apart. And over all of the Arks the spirit of an omnipotent ancestor abides. Ophelia lives on Anima, an ark where objects have souls. Beneath her worn scarf and thick glasses, the young girl hides the ability to read and communicate with the souls of objects, and the power to travel through mirrors. Her peaceful existence on the Ark of Anima is disrupted when she is promised in marriage to Thorn, from the powerful Dragon clan. Ophelia must leave her family and follow her fiancée to the floating capital on the distant Ark of the Pole. Why has she been chosen? Why must she hide her true identity? Though she doesn’t know it yet, she has become a pawn in a deadly plot.

I had this book literally on my TBR this year but I didn’t have enough time to read it in the month and due to me deciding to read books based on themes I couldn’t transfer it over to the next month 😦 This has been on my TBR for sooooo long.

Plot: The dream chooses the dreamer, not the other way around—and Lazlo Strange, war orphan and junior librarian, has always feared that his dream chose poorly. Since he was five years old he’s been obsessed with the mythic lost city of Weep, but it would take someone bolder than he to cross half the world in search of it. Then a stunning opportunity presents itself, in the person of a hero called the Godslayer and a band of legendary warriors, and he has to seize his chance or lose his dream forever. What happened in Weep two hundred years ago to cut it off from the rest of the world? What exactly did the Godslayer slay that went by the name of god? And what is the mysterious problem he now seeks help in solving? The answers await in Weep, but so do more mysteries—including the blue-skinned goddess who appears in Lazlo’s dreams. How did he dream her before he knew she existed? And if all the gods are dead, why does she seem so real?

Plot: Saved from the brink of death by a mysterious stranger, Constanta is transformed from a medieval peasant into a bride fit for an undying king. But when Dracula draws a cunning aristocrat and a starving artist into his web of passion and deceit, Constanta realizes that her beloved is capable of terrible things. Finding comfort in the arms of her rival consorts, she begins to unravel their husband’s dark secrets. With the lives of everyone she loves on the line, Constanta will have to choose between her own freedom and her love for her husband. But bonds forged by blood can only be broken by death.

So, while I didn’t get round to reading it this year but I do plan on reading it’s companion book, An Education in Malice next January. And I still want to read this one as well but I will be focusing on An Education in Malice.

Plot: A thief. An artist. A acrobat. An actress. While Josefa, Emilie, Hinnah, and Violet seemingly don’t have anything in common, they’re united in one goal: stealing the Rubaiyat, a jewel-encrusted book aboard the RMS Titanic that just might be the golden ticket to solving their problems. But careless mistakes, old grudges, and new romance threaten to jeopardize everything they’ve worked for and put them in incredible danger when tragedy strikes. While the odds of pulling off the heist are slim, the odds of survival are even slimmer . . .

Not sure exactly sure when I will get round to reading this but I still want to.

Plot: When her brother is murdered, a petty thief from the slums of Longhill sets out to discover who killed him and why. But the more she discovers about him, the more she learns about herself, and the truths she finds are more dangerous than knives. Swept up in an intrigue as deep as the roots of Kithamar, where the secrets of the lowest born can sometimes topple thrones, the story Alys chooses will have the power to change everything.

Literally have no idea when I will read this but I really want to. The timing has just been crazy this year.

Plot: In a strange little home built into the branches of a grove of trees, live three robots–fatherly inventor android Giovanni Lawson, a pleasantly sadistic nurse machine, and a small vacuum desperate for love and attention. Victor Lawson, a human, lives there too. They’re a family, hidden and safe.  The day Vic salvages and repairs an unfamiliar android labelled “HAP,” he learns of a shared dark past between Hap and Gio-a past spent hunting humans.  When Hap unwittingly alerts robots from Gio’s former life to their whereabouts, the family is no longer hidden and safe. Gio is captured and taken back to his old laboratory in the City of Electric Dreams. So together, the rest of Vic’s assembled family must journey across an unforgiving and otherworldly country to rescue Gio from decommission, or worse, reprogramming.  Along the way to save Gio, amid conflicted feelings of betrayal and affection for Hap, Vic must decide for himself: Can he accept love with strings attached?

Again, another book I actually had on one of my monthly TBRs but did not get round to reading. This was the only long listed sci-fi book on the Goodreads Choice Awards for this year that I own. And I didn’t read it!!

Books I Haven’t Read and No Longer Want To

Synopsis: The middle ages are seen as a bloodthirsty time of Vikings, saints and kings: a patriarchal society which oppressed and excluded women. But when we dig a little deeper into the truth, we can see that the ‘dark’ ages were anything but. Oxford and BBC historian Janina Ramirez has uncovered countless influential women’s names struck out of historical records, with the word FEMINA annotated beside them. As gatekeepers of the past ordered books to be burnt, artworks to be destroyed, and new versions of myths, legends and historical documents to be produced, our view of history has been manipulated. Only now, through a careful examination of the artefacts, writings and possessions they left behind, are the influential and multifaceted lives of women emerging. Femina goes beyond the official records to uncover the true impact of women like Jadwiga, the only female King in Europe, Margery Kempe, who exploited her image and story to ensure her notoriety, and the Loftus Princess, whose existence gives us clues about the beginnings of Christianity in England. See the medieval world with fresh eyes and discover why these remarkable women were removed from our collective memories.

At the moment this comes down more to I just don’t think I will get down to reading it any time soon. My priorities have changed.

Plot: Khai Diep has no feelings. Well, he feels irritation when people move his things or contentment when ledgers balance down to the penny, but not big, important emotions—like grief. And love. He thinks he’s defective. His family knows better—that his autism means he just processes emotions differently. When he steadfastly avoids relationships, his mother takes matters into her own hands and returns to Vietnam to find him the perfect bride. As a mixed-race girl living in the slums of Ho Chi Minh City, Esme Tran has always felt out of place. When the opportunity arises to come to America and meet a potential husband, she can’t turn it down, thinking this could be the break her family needs. Seducing Khai, however, doesn’t go as planned. Esme’s lessons in love seem to be working…but only on herself. She’s hopelessly smitten with a man who’s convinced he can never return her affection. With Esme’s time in the United States dwindling, Khai is forced to understand he’s been wrong all along. And there’s more than one way to love.

I read this book very early in the year but I just couldn’t get into it so I just don’t think I will pick it back up.