December 2024 Wrap-Up

Personal Highlights from this month:

• Christmas!!
• New Year’s Eve!!
• Miss R’s 5th-grade class graduated from DARE, and the SRO had a ceremony for them. It was adorable. Each kid got a T-shirt and a certificate. The DARE graduation was followed up by the 5th grade presenting states in the library. Each kid had a state (people were doubled up because the class is big), and they had to convince the person looking at their exhibit to visit that state. Miss R had Nevada, and yes, she made the focus of her presentation Las Vegas…lol.

Blog/Reading Highlights from this month

• I finished The Vampire and The Hunter trilogy. It was an exciting take on Dracula and Frankenstein.
• I started and finished the Fantasy & Forensic series this month. I enjoyed this series and loved how the author combined modern-day forensics with fantasy stories. But the books were also very dark (incest, abuse, workplace harassment, ableism, and genocide).
• I started and finished the Saving Liam series. This series is a love story, but it is also a story about overcoming the horrors of prolonged sexual and mental abuse. I was crying in some parts because of what Liam went through.
• I started and finished The Sweet Darlings trilogy. I liked the first and third books. But the second one was meh for me. For one, I am not a fan of stalking, and I was not a fan of Sammi’s obsessive behavior. It was way over the top and killed the book for me.
• I started and finished The Ivy Years series. This series was fantastic. Each book dealt with a different issue. The Year We Fell Down—ableism, bias (knowing and unknowing) against handicapped people. The Year We Hid Away—drug use and abuse, death of a parent, child sexual abuse, and the backlash of a high-profile abuse trial against the child of the abuser. The Understatement of the Year—hate crime (the two main characters were beaten as teenagers after being caught kissing), gay bashing (verbal and actions), homophobia (internal and external). The Shameless Hour—slut shaming (by men and women), drugging (main female character was drugged at a frat party). The Fifteenth Minute—stalking (main female character), accusations of rape against main male character

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Books I Read:

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Books I bought:

All I Want for Christmas Is You by Erika Kelly

Family Trust by Peter Wilson (from Gina Rae Michell)

The Fortress by T.A. Styles (from Boys’ Mom Reads!)

Love on the Wind by P.C. Zick (from Jody’s Bookish Haven)

Lessons from a One-Night Stand by Piper Rayne (from Heather Adores Books)

Advice from a Jilted Bride by Piper Rayne

A Christmas Arrangement by Annie Adams

The Dragon’s Undoing by Lily Cahill (from BookBub)

The Dragon’s Temptation by Lily Cahill

The Cottonmouth Club by Susan Kiernan-Lewis (from BookBub)

A Twist of Fate by Kelley Armstrong (from BookBub)

Tavish by Jane Stain (from BookBub)

The Case of the Cat Crazy Lady by Debbie De Louise

Clouds in My Coffee by Julie Mulhern (from BookBub)

Dark by Vi Cater (from BookBub)