5 things Friday: January TBR edition

New year, new books! It's not like the calendar changing to 2021 is a magical cure for what we didn't like about 2020, but at least I have a new stack of good stuff to read as we settle in for another month at home with fingers crossed that we didn't have a bunch of people out there spreading illness last night...

To kick off the new year I thought it would be great to start with a personal growth type book, and particularly The Lazy Genius Way - a bit of inspiration for getting stuff done! But also I feel like I will want to just cozy up in January, so an Irish mystery set in winter will probably be perfect. Can't remember what podcast I heard about Snow on, but sounds excellent and so I snagged it when I spotted a Kindle deal. Also excited to read Red at the Bone from my Christmas gift stack, since I've loved everything I've ever read by Jacqueline Woodson; Outlawed is my January BOTM pick, and a female-centered Western just sounds like a fun change of pace.

Finally, House Lessons - I heard this memoir of renovating an old home raved about on From the Front Porch, and what better thing than to read and appreciate my old home more, while I'll be spending even more time in it this month.

As for my December reading list, choosing books based on Christmas-colored covers was fun, with admittedly less successful results on the actual insides...

• Dear Haiti, Love Alaine: had a lot of promise as a YA book that I would enjoy, with a spunky and sassy teenager uncovering some family history, plus bringing in a setting that I don't know a ton about. But it turned out to be just a little too scattered to really come together in a satisfying way. Sometimes books that tell the story in a combination of journal entries, texts/emails, news stories, etc. work great and sometimes they just leave me feeling like I couldn't connect in. ★★★
• The Postscript Murders: the sequel to a meta-/puzzle-type mystery that I really enjoyed earlier in the year, The Stranger Diaries, this one was just a bit over the top for me in terms of this unlikely crew - made up of a young Eastern European home care worker, elderly man, and former monk - that gets involved trying to "help" the police uncover a killer, in a case where their friend, an elderly lady, was ruled as a natural death. Loved the return of detective Harbinder Kaur from the previous book, but she's only a small part of the story here, with this the cast of characters that while being quirky and enjoyable makes the story much more about them than it is about the mystery. Very little tension at all - kind of like a Frederik Backman romp with a detective involved - so I was a bit disappointed having expected more of a mystery. Pick it up if you want something in the "cozy" mystery category with visits to literary conferences and a few dead bodies (not gory in the least) on the side, but otherwise read the first one, which was much more satisfying as an actual mystery/crime novel. (Received from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review; publishes in 2021.) ★★★
• The Last Romantics: a family drama about four siblings over the course of their lives. Sort of in the vein of character-driven sibling stories like Commonwealth or The Immortalists, but not good enough to make me like it despite character-driven stories not being my fave. And I really did not like the "current" timeline, which was set near the end of this century when the protagonist is like 104 years old, and that version of the world clearly has some sort of apocalyptic feel, but it's just really vaguely alluded to and doesn't seem to have anything to do with anything. Just a weird and distracting unsettling feeling. ★★★
• Last Tang Standing: this is billed as Crazy Rich Asians meets Bridget Jones's Diary, and I guess it is the latter in that it is written in diary form, but it is much more the former. Andrea is the last remaining unmarried cousin in her Singaporean clan, and she hears no end of it from them; her diary entries chronicle a year of balancing a partner-track law firm position, overbearing relatives, dating prospects, and a fair bit of over-indulging on the booze. Light in tone like Crazy Rich Asians, and plenty of the rich people behaving badly vibes of it. I had just read Kevin Kwan's newest, Sex & Vanity, so maybe I was too close to something similar to enjoy this one as much, but if you're looking for something fun in this vein, it's a pretty good option. ★★★
• Queenie: finally one that was more of a success for me! Strangely enough, the blurbs also compare this one to Bridget Jones's Diary, but this time, purport that it meets Americanah. Not sure how I feel about this description, but Queenie, a 20-something Londoner of Jamaican heritage, was a character I really grew to love as she discovered herself (despite some choices that she made about shirking work duties and questionable sexual encounters on her journey there, which make type-A me squirm) and discovered her voice as a woman and as a Black woman. ★★★★

 

Now I want to know if you've got anything cozy planned for your January reading!