2024 Reading Wrapped

I’m a little behind on sharing my 2024 Reading Wrapped, but figured it’s better late than never!

In 2024, I read eleven amazing books (plus quite a few others that are not on Goodreads yet but I’ll claim them this year, ha!). Some were craft books, some were for SnowRidge Press, and some were solely for my own personal enjoyment. Ready to check out the breakdown? 🙂

SnowRidge Press Novels:

(For those of you who may not know, I’m the co-founder and head editor of the small publishing company known as SnowRidge Press! We publish Fantasy, Dystopian, and Contemporary novels in the YA and NA genres. All of the SnowRidge books I add to my “read” list on Goodreads, but I don’t rate these since I was an editor on the project!)

1. Olympia by Eva Grace (YA Mythology Retelling + Action & Adventure Fantasy)
2. Water Horse by Katie Hanna (NA Western/Historical Fantasy with heavy emphasis on Irish mythology)
3. Death Walks in Mowhall by Benjamin Hanna (NA Medieval/Dark Fantasy; fun fact – he and Katie Hanna are siblings!)
4. The Woman of Blythe Manor by Miriam Wade (NA Urban/Paranormal Fantasy)
5. The North Guard by Eva Grace (YA Mythology Retelling + Action & Adventure Fantasy; this is book 2 in her Chronicles of Chaos series!)
6. The Theater Threat by Allie Sarah (YA LGBTQ+ Romance; this is book 3 in her Trinity High series!)

Perhaps I’m a touch bit biased, but all of these novels are absolutely amazing, and if you’re interested in checking them out, you can click on any of the titles above – they’re linked to each individual book’s “About Me” page on our website store! You can also find them on Amazon. 🙂

Craft Books:

1. Romancing the Beat by Gwen Hayes (this was an absolutely phenomenal book about how to write a great romance novel. It describes each big plot point in romance manuscripts as “beats”, and Hayes discusses why each “beat” is important to advance the plot, help the characters fall in love, and have readers rooting for the romance from beginning to end. Since I started dipping my toes in the romance genre as a writer earlier last year, under the penname Savanna Raine, this book was an incredible resource! I plan on referring to it several times throughout the years.)
2. Newsletter Ninja by Tammi Labrecque (an incredibly insightful novel with tips to help authors catapault their newsletter to the next level! This was one of the most informative books I’ve read on the pesky subject of newsletters. While I quite enjoyed it and plan to continue implementing the strategies the book discusses over the next few months, I am curious as to how the tips will hold up given a lot of authors/reader are switching from newsletters to Substack. Time will tell, I guess!)

Recreational Reads:

(In true me-fashion, all the books I read “for fun” were romance books. But who can blame me when they were just THAT good???)

1. Wicked & Wildflower by Sarah A. Bailey (I actually wrote a book review on the blog for this one, which you can find HERE!)
2. Unromance by Erin Connor (I ALSO wrote a book review post for this one, since it was another five-star read! You can read it HERE!)
3. Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston (aka: my new favorite book of all-time. *swoons* I have not written a book review for it yet, but that’s solely because I’m rereading it and annotating it as we speak. Also I’ve watched the movie like three times in the past month/month and a half. I’m literally obsessed!)

I don’t tend to set a lot of reading goals for myself – I’m far too much of a mood reader for that! But there are a few things I’m hoping to accomplish in 2025 🙂

First – on Goodreads/Storygraph, my reading goal for the year is twelve books. I’ll most likely pass this solely due to the SnowRidge Press books I will read and edit this year, but we shall see!

Second – I’m currently buddy-reading The Brothers Karamazov with my siblings-in-law. Classics tend to be one of my least favorite genres (please don’t @ me lol lol) but I would like to be better about reading some of them, even if it’s just one a year! While the current book club goal is to finish sometime early this summer, I might take a bit longer and need the rest of the year to finish… But then again, book clubs are for accountability, so we’ll see how it goes! 🙂

Third – I’m trying to get better at leaving reviews for the books I read on Goodreads, Storygraph, and Amazon.

Fourth – I’d kind of loveeee to read ten romance books just for funsies this year. I don’t know if I can manage it – that’s a lot of reading to do between work, writing, juggling life with toddlers, and most likely moving over the summer. *dies* But it’d be super fun!! (As you can see, this is a really loose “goal”, not something I’m going to be upset about if it doesn’t happen lol!)

And Fifth – I’d love to read at least one Fredrik Backman novel! He’s been on my to-read list for a while, but I think his stories and his writing style are similar to what I want to accomplish with one of my own manuscripts. (A contemporary, literary drama.) So it’d be good to read at least one of his novels not just for fun but also so I can study the genre, genre expectations, and style to see if that’s where I want to take one of my current WIPs. 🙂

I think that about sums it up! Have you read any of the above books? What are your reading goals for 2025? I’d love to chat in the comments! 😀