What Deanna Read #102: December 2024

You guys!!! It's February. Okay, it's only February 1st, but I'm late on last month's What Deanna Read which was for December 2024. Oof! Time is flying by. I don't have an excuse. Work has been crazy busy. I had this plan to have a holiday from about December 18th through to mid-January, but that lasted about 4 days before things got crazy and has stayed crazy.

Update: It's OBVIOUSLY not February 1st anymore. It's actually closer to the end of the month. You know what happened? I started putting this together and then I realised that I was accidentally putting my January 2025 reads instead of my December 2024 reads, and it was about 3am and I ran out of steam. I kinda just konked out and then work got bonkers. And if you're wondering why and haven't seen, this was the reason. It's actually been an exciting time.

Here's what I read in December 2024. Better late than never, right? Really, really late. Soz!

A Guardian For Christmas

Snowed In With The Bosses

Catnapped: A Pawsitively Purrfect Christmas

A Cold Dark Promise 🎧

Big Daddy

Cold Malice 🎧

Sacked and Sleighed

Triplets For The Mafia Prince

A Very Stalker Christmas

Submission

Novak Raven

Blackwing Dragon

Rebel Revenge

He Sees You When You're Sleeping

Zinnia

Amaryllis

Praise Me: President

Hard Knocks

The Dangerous One

The Hero She Deserves

Visions & Shadows

Dune (Goodreads Challenge)

A Discovery Of Witches (reread & Goodreads Challenge)

It Started With Paris 🎧 (book club read)

A Christmas Carol 🎧(book club read)

Wine Sense: The Art Of Appreciating Wine

Viral Justice (reread - original release) * Link it to preorder

Beauty and the Boss

Death Defiant

Daddy's Wild Girl

False Start

Looking back, it seems that I read a bit more than I thought I did in December which was odd cos December was supposed to be a quiet month as I had intended to have a holiday, but didn't. C'est la vie, oui?

Some awesome audiobooks to kick things off. I love Toni Anderson's Cold Justice series and just adore when Alex Parker pops up in every book. We are doing the first book in the series for book club later in the year, so I will relisten to the audiobook later in the year to prepare for that. Am actually really looking forward to that. Funnily enough, I've gotten pretty far into the series and didn't even realise it. I got through Cold Malice and A Cold Dark Promise. Both excellent. Toni Anderson's books are very full-on, so I often need a break between books, but also want to keep racing onto the next book. They're kinda dark and intense though, so I can only listen to two in a row before needing a break. There's only so many serial killers and sex traffickers a girl can take. Am still obsessed with Eric G Dove's voice which makes the audiobooks just wonderful.

Aside from that, there were some rereads for work (I'm editing a book for a rerelease) and also for a Goodreds challenge. I don't think I'm going to make much of an effort to do the Goodreads challenges each year? Quarter? It's too much effort and a lot of the books fall outside what I usually read, so it's not worth the effort for me. No, no. I read enough. I do not need to expand my horizons, thank you very much. That said, I did do a reread of A Discovery Of Witches by Deborah Harkness and it's still freaking brilliant.

Other standouts included Jessa Kane's Praise Me: President, TS Joyce's Novak Raven and Blackwing Dragon (of course!), Anna Hackett's The Hero She Deserves (I confess to being obsessed with Sawyer's biceps!! And I think this is my favorite book of the series, probably also because of Sawyer's biceps), and Jayne Castle's Amaryllis and Zinnia. I'm saving the last book in the series for later.

On a final note, Death Defiant by Charlotte Chaos. Could she have possibly put even less effort into that cover than she did? I know, it's a little snarky of me, but I did take a chance on the book since the blurb sounded interesting. Still... that cover...

How did you go with your reading? Read any good books last month?


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