Quarter Year Crisis Book Tag

As you might be aware, I have read over 200 books so far, so around 50 per month. Still, i haven’t really mapped out which of the bookish goals I made at the start of the year I need to work on more than others, so with this tag, I will be kidding two birds with one stone, and yes, for the English pet peeves, I get it’s the word the proper term but not fond of it. The creator, I believe, is Roosin’s Reading.

How many books have you read so far?

On the day I’m writing this post, I have read 206 books, of which around 116 are from my Kindle, so I say I completed my goal of reading 100 novels from there. By the time this post is up, I hope to be at 210, but my working hours have changed, so I doubt I will be able to.

Have you already found a book you think might be a 2025 favorite?

I have read nine books that I rated 5 stars, but it is unlikely that they will be on my favourite list at the end of the year.

If not what was your favorite book you read that wasn’t quite five-star?

On the other hand, to my five-star list so far, there are a couple of fours I will remember for a while, like The Alibi by Rachel Sinclair and I Am the Swarm by Hayley Chewins.

Goodreads Blurb

As far back as anyone can remember, the women of the Strand family have been magical.

Their gifts manifest when they each turn fifteen, always in different ways. But Nell Strand knows that her family’s magic is a curse. Her mother’s age changes every day; she’s often too young to be the mother Nell needs. Her older sister bleeds music and will do anything to release the songs inside her. Nell sees the way magic rips her family apart again and again.

When Nell’s own magic arrives in the form of ladybugs alighting on the keys of her beloved piano, the first thing she feels is joy. The ladybugs are a piece of her, a harmless and delicate manifestation of her creativity. But soon enough, the rest come. Thick-shelled glossy beetles that creep along her collarbone when her piano teacher stares at her. Soft gray moths that appear and die alongside a rush of disappointment. Worst of all are the wasps. It doesn’t matter how deep she buries her rage, the wasps always come. Nell will have to decide just how much of herself she’s willing to lock away to stop them—or if she can find the strength to feel, no matter the consequences.

Goodreads Blurb:

he wife of a gangster is accused of offing him. Damien soon finds that nobody is who they seem – quite literally. But to defend his client, he must break every ethical rule. 

Damien Harrington is fresh off his come from behind victory when he’s thrust into yet another harrowing scenario. Gina Degrazio, wife to Vittorio Degrazio, notorious gangster, stands accused of Vittorio’s murder. Gina’s a tough-talking native New Yorker who was transplanted to Kansas City. She swears she didn’t do it. She was with her boyfriend, Enzo Degrazio, Vittorio’s twin brother, at the time of the murder. Or so she says. However, bit by bit, her story falls apart. Damien doubts that Gina was anywhere near Enzo at the time of the murder, yet he must use that alibi excuse if he is to win Gina’s case.

In the meantime, Damien and Harper together work several wrongful death suits that were the result of toxic mold in various homes on the East Side. The plaintiffs are all poor and minority, the landlords are all slumlords and scummy, and Damien works these cases with a passion that he has not felt for the law in many years. 

With all the hairpin curves and twists you’ve come to expect from a Rachel Sinclair legal thriller, this first installment featuring Damien Harrington in the lead is not to be missed!

Any 1-star books / least favorite book of the year?

Well, I could have sworn that I gave some books one star, but from Goodreads and my reading stats, it looks like I was wrong. In reality, there were some  novels I gave two stars that can pass for one star to me, like Becoming by Jeanne Reames and  His Wake-Up Call by Jan Thompson

Goodreads Blurb:

Single thirty-something Sebastian Langston hires his sister’s best friend to be his fake girlfriend for the summer in order to win back his ex-fiancée whom he lost to a billionaire.
The desperate jilted man…

Restaurateur Sebastian Langston cannot believe that his ex-fiancée, Talia, would leave him again. They’ve broken up so many times that he is sure she’ll return to him…until he sees her with a billionaire. Now he has to fight to get her back. Sebastian cooks up an idea in which he hires a beautiful girl who can make Talia jealous. Poor starving harpist Emmeline O’Hanlon needs money and seems willing to help him reach his objectives.
The dreamy rent-a-girlfriend…

When her best friend’s older brother offers her an unusual proposition, Emmeline has no idea what she is getting into. However, her van is dead, her rent is due, and she is forced to take the job. The short-term business agreement would only last one summer, or so Emmeline thinks. More than money for graduate school, she needs Sebastian’s funding to resume the search for her long-lost brother. Sebastian promises to enlist one of the top private investigators in the region to find Claude. In return, all she has to do is smile and make Talia jealous. How hard can it be?
The duet that can’t go wrong…

So begins this ill-advised scheme to drive Sebastian’s ex-fiancée back to him. He thinks his plan-on-a-whim will succeed because it has to. He will turn thirty-four next September, and he wants to be a father by the following summer, preferably to the first of a passel of Talia’s future children. As they keep up the ruse, Emmeline’s ethereal harp starts to sound like a siren song that distracts Sebastian from his goals. Soon, he rows away from his lane and begins to forget his original purpose for hiring her…

Goodreads Blurb:

Two boys, one heroic bond, and the molding of Greece’s greatest son.

Before he became known as Alexander the Great, he was Alexandros, the teenage son of the king of Makedon. Rather than living a life of luxury, as prince he has to be better and learn faster than his peers, tackling problems without any help. One such problem involves his increasingly complicated feelings for his new companion, Hephaistion.

When Alexandros and Hephaistion go to study under the philosopher Aristoteles, their evolving relationship becomes even harder to navigate. Strength, competition, and status define one’s fate in their world—a world that seems to have little room for the tenderness growing between them.

Alexandros is expected to command, not to crave the warmth of friendship with an equal. In a kingdom where his shrewd mother and sister are deemed inferior for their sex, and his love for Hephaistion could be seen as submission to an older boy, Alexandros longs to be a human being when everyone but Hephaistion just wants him to be a king.

Most read genre so far?

The simple answer would be contemporary, even if my favourite genres are thrillers and historical fiction, mainly set in WW2. I haven’t read any from my list since they aren’t on my Kindle, but for the next Readathin, I’m counting them as my TBR.

A book that surprised you?

The answer to this question is surely Oogy: The Dog Only a Family Could Love by Larry Levin. I got super emotional when I learnt of the pain Oogy was caused, and he’s still a happy, gentle dog.

Goodreads Blurb:

In the bestselling tradition of Rescuing Sprite comes the story of a puppy brought back from the brink of death, and the family he adopted.

In 2002, Larry Levin and his twin sons, Dan and Noah, took their terminally ill cat to the Ardmore Animal Hospital outside Philadelphia to have the beloved pet put to sleep. What would begin as a terrible day suddenly got brighter as the ugliest dog they had ever seen–one who was missing an ear and had half his face covered in scar tissue–ran up to them and captured their hearts. The dog had been used as bait for fighting dogs when he was just a few months old. He had been thrown in a cage and left to die until the police rescued him and the staff at Ardmore Animal Hospital saved his life. The Levins, whose sons are themselves adopted, were unable to resist Oogy’s charms, and decided to take him home.

Heartwarming and redemptive, Oogy is the story of the people who were determined to rescue this dog against all odds, and of the family who took him home, named him “Oogy” (an affectionate derivative of ugly), and made him one of their own.

A Book that’s come out in 2025 already that you want to read but haven’t yet?

Six Days in Bombay by Alka Joshi was released on April 15th, and I downloaded it today simply because I’m in the mood to read it.

Goodreads Blurb:

When renouned painter Mira Novak arrives at Wadia hospital in Bombay after a miscarriage, she’s expected to make a quick recovery, and Sona is excited to spend time with the worldly woman who shares her half-Indian identity, even if that’s where their similarities end. Sona is enraptured by Mira’s stories of her travels, and shocked by accounts of the many lovers she’s left scattered through Europe. Over the course of a week, Mira befriends Sona, seeing in her something bigger than the small life she’s living with her mother. Mira is released from the hospital just in time to attend a lavish engagement party where all of Bombay society. But the next day, Mira is readmitted to the hospital in worse condition than before, and when she dies under mysterious circumstances, Sona immediately falls under suspicion.

Before leaving the hospital in disgrace, Sona is given a note Mira left for her, along with her four favorite paintings. But how could she have known to leave a note if she didn’t know she was going to die? The note sends Sona on a mission to deliver three of the paintings—the first to Petra, Mira’s childhood friend and first love in Prague; the second to her art dealer Josephine in Paris; the third to her first painting tutor, Paolo, with whom both Mira and her mother had affairs. As Sona uncovers Mira’s history, she learns that the charming facade she’d come to know was only one part of a complicated and sometimes cruel woman. But can she discover what really happened to Mira and exonerate herself?

Along the way, Sona also comes to terms with her own complex history and the English father who deserted her and her mother in India so many years ago. In the end, she’ll discover that we are all made up of pieces, and only by seeing the world do we learn to see ourselves.

One goal you made that you’re succeeding at?

My goal at the start of the year was to read 100 LGBT+ books, and I’m at 52, so I feel I’m on the right path on that challenge.

One goal you made you need to focus on?

That would have to be to read more indie reads, but the issue I’m finding with that is that I pick random books from my Kindle, and the app doesn’t tell me which are self-published unless you just purchased the book (something I’m not trying to do).

New to you Booktubers/bookstagrammer/booktokers for 2025 you recommend?

This is my favourite question out of all of them, and here are some people I just followed:

Pages of Emma

Finally Got Around To It

Techiscrapper

Precious Trash