The 2025 Mid-Year Book Freakout Tag

The halfway mark is here. It's been a relatively quiet year so far. I think ApollyCon is the craziest thing that's happened to me other than the tornado that came through my town. Since I only had my power out for a few days, it didn't really affect me like it did some other people in my area. I think there are some fun things coming up in the later half of year, though, so I have that to look forward to. But anyway, the year being halfway over also means it’s time for the Mid-Year Book Freak Out Tag.

This tag was created years ago by someone in the book community to basically wrap up the first half of a person's reading year. I’ve had a good reading year so far, as of June 12, when I'm writing this post. I've reached my 2025 reading goal. I'm hoping I can double my numbers by the end of the year, however, I'm not changing my reading goal. I don't want the pressure.

As of June 12, I’ve read 34 books. There is one series that I owe my reading speed to, as it really brought my love for reading back after about a year of significant slumpage. I'll talk about it in a bit, actually. I've also been reading more of my physical books than normal as well. I'm really enjoying that. I have this challenge where I'm trying to read a physical book for every physical book that I haul that I haven't read yet. It was going pretty well, until a bunch of FairyLoot sets showed up all at once. Ha ha. I'm going to try to read some shorter books soon so I can catch up though. I just need to get through some of my lengthy ARCs first.

BEST BOOK YOU’VE READ SO FAR IN 2025

This was a super easy answer, as, like I said earlier, there was one book that really got me to enjoy reading again, and it was this one: Bonded by Thorns by Elizabeth Helen. I don't know why but I just loved it. I think because it was easy and fun while still being a good fantasy story. It helps that I actually like the guy characters as well. Sometimes, the men in why-choose stories can be too all about serving their woman. These guys, however, have their own things going on. Plus, it's just a good time.

BEST SEQUEL YOU’VE READ SO FAR

This question was easy to answer as well, just because I haven't read a ton of sequels this year. I've been prioritizing getting books off my TBR, which means reading some of those first books in series. But yeah, the second, third, and fourth books in the Beasts of the Briar series were great. While I think the story got more epic in scope, which hurt some of the character development and interactions a bit, there are apparently going to be three more books in the series, so I expect any limitations in character development won't really be a problem by that point. I'm glad I have this series after Zodiac Academy and its spinoffs concluded. It's really helped fill a void I didn't even know I had.

NEW RELEASE YOU HAVEN’T READ YET, BUT WANT TO

I don't have a set answer for this one. I just looked at my shelves and picked something that I got in the past five months. The Wind Weaver by Julie Johnson was the winner. I've heard great things about it from Booktubers I watch, so I'm hoping that means it's an amazing read. I have nothing more to really go on other than that.

MOST ANTICIPATED RELEASE FOR

THE SECOND HALF OF THE YEAR

The second half of 2025 is going to be amazing! I have The Primal of Blood and Bone coming out on the same day that another anticipated release, What Fury Brings by Tricia Levanseller releases. I'm trying to get an ARC of What Fury Brings so I can read it before POBAB, as POBAB will take all of my attention and likely my sanity, but so far, it's been quiet. I'm also excited for Bitter Burn by Sierra Simone, the final book in the New Camelot trilogy.

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT

Now this was a difficult question, as there were a couple of books that didn't quite meet the mark for me, but I wouldn't say I was disappointed by them, since I knew going in they had lower reviews or weren't really my thing. But Blood of Hercules by Jasmine Mas kind of hurt me a bit. I'd heard amazing things about this book, but I read it, and while it wasn't bad, it was just odd. I still plan to continue with the series, but I think it could have been soooooo much better..

BIGGEST SURPRISE

I requested The Raven Scholar for review from Orbit, not knowing it was an epic fantasy with little romance. Therefore, I was surprised that I enjoyed myself so much while reading. It took a couple of chapters to get into the story, but once I did, I'd keep wanting to flip the pages. I think this one reignited my love for fantasy, not just romantasy.

FAVORITE NEW AUTHOR

Obviously, I had to put Elizabeth and Helen here, the individual names of the author duo Elizabeth Helen. Like I said, they were able to fill a void that only Zodiac Academy, Ruthless Boys, and Darkmore Penitentiary had been able to fill. I'm excited to read the last three books of the series. I am sad they won't release until 2026, though. It's gonna be a long wait.

NEWEST FICTIONAL CRUSH

This was another tough question. I have a few characters that come to mind. One being Dayton from the Beasts of the Briar series (pictured above), as well as Farron and Kel from the Beasts of the Briar series. I also like Lorian from the Kingdom of Lies series by Stacia Stark, Levan from Silvercloak, Kayden Lockwood from Kiss the Villain, and Rory Myndacious from The Knight and the Moth.

NEWEST FAVORITE CHARACTER

Farron from the Beasts of the Briar series wins this one. I just love me a sweet cinnamon roll character, and that is definitely what he is, though I'm a little worried about him for the future books. The gargoyle from The Knight and the Moth is also pretty high up there.

BOOK THAT MADE YOU CRY

 

  I don't think I cried very much this year. Or at least, I don't remember if I have, which means there was nothing that truly devastated me. So, I guess I'm going with The Bones Beneath My Skin by TJ Klune. I feel like TJ Klune has the unique ability to make me cry with every book he writes, so this isn't much of a surprise that I teared up for this one. Although, there wasn't any sobbing, just a couple of wet eyes every once in a while.

BOOK THAT MADE YOU HAPPY

This is a weird one to say made me happy, but I couldn't list the Beasts of the Briar books again, so I'm going with Kiss the Villain by Rina Kent, despite it being a dark, mafia romance book. I think this book helped get me back into reading just like the Beasts books did. It was fun and sexy at the same time. I actually went out and bought all of the books set in the same time range, just so I could follow more of the backstory of the characters I enjoy. I'm excited for the next one in this series to come out next year.

FAVORITE BOOK ADAPTATION

YOU SAW THIS YEAR

I haven't watched many book adaptations. The only one that really stands out to me is The Wheel of Time season three. However, I haven't ready the books, so my answer is based purely on the television show. While I know the show has many flaws, I still love the way they've set up the characters and how they're depicting the worldbuilding. I will say, Amazon is a little cheap when it comes to background actors, though. Sometimes you wonder why there aren't any people running around in the background of a busy town. It's definitely funny once you realize it. I'm super mad they decided to cancel this show, but I could definitely see it coming. Like I said, Amazon is too cheap since they spent all their money on Fourth Wing and Rings of Power.

FAVORITE REVIEW YOU’VE WRITTEN THIS YEAR

I've actually had some great reviews this year. The Raven Scholar is one of them, and my upcoming review of Silvercloak is another I think is really good. However, my favorite is my review of The Knight and the Moth. It was an atmospheric, but funny, book, so I think my review reflected that.

 

You can read my review of The Knight and the Moth here.

MOST BEAUTIFUL BOOK YOU’VE

RECEIVED SO FAR THIS YEAR

 I actually had a few books for this answer, but the one I went with is the Books for Days Crate version of A Shadow in the Ember by JLA. It's just so pretty. The artwork inside is amazing and the edges are gorgeous. Plus, I'm going to get a whole set for both series very soon. Yay! The Heavenly Bodies FairyLoot edition, the Arcane editions of FBAA, and the Wicked trilogy were also very close contenders.

WHAT BOOKS DO YOU NEED TO READ

BY THE END OF THE YEAR

Everything on my never-ending TBR! Ugh. But some of the highlights, which haven't really changed a lot from what I answered last year, are:

The Dragon Rider by Taran Matharu

Powerless trilogy by Lauren Roberts

A Storm of Swords by George R.R. Martin

An Ember in the Ashes series by Sabaa Tahir

The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake

These are the books I want to have completed by the end of the year. Will that happen? Unlikely. Some of them are things I'm in the mood for right now, but that may change a couple of months down the line. As long as I'm continuing to make progress on my physical TBR, I'll be satisfied.

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Alright, there you have it. My Mid-Year Book Freak Out answers for 2025. What would your answers to these questions be? Let me know in the comments below!

Stacking the Shelves: The Forgotten May Books Edition

 "Stacking the Shelves" is a weekly haul meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews and Reading Reality. It allows book buyers to share their accumulation of books with the online book-loving community.

Well, we're now halfway through 2025. Wow. That's nuts. The past couple of weeks have been pretty crappy for me lately, but things are looking up a bit. Nothing major happened, I just hurt my back, had a bug infestation, and got rejected for a book I wanted on NetGalley a couple of days ago. But two of those things have/will be rectified soon. Now, my back, on the other hand, that's still an ongoing problem, unfortunately.

First up in this week's haul are actually some books that should have been in the haul from last week. I'm not sure how/why I forgot them. I guess because I'd already put them away by the time I started writing my haul post. But anyway, my FairyLoot editions of The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig, The Shadow Bride by Shelby Mahurin, and Broken Souls and Bones by L.J. Andrews all came in within a week of each other. Look at those purple books! Good thing it's my favorite color! Also, this The Knight and the Moth copy is going to be replaced. It came severely damaged. It's hard to tell from far away, but you can definitely see it up close. 

 

 

I also received the first FairyLoot Epic box featuring The Devils by Joe Abercrombie. It turns out this one is going to be a movie directed by James Cameron, so it'll be fun to read it. The edition is really pretty. I just wish it wasn't a shiny cover. I'd have preferred a nice matte one over the slick, shiny kind.

 

 

Next up, I have my preorder of the boxset of Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games series. I didn't have the most recent books, and my older editions were in rough shape, so when they announced a hardcover boxset with the original covers, I jumped on it. With my Barnes & Noble membership discount and the preorder discount, I only spent like $100 on this, I think.

 

 

Speaking of older books, I ordered the sixth book in D.J. MacHale's Pendragon series from eBay to replace the copy I destroyed while organizing and rearranging my books. I needed the old cover to match my set, so it was difficult to find one that was in decent shape secondhand. I had to order a set of books 1-6 all together just to get this one. I'm not keeping the others, though, as they were not in great condition. Thankfully, it was only like $15 to get the entire set, so not too bad. 

 

 

 

And lastly, I have a book my sister gave me. She finished Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, and since she doesn't keep books after she reads them, she gave it to me. She wants me to read it immediately so we can talk about it, but I have a couple of review books to get through first, sadly. I will not be requesting lengthy books to review in the future, or at least not two that are being published in the same month. I am having a difficult time getting through both of them right now. Ugh. But that's a story for another day.

Well, that's all for me. What books have you bought/received lately?

ApollyCon 2025 Recap: Day Three

I know, I know. I am still working on my ApollyCon recap posts almost two months post-event. I'm ridiculous. But, I always like to have these posts to go back and look on when the next event comes around. It helps me keep organized and remember what went right and wrong each year. The good news is, there's only one more day to recap after this one. Thank goodness!

 

Typically, Friday mornings at ApollyCon are for author panels. We were just too exhausted from the night before to even contemplate going to the panels. We're getting too old to keep going to these events. Ha ha. We ended up just getting breakfast downstairs, prepping for the Primal ticket-level signing, and relaxing before we had to head down to get in line around noon. You can see our packed carts in the first pic, along with me hanging out in line, and a 3D printed dragon I got. Someone was giving them away in line, so of course I had to nab one. Mine's the silver one. Isn't he cute? My friend grabbed a pink one. 

 

The first author we went to was Callie Hart. We actually just grabbed a ticket for her, and then headed to Jemlin's booth, but we didn't stay at Jemlin's booth long because her line was so long. I got a ticket for Jemlin and then we went to a few other areas and came back to Callie's table. She was nice. I accidentally left my yearbook behind at her table, so I had to go back and get it. I'd only barely walked away when Callie and her assistants reminded me, but that happened a couple of times throughout the signing. It was a reoccurring theme of forgetting that darn yearbook.

 

Now, I'm not exactly sure if everything is in order from here on out, but I think next up was Lisette Marshall. We ordered her Fae Isles special edition set. They're beautiful books, but we knew they'd be super heavy, so we decided to get those on Friday so we could ship them back in the boxes we'd packed to free up our suitcase space on the way home.

 

Next up was Nicole Platania. Now, I haven't read her book, but my friend did, and she really liked it. So, I went ahead and ordered The Curse of Ophelia. It looks like a fun book, so I hope I can get to it fairly soon, especially if she comes back for next year and I get tickets. It'd be great to get the sequel signed. 

 

I don't know exactly when, but I did visit Claire Legrand early on in the signing time too. She signed my copy of Furyborn. I forgot to take a pic with her, and I originally forgot to have her sign my yearbook. I ended up going back either later on this day or on day four to get her to sign the yearbook. She gave me a fancy bookmark too. I think that'll be in my next post, as I took a pic of a bunch of swag all together.

 

 

I think around this time, I decided to go back to Jemlin's table. I officially met Autumn from @/theautumnbookreads on Instagram. She does all the book box guesses each month, so I can decide if I want to save money. Lol. I had her sign the back of my yearbook. I also got Jemlin and Alicia to sign my yearbook. But, most importantly, I picked up my Prettygal Pins preorders, bought some other cards, and got some freebie cards. I took pics with the Violet Sorengail cardboard cutout too. Xaden was a bit too out of the way, but I took some pics of him all by his lonesome.

 

We went to see J.R. Ward at some point in this craziness. It was amazing to see her. She's so funny and so nice. She acted like seeing each person was just the greatest thing ever. She was even skipping and having a blast when she went to take a restroom break. She even did that later that night when she had to sign overtime with JLA. Thankfully, I was able to get her signing done during the regular hours though. We talked about how I hoped she'd be back the next year, and she said she would. She already had plans to host the same type of panel she hosted the previous day. I'll have to decide what books to get signed by her next time. I got Dark Lover, Lover Eternal, and Lover At Last signed and personalized this time. Oh, and she was giving out these awesome Rhage stickers based on the cardboard cutout you'll see in the next recap.

 

I believe after this, we went to Carissa Broadbent's table. Again, I could be totally wrong. I feel like I'm missing a few authors, but I'll do a list of anyone I missed in the next post. It's likely, if I forgot to include them, I only got my yearbook signed and didn't get a picture with them. For Carissa, I didn't bring any books. I had something signed by her last year, and I didn't want to take up more suitcase space, so I just did the dustjacket preorder she had. I still haven't put these on a book set yet. I need to figure out what I want to do about them. I'm thinking of putting them on the Owlcrate editions, since those are the same size as the traditionally published versions.

 

 

 

Now, I think some of these are definitely out of order because I have Jamie Applegate-Hunter next in my photo bank, but I feel like we saw her on our way out of this room. But, at some point, she did sign my preorder of The Umbra King, and gave us some swag. I also really liked her yellow dress. It was so cute. 

 

 

 

And then, I have Nalini Singh. I've been reading Nalini's Singh's books since high school, much like J.R. Ward's, so it was really cool to meet her. I had her sign two of my Guild Hunter books. I've only read the first book in this series, as her Psy-Changeling one was what I started with, but I don't own those in physical form. Nalini was very sweet, and I loved her character art. I hope it's still available when I've read the series, so I can maybe buy it one day. (Honestly, now that I'm thinking about it, we might have gone upstairs then come back downstairs to get Nalini's books signed. I think that's what we did when we needed to kill time waiting for JLA's line to open up.)

Up next, possibly, was Melissa Roehrich. We picked up our preorders of Lady of Darkness and Rain of Shadows and Endings, which were pre-signed. That meant we just got Melissa to sign out yearbooks and take pics once we met her. We did have to go back and return our Rain copies though, as they gave us the special edition, and we didn't want that edition. People claimed we were so nice for doing the right thing and returning our special copies, but, honestly, I liked the regular cover more.

 

Okay, so I think we're getting to the end now. Not the end of this recap post, but the end of me and my friend spending time in this room. The last thing we did, I think, was see Kalista Neith where I bought a $75 special edition. Icky. In my defense, the author did not tell us it was $75. I probably wouldn't have bought it if I'd known. It is super pretty, though. It's Invoking the Blood. Unfortunately, the narrator also signed the copy, which I didn't like. But he was standing there and the author asked if he could sign it.What was I supposed to say? On the way out of this room, I had the Arcane Society/Mystic Box owner sign my yearbook. We had purchased the first and third books in the Wicked trilogy at their table earlier too. I don't have a pick of them by themselves, but you'll see them in the next recap. After that, we headed upstairs to dump our stuff and head to the next signing room.

 

So, as you can tell by the carpet on the floor, we're in the new signing room. I have no idea what order these are in, but we did meet Rebecca F. Kenney at some point during the five-hour signing time. She actually didn't know I'd snuck up behind her to join the photo. Ha ha. Sorry, Rebecca.

 

 

We also saw Miranda Lyn and picked up our preorders. I got the paperback edition of Till Death. It's another book my friend read and recommended, so I decided to just preorder it. I'll get around to it eventually, right?

 

At some point during this, we also picked up our Books for Days Crate preorders. We each ordered a copy of their A Shadow in the Ember edition as well as their Kingdom of Crowns and Daggers edition by K.A. Knight and Erin O'Kane. I also bought their Sera and Ash standee and their Flesh & Fire character cards. The editions each came with overlays as well. We had to pick them up before going to JLA's signing line. JLA's line was very behind, so we ended up having to wait until around 8-9 p.m. to get her signature, which really sucked.

The signing ended at around 5 p.m., so if you were unable to get JLA's signature during the Primal signing time, you had to slog to another room to wait in another line to get her signature. They also announced that she wasn't personalizing anything anymore, so that kind of sucked. We ended up having to wait almost three hours to get our books signed. I was kind of over it by that point. They seriously need to figure out a way to do the signing that doesn't require people to not be able to schedule their time appropriately. But anyway, I got my ApollyCon edition of Born of Blood and Ash signed as well as the Arcane Torn edition, the Books for Days Crate ASITE, and the Coronation event ASITE. I think that was all I got signed, just because I was so exhausted. We could only get three items signed with the exception of things we'd ordered from the JLA Shop and what came in our Primal bag. So I got my yearbook signed too. There were a few other things I could've gotten signed, but I was just done. When I finally got to JLA she was kind of more interested in talking to her staff/volunteers than readers, which was kind of a bummer. They were doing that kind of slap-happy exhausted-type of conversation you have with people you know. At least I'd met her before, so I didn't feel ignored during the only time I'd seen her. That would have been awful. After all of that, though, we trekked up to our hotel room to prep for the next night and to majorly crash. The next morning would be an early one, unfortunately again.

Well, that was all for the third day. It was another long, crazy one. Thankfully, day four is a little bit less so. It did have its chaotic moments, though. Stay tuned for the next recap post. It'll be up whenever I can get around to it!