Well, 2025 is officially over. Good riddance. I hope 2026 is better, but I don't know if it will be. Sigh. In happier news, Christmas was good. Saw family, ate food, opened presents, etc. It was also nice just being off of work for a while. I need to take some more time off in 2026. Since I don't have ApollyCon tickets, I think I should be able to do so without any problems.
As for books I got in the past two weeks, I'll start with the Christmas haul. My mom got me quite a few books off my list, including Frankenstein and Dracula, the B&N editions. She also got me Unchained by Jennifer L. Armentrout, Four Ruined Realms and Three Shattered Souls by Mai Corland, and North Queen, Shadow Queen, and War Queen by Nicola Tyche. And she got me the Supernatural box set and a couple of other DVDS. And a new Buffy Funko Pop.
Next, I have a preorder that's taken a loooong time to get here. It's the Bookish Box box set of Melissa K. Roehrich's Lady of Darkness series. It's very pretty. While the font on the spines annoys me, the colors are very pleasing overall. I'm glad I bought this set, even though I haven't read the series yet. Oops. Because it took so long to ship, Bookish also sent out a free crown with the others. That was nice of them.
And here, I have part of the B&N order I made when they were having their 50% off sale online. I couldn't partake in the 25% off sale in-stores, so I splurged online. And this isn't even all of what I ordered. It's just what came in before New Year's. I got Red City by Marie Lu, Terror at the Gates by Scarlett St. Clair, and Kill the Beast by Serra Swift, but I expect a few more things will arrive soon.
Here, I have some FairyLoot orders that arrived, and a B&N preorder that came in. My FairyLoot preorder of The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy came in right before the holidays, and I think Dawn of the Firebird by Sarah Mughal Rana also came in around then. It's the December Adult sub pick. Now, Meet Cute, a Valentine's Day anthology featuring a short story by JLA, came in, and I ended up getting a slight refund, as the dumb publisher decided to use stickers to group the individual stories together so you can "open" one each day before Valentine's Day. The stupid sticker rips the pages! I was so mad. I wouldn't have ordered it if I knew that. Thankfully, it wasn't super expensive, so I just decided to keep it and get the 20% refund from B&N for the damage. I'm just super annoyed at whoever thought that was a good idea. At least use stickers that don't rip the pages. Yeesh.
For the ebooks, I have one, and it was a surprise one as well. Jennifer L. Armentrout released a novella in the Blood & Ash world, specifically one that has bonus content from her recent release. I downloaded it immediately, but I still haven't read it. I know. I know. It's terrible. But, I'm in the middle of like five other books right now. I really want to finish some of those first. And, I'm really into reading physical copies, so reading on my ebook apps just sounds icky at the moment.
Well, that's all for me. What books have
you bought/received lately?
