I’m reluctant to revisit 2025, so I’ll make it quick. In December, I finished a sapphic Christmas romance, Yours for the Season by Kate Cochrane. I wasn’t a fan, but my book club had a better opinion of it. I also read Kindred Dragons by Sarah Mensinga, a middle grade fantasy graphic novel. I really enjoyed it! And then I squeezed in one more seasonal read, Christmas at the Women’s Hotel by Daniel M. Lavery, which I liked, though I wasn’t blown away by the first book in the series.
As for January, I am currently involved in a Secret Reading Project that is taking up almost all of my TBR. I will be squeezing in Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K. Reilly for my book club, which I’m looking forward to. It’s a queer litfic novel about a pair of Maaori-Russian-Catalonian siblings, and I’ve heard great things about it.
Some of the Secret Reading Project TBR is out of my control, but I believe I’ll be reading Hermaphrodite Logic by Jules Joanne Gleeson, which fits for the 2026 Read Harder Challenge task #19: Read a book by an intersex author.
I’m also hoping to read The Hollow Half: A Memoir of Bodies and Borders by Sarah Aziza. I read the first few chapters of this memoir about the Palestinian diaspora and thought it was beautifully written.
Another option is Who I Always Was by Theresa Okokon, a memoir in essays that’s partly about her grappling with not having the complete story about her father’s death.
Those are some options, but most of my TBR for this month is still up in the air.