Books I finished 2019 with.

Without a doubt, 2019 was my liveliest reading year to date.

Though more impressively (to me), I actually read a decent amount in December. I'm usually so wrapped up in the holidays that I forget to make time for it - despite the fact that I'm super attracted to Christmas themed books and I tend to collect them. Whoops.

I read six books to wrap up the 20-teens: three of them having holidayish vibes. All of them worthy of good ratings! Here's how I finished the decade...


Well, for starters, one of the books is missing from the stack because I already lent it to my mom. I picked it up as kind of a filler book, and ended up being super surprised by it. You know how YA can be ultra-cheesy, but if the writing is good and the tension is legit, you can overlook the cheese and just melt into the story? Yeah, it was that.


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Whatever Life Throws At You follows Annie and her Dad as they relocate for his new job as a pitching coach in Kansas City. The gooey part comes in the form of her falling for the rookie pitcher and their forbidden relationship and it's so good.

The rest of the stack (in the order I read them):

A Man Called Ove
Emotional and at times intense, I saw the value in this book and particularly liked the last few chapters. But, overall, I didn't love the time I spent on it. It was shocking to me, I think, because Fredrik Backman is one of my favorite emotionally-driven authors, and I felt that Ove's grumpy and stilted temperament got in the way of that. Which means he did a great job as an author - letting his character be who he was. It just wasn't the reading experience I'd hoped for. I didn't love spending lots of time with Ove's negative, OCD nature...it made me feel anxious. Though of course, I loved his mushy heart and the family he ended up creating. It was good...just not what I thought it would be.

Snow In Love
This was a really fun and cute collection of short stories, and I loved reading it when I did because it came in smaller pieces which was perfect for reading over the busy week of Christmas. I liked all of the stories, but the one by Kasie West was the best one by far.

Pride and Prejudice and Mistletoe
I've been really into the Pride and Prejudice vibe lately. In reading this, it was kind of natural to sort the characters into their namesakes, but it was at times disorienting to realize they weren't carbon copies. A good thing in the literary sense, in my opinion. It just made my following of the story a little distracted because I was so busy trying to reconcile the characters with their origination, if that makes sense. And man, Darcy was a touch immature for being so successful professionally. That part didn't align so well for me, nor did the terrible advice Darcy and Bingley gave each other regarding their relationships. I thought it was a good book to read at the time I read it, and I like the overall feeling of hanging with the familiar characters (not to mention all the Gilmore Girls mentions), but it was just a little off for me.

One Day In December
This book. THIS book.....was fabulous. I was hoooooked on this and adored every minute of reading it! How awesome to squeak in one more 5-star book before the year ended?? One day right before Christmas, Laurie falls in love at first sight with a guy she's never even spoken to. They locked eyes at a bus stop, but were separated before either of them made a move. She spent the next year searching high and low for him, with the help of her roommate and best friend, to no avail. After a year has gone by and the two friends are throwing their annual Christmas party, Laurie finds out that her friend's new boyfriend is bus guy!!! The book then follows this sticky situation through the next decade, and it's messy and juicy and tense and so-so good!

Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life
I don't know why, but certain books hang out on my "currently reading" shelf on GoodReads for a really long time. Sometimes it's because they're books I just pick up here and there when the mood strikes, but other times it's my unwillingness to just go ahead and DNF a book. I was SO TORN on this one, because while it had a lot of useful information that I enjoyed learning about, it also created some intense anxiousness for me! It was all about the practice of feng shui, and many of the "you absolutely cannot have this" conditions she mentioned were in my house without many options in the way of fixing them! So this sat half-read on my nightstand for most of the year until I decided to plow through it to get something off my relentless currently reading shelf. It left me with some new motivation, and if you can avoid getting caught up in some of the inevitable down falls, this book is extremely informative.

And that was a wrap on 2019! And all of the 20-teens (crazy).

Did you wrap up the year/decade with anything good? Let me know so I can jam them into my already-too-long 2020 list! ;)



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