Thank you again to Sam @ Taking on a World of Words for hosting this weekly meme. I’m pretty sure you all know the drill by now, but in case you don’t and you want to join, here are the three questions we always answer:

1. What are you currently reading?
2. What did you recently finish reading?
3. What do you think you will read next?

• All I’ve Wanted All I’ve Needed – A. E. Valdez
• Execution in E – Alexia Gordon
• Ben and Beatriz – Katalina Gamarra

So I am absolutely adoring Ben and Beatriz, but it’s also pissing me off because of the stuff that’s going on with it. I think it’s supposed to be irritating, or at least it’s supposed to be thought-provoking and make you think about the present. It takes place the year after Trump was elected, and our two characters – well, mostly Beatriz – are learning how to live with the consequences. I will say maybe Ben has some things he is thinking about but not as prominent as Beatriz is, clearly. I’m hoping there is a decent ending involved, but as one of my coworkers said, if it doesn’t end the way she thinks it will, it will be missing something. Or at least not be as gratifying as it should be.

I also have some sort of last ditch effort to finish the Gethesemane Brown Mysteries series before the end of the year since I didn’t end up finishing most of the other series that I wanted to. But if I can finish this before the year is out, then that would be cool. I will say that I’ve been listening to the books on like 1.5x speed and whatnot, so am I actually paying attention? Kind of. Luckily I don’t really need to know what happened in the other books for them to make sense, but it was cool to see some easter eggs from the previous books. I’m also bummed that this is the last one in the series, and I don’t see any other books from this author yet. I hope she comes out with more books soon, whether in this series or a new one.

• Killing in C Sharp – Alexia Gordon
• Her Royal Spyness – Rhys Bowen
• Sugar and Spite – Gail D. Villanueva
• City Spies – James Ponti
• Fatality in F – Alexia Gordon

Oh my gosh, Sugar and Spite has to be my favorite book that I read this week. I’ll have to work on that review at some point before I forget because I don’t want to forget this book. I will warn everyone that there is a death of a pet in this one, and even though I knew it was coming – thank you to those who always include trigger and content warnings in their reviews – it still hurt my soul.

I also read City Spies as my final Battle of the Books book that I needed to read before the discussion date in January. I have officially read all of my books for the year and I am super happy about that. I have to say they were all pretty good too! I don’t know if I have a favorite out of the five, but I’m glad that I at least enjoyed them all. I was worried that I wouldn’t, but we did good.

• I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast is Me – Jamison Shea
• Bet On It – Jodie Slaughter

Honestly, I don’t know if I’ll get to either of these before the end of the year, but it is wishful thinking. If I don’t get to them, then I’ll know where to start for the January challenge. I have to bust my butt for that one for sure, making sure that I read as much as I can while also reading books that will match up with the challenges I’m participating in. Let’s hope I can commit to those possibility piles that I’m trying to do for these challenges. Let’s see if I can actually succeed!

Phew! Still can’t believe I got through that many books in a week! I stay surprised and proud of myself for every day that I get to read and make progress on my reading journey. It is a journey, after all. One that I love and that I hope to continue to make progress on all my life. I hope there never comes a time where I don’t want to or love to read. So let’s hope that this happens.

Can you believe the year is almost over?! Sheesh, it’s moving so quickly. I wonder how 2024 will treat us kindly, or at least not mess us up like it has been lately.

See you in the next post.