Reflecting On My 2023 Bookish Resolutions

 Way back in January, I started 2023 by setting seven bookish resolutions and sharing them in a blog post. Click here to read it. Now we've reached the end of the year and that little lull between Christmas and New Year which is the perfect time to pause and reflect, I thought I'd review them and share how I've got on. 

I will also be sharing my 2024 bookish resolutions in a post in the coming weeks so stay tuned!

These were my 2023 bookish resolutions:

Read 52 books

I am very proud to say that, for the first time ever, I have not only reached my 2023 book goal but I have also surpassed it. Although I'm hoping to squeeze an extra book or two in before we ring in 2024, to date I have read 72 books!

One thing which has really helped me to increase the amount I am reading was reading more e-books. Prior to 2023 I was a firm member of team 'I can only read physical books' but reading more ARCs this year has meant that I've had to make a switch to e-books, all read on my iPad. I don't know what the science behind it is but I read so much quicker when reading electronically so have been able to whizz through so many extra books this year!

Read One Chapter A Day

This is a goal which I have mostly stuck to. There have been odd days where I just haven't felt up to reading but for the majority of the year I have stuck to my aim of reading at least one chapter a day. Making a hot drink, grabbing a biscuit or two and cosying up in bed to read has become a permanent part of my daily night-time routine and this is something I plan on continuing into 2024.

Branch Out And Explore New Genres

In 2023 I wanted to expand my reading repertoire and explore a range of genres, rather than sticking solely to my beloved historical fiction. After consulting my trusty StoryGraph app, I can confirm that I have read the following genres this year: romance, historical fiction, young adult, contemporary fiction, LGBTQIA+ fiction, graphic novels, thrillers, mystery, middle grade, self help and memoirs. Not a bad range! 

Diversify My Reading List

In this resolution I aimed to read more books written by BAME authors, books featuring BAME characters, books with trans and non-binary representation and books with disabled representation. I have succeeded in reading more books with a range of representation, and even added in an option on the right hand side of my blog for readers to sort my book reviews by different representation. But I would like to continue to diversify my reading even further in the next year particularly in regards to BAME authors and characters. If anyone has any book recommendations please let me know! 

Create A Physical TBR Database

My next bookish resolution was to create a database of the books I own, which can be sorted by author, genre and whether or not I have read it yet. Although it was a timely process, I completed this earlier in the year and have continued to add to it and when I've purchased new books. It's been an incredibly useful resource already for referring to when I'm out book shopping and can't remember if I already own a particular title.

Publish Regular Bookish Blog Posts

One of my biggest goals of 2023 was to maintain a regular posting schedule here on Yours, Chloe, including posting regular bookish content. I've posted a grand total of 55 book reviews this year, definitely achieving that goal. You can find all of them in my blog archive on the right hand side of my blog.

Moving forward into 2024 I am aiming to extend my bookish blog posts outside of book reviews into other content such as monthly reading roundups and book suggestions linked to different themes.

Did you sent any bookish resolutions this year?

Review: Christmas with the Lords by Hannah Langdon*

*I received a copy of this book in eBook format via NetGalley in return for this review. All reviews published on Yours, Chloe are completely honest and my own, and are in now way influenced by the gifting opportunity.

Title: Christmas With The Lords
Author: Hannah Langdon
Genre: Holiday Romance

Trigger warnings:  References to a mental health breakdown

Rating: ★★★ 

URGENTLY WANTED: a nanny for Christmas. Seeking an adventurous nanny to work for the aristocratic Lord family at their country estate. Must love naughty dogs, mischievous children and have a high tolerance for Christmas chaos. Room and board provided.

Penny Windlesham is stunned when her long-term boyfriend suddenly dumps her, leaving her with a broken heart just in time for Christmas. At a loose end, she accepts a job as a short-term nanny to a family she’s never met. Climbing aboard a train bound for the Dorset countryside, a tear rolls down her cheek. Alone, working and amongst strangers… could her Christmas be any less magical?

As she crunches up the family’s frost-covered drive, Penny’s spirits lift when she glimpses her home for the next month: an enormous manor house, its windows glowing with firelight and festooned with twinkling holly. And, as she settles into her role caring for the adorable Lord children, she finds herself surrounded by a quirky cast of characters, including loveably frazzled Spanish chef Pilar and the children’s grouchy uncle, Lando Lord.

Despite Penny’s attempts to avoid him, the darkly handsome Lando seems to be everywhere – hanging around like Scrooge amidst the happy present-wrapping and gingerbread baking. Apparently he wasn’t always this way… is there some secret reason he’s so cranky at Christmas?

When Lando is commissioned to carve a beautiful new Nativity scene for the local church, Penny blushingly agrees to be his model, and a sudden spark flickers between them. But it’s not long before the past comes knocking, and Penny discovers exactly why Lando left his old life behind…

 

Christmas with the Lords is the debut novel from Hannah Langdon. It’s a cosy festive romance which is an easy read, perfect for fans of a cheesy Christmas Hallmark movie.

Penny was a lovely protagonist and it’s nice to have a 30-something FMC in a festive romance. She was wonderful with the children she was nannying for and I loved their relationships. It was also great to see Penny really grow in self-confidence as the novel progressed and start to see her own worth again.

I loved the Lord family and the chaotic energy they brought to the book. It was lovely to see Penny find a family in the Lords as the novel progressed. Most wealthy families you see in contemporary fiction tend to be written as a tad on the pretentious side but the Lord family were so far from it. I’d love to return to them in a future book in some way as I really didn’t feel ready to part with them when the book ended. Exploring all of their family Christmas traditions made the book feel really cosy and festive, perfect for getting you in the mood for the holiday season. The beautiful setting of their gorgeous historic home and quaint small-village was also perfect for a cosy festive story; it sounds like an absolutely dreamy place to spend Christmas!

At the heart of the story is a grumpy x sunshine romance between the cheerful Penny and the grumpy Lando. Fans of a true slow burn romance will love this book as you are left waiting for most of the story for them to sort themselves out and actually get together. However, the one thing that dropped the book from a 4* to a 3* for me was the fact that I was really craving a few more romantic scenes between Penny and Lando once they had got together. Although the scenes we did get were lovely, there was just too few of them to fully satisfy me after such a slow burn romance story.

If you’re looking for a cosy Christmas story with a slow-burn romance and lots of festive family antics, you’ll love Christmas with the Lords. I’m definitely also excited to see what comes next from Hannah Langdon.

Review: A Concert for Christmas by Helen Hawkins*

*I received a copy of this book in eBook format via NetGalley in return for this review. All reviews published on Yours, Chloe are completely honest and my own, and are in now way influenced by the gifting opportunity.

Title: A Concert For Christmas
Author: Helen Hawkins
Genre: Holiday Romance

Trigger warnings:  Car Accident, Miscarriage (Second Trimester), Bullying

Rating: ★★

Schoolteacher Sophie Lawson has fled to the Cotswold countryside after a tragic break-up and is throwing herself into dating and organising Cranswell’s annual Christmas concert. The festive fun is marred by the arrival of a handsome but surly musical director, tricky pupils and concert preparations falling into disarray. Disaster strikes, but the show must go on. Will the concert bring Christmas harmony to Cranswell and will Sophie end the year on a high note? 

A Concert For Christmas is the debut novel from author Helen Hawkins and a cosy Christmas contemporary romance set in the fictional Cotswold market town of Cranswell. It’s an easy read which you could fly through in a day and great if you like books with a cosy community theme.

I want to preface this review by saying that I did want to like this book. I always try to support new authors and hate having to give negative feedback on a debut book where possible. But, although it did have some strengths, I largely didn’t get on with A Concert For Christmas and hope that this review explains my reasoning for this well.

To start with the things I enjoyed about the book, I did really like the cosy small-town setting of Cranswell and it was nice to meet the different inhabitants of the town. A particular shoutout goes to my personal favourite character: the eccentric Lulu. The focus on the choir and their Christmas concert felt lovely and festive so it was a great setup for a cosy Christmas novel.

Sophie was a nice-enough protagonist. She made me laugh at times and it was sweet how much she cared about everyone around her. I liked following her day-to-day life as a primary school teacher and thought this was a nice touch as primary schools can be lovely – yet busy – places to work over Christmas. The trauma she has following her miscarriage and subsequent relationship breakdown was largely well written also. However, I was absolutely infuriated by her for dating the parent of a child in her class. I am an ex-teacher and that is a total no-no, particularly in the way Sophie went about it. She was over-familiar with Liam’s daughter Cassie and it just all completely went against teacher professionalism. I also didn’t like the relationship between Sophie and her mum. I appreciate that difficult parent/child relationships do exist but this felt too much and it seemed unrealistic that Sophie’s mum would run a charity supporting those who have experienced child loss yet be completely oblivious to how Sophie was struggling.

The primary issue with the book is Liam’s character. He treats Sophie really poorly and is blowing hot and cold throughout the whole story so it really hard to root for their romance. All I wanted was for Sophie to run for the hills. I appreciate that something could be said for Liam’s untreated trauma following the death of his wife but if anything, he needed therapy not a new girlfriend to take on the brunt of his trauma responses. It was extremely difficult to celebrate a HEA between them when we’d seen awful anger issues in Liam that had not been addressed.

Unfortunately, I did find the narrative structure difficult to engage with also. We had frequent chapter breaks in the middle of scenes and chapters repeatedly switched focus between our two POVs – Sophie’s and Liam’s – and this overall just made the narrative feel really disjointed and difficult to follow.

Overall, this book would be good for anyone wanting a easy-read Christmas book with a small-town setting and community feel, but it just wasn’t for me.

Review: Make You Mine This Christmas by Lizzie Huxley-Jones*

*I received a copy of this book in eBook format via NetGalley in return for this review. All reviews published on Yours, Chloe are completely honest and my own, and are in now way influenced by the gifting opportunity. This review is being posted as part of the Make You Mine This Christmas blog tour organised by Hodder & Stoughton.

Title: Make You Mine This Christmas
Author: Lizzie Huxley-Jones
Genre: LGBTQIA+ Romance / Holiday Romance
Trigger warnings:  -
Rating: ★★★★

It's the golden rule of pretending to be someone's girlfriend: don't fall for their sister.

After a year from hell, Haf is ready to blow off steam at a Christmas party: a kind stranger, a few too many drinks and suddenly she's kissing Christopher under the mistletoe - in front of his ex-girlfriend.

The next day the news is out that they're apparently a couple, madly in love and coming to Oxlea to spend the festive season with Christopher's family. But Haf doesn't have better holiday plans and to save her new friend from embarrassment, she agrees to pretend to be Christopher's girlfriend for Christmas.

It has the makings of a hilarious anecdote they'll be telling for years. Until Haf meets Christopher's sister: the mysterious, magnetic and utterly irresistible Kit. Maybe love was waiting for Haf in this quiet little town all along ... 

Make You Mine This Christmas is the latest heartwarming novel from author Lizzie Huxley-Jones and the must-read queer rom-com of this festive season.

The plot is packed full of all of your favourite romance tropes set against the backdrop of a snowy UK Christmas. Although a fake dating plot is at the forefront of the story, we also have a fantastic queer meet cute in a bookshop and the forbidden love trope is explored through Haf’s attraction to her fake boyfriend’s sister Kit. Lizzie Huxley-Jones has a really engaging writing style which you can just sink into like a big hug and I read the entire book in one sitting. I just couldn’t get enough!

I loved how much representation we had within the story and this is really something which I think sets Make You Mine This Christmas apart from other books. This includes neurodivergent, disability and chronic pain rep, a curvy and body-positive FMC and a range of LGBTQIA+ representation including characters who were non-binary, bisexual and lesbian.

This book is perfect if you want a really Christmas-heavy read packed full of festive cheer to cosy up with this holiday season. It really gave off Hallmark-movie vibes with everything from questionable Christmas jumpers and handmade decorations to kisses under the mistletoe and a cosy community Christmas fair with real (albeit unpredictable) reindeer.

One of the things which stood out within the story was how loveable and relatable all of the characters were. Haf was a truly fantastic protagonist and, as someone who was diagnosed as autistic in adulthood, I loved that she was written as an autistic character whose autism had been missed but probably explained a lot of the aspects of her character. This representation is so important and really made me feel seen so I want to thank Lizzie Huxley-Jones for including this in the story. Haf’s fake-boyfriend Christopher was a total sweetheart and, whilst being mindful of avoiding spoilers where possible, I loved the journey his character went on towards starting to advocate more for his wants and dreams rather than feeling like he has to confirm to the expectations set of him. I honestly don’t know where to begin with talking about how much I loved Kit’s character. I fell in love with her the minute we met her in the bookshop and this love only grew the more we got to know her. Her relationship with her brother felt like a really authentic sibling relationship and, as I’ve already said, I thought her disability and linked chronic pain were really well portrayed and some of the best disabled representation I’ve seen in any book. The romantic and sexual tension between Haf and Kit was well-written, as were the (spoiler alert) romantic and spicier scenes when we got to them. If anything, one thing I would have liked in way of improving the narrative was if we’d had even more stolen romantic moments between Haf and Kit to build up their romance gradually. Although it’s a slow burn prior to their first kiss, after that it feels like we go from 0-100 and I would have liked a few more stolen kisses here and there to increase the tension even further by the time we get to the spicier moments.

We also have a fantastic cast of supporting characters and I loved every single one of them, from Laurel the fake boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend to the queer meet-cute obsessed bookseller and the ever-present Bryn. Ambrose, Haf’s flatmate and best friend, had to be my favourite though and they made me laugh out loud almost every chapter with their witty remarks and hilarious use of twitter polls. I loved that although Ambrose was non-binary, they weren’t defined by their gender identity and aside from use of they/them pronouns throughout the narrative, their gender identity was only referenced briefly and the focus was more on their other character traits.

Overall, Make You Mine This Christmas is a charming festive sapphic romance packed full of Christmas spirit, witty characters, laugh-out-loud moments, cute romantic scenes and truly incredible disabled and LGBTQIA+ representation. It’s a must-read this Christmas.