2025 Reading Plans

Posted on 01/07/2025 by Lenn

Happy New Year, everyone!

I had been meaning to bring this blog back to life, but decided to just wait for the new year to do so and now that we’re already a few days into 2025, I’m back and will be sharing my reading goals for this year.

Despite my inactivity here, I read quite a lot in 2024 with 157 books in total and it was my best reading year yet. And though I still intend to read plenty of books in 2025, I also plan on getting back into fantasy and catch up on my backlist or fantasy TBR so I’m already anticipating a slight decrease in the number of books by the end of this year because it takes quite some time for me to finish high fantasy books and series! I did set my Goodreads and Fable reading goal to 80 books compared to last year’s 70 though, so that’s still a lot, but I’m positive and that I can complete that by the end of the year.

Some of my reading goals for 2025 are:

Read more Japanese literature
Read more literary fiction
Read more local (Filipiniana) books
Put a dent on my fantasy TBR
Catch up with my comics/manga TBR
Finish reading the Farseer trilogy
Finish reading the Trials of Apollo series
Finish reading the Chestnut Springs series
Be smarter when it comes to buying books:
- Only buy books from a series I already have/currently reading
- Only buy book 1 of a new series once I’ve finished reading a series
- For standalone books, I can buy some that I strongly feel like I will enjoy (e.g., books from a favorite author), otherwise, just read them via kindle
- Don’t give in too much on sales

*I still won’t post monthly hopefuls or TBRs though because as a mood reader, I really suck at following them. Haha

Again, happy new year, everyone!

Book Review: My Mother’s Eyes by Jeremy Ray

Posted on 08/04/2023 by Lenn

Title: My Mother’s Eyes

Author: Jeremy Ray

Publication Date: December 17, 2021

Number of Pages: 39

Format: E-book

Publisher: Ray Publishing

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Synopsis:

“You’re wrong, Jordie. You’ll see. Draw me just one more time.”

No one knows if his mother will come out of her coma, so fourteen-year-old Jordie memorializes her in the only way he knows how: by drawing her. His older brother doesn’t approve of these sketches, but Jordie’s determined to capture the person she used to be.

Unfortunately, Jordie must draw her from memory because his mom didn’t keep pictures, and her body in the hospital no longer looks like her. But the images of her are quickly fading, and if he doesn’t get a drawing right soon, the mother he remembers may slip away forever. No matter how close Jordie gets to completing a drawing, his mom’s most vital feature always evades him.

Will Jordie capture his mother’s eyes? Or are they and his mother gone forever?
Continue reading →

Book Review: Magnum Opus by Caitlin Marceau

Posted on 08/03/2023 by Lenn

Title: Magnum Opus

Author: Caitlin Marceau

Publication Date: August 30, 2022

Number of Pages: 63

Format: E-book

Publisher: Timber Ghost Press

Genre: Horror, Supernatural

Synopsis:

Charlotte Curran is willing to do whatever it takes to make sure her newest book is a best seller… even if that means murdering her best friend.

Nobody suspects her of killing renowned author Kim Lavoie, but when Charlotte starts seeing Kim everywhere she turns, she quickly realizes it’s more than just her guilty conscience haunting her. With each passing day, Kim’s judging gaze grows more difficult to escape.

Magnum Opus is a dark look at the price of fame and the legacy we leave behind. Continue reading →

Book Review: Am I Beautiful? by Jon Athan

Posted on 08/02/2023 by Lenn

Title: Am I Beautiful?

Author: Jon Athan

Publication Date: February 15, 2021

Number of Pages: 298

Format: E-book

Publisher: Independent

Genre: Horror, Splatterpunk

Synopsis:

Adam Miller, a successful marketing manager at a travel agency, visits Tokyo, Japan on business. During his trip, he has a one-night stand with a young Japanese woman, Miki Someya. But Miki latches onto him. She follows him— stalks him —through the streets of Tokyo, professing her love and begging for his. Adam manages to avoid her, but he loses control of himself when she confronts him and threatens to follow him home to tell his wife about their affair. In a fit of drunken rage, Adam attacks her. He beats her black and blue, then he carves a smile on her face with a pair of shears.

Afraid and ashamed, he flees the country and escapes prosecution. But years later, when children start vanishing in his city and the only suspect is a woman with a scarred face, he suspects his past has followed him home… Inspired by a classic urban legend, Jon Athan, the author of Lovesick and Maneater , brings you a disturbing new vision of sadistic romance. This novel contains graphic content. Reader discretion is advised. Continue reading →

Book Review: My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward by Mark Lukach

Posted on 08/01/2023 by Lenn

Title: My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward

Author: Mark Lukach

Publication Date: May 2, 2017

Number of Pages: 320

Format: Audiobook

Publisher: Harper Wave

Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir, Mental Illness

Synopsis:

A heart-wrenching, yet hopeful, memoir of a young marriage that is redefined by mental illness and affirms the power of love.

Mark and Giulia’s life together began as a storybook romance. They fell in love at eighteen, married at twenty-four, and were living their dream life in San Francisco. When Giulia was twenty-seven, she suffered a terrifying and unexpected psychotic break that landed her in the psych ward for nearly a month. One day she was vibrant and well-adjusted; the next she was delusional and suicidal, convinced that her loved ones were not safe.

Eventually, Giulia fully recovered, and the couple had a son. But, soon after Jonas was born, Giulia had another breakdown, and then a third a few years after that. Pushed to the edge of the abyss, everything the couple had once taken for granted was upended.

A story of the fragility of the mind, and the tenacity of the human spirit, My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward is, above all, a love story that raises profound questions: How do we care for the people we love? What and who do we live for? Breathtaking in its candor, radiant with compassion, and written with dazzling lyricism, Lukach’s is an intensely personal odyssey through the harrowing years of his wife’s mental illness, anchored by an abiding devotion to family that will affirm readers’ faith in the power of love. Continue reading →

Book Review: I’m Not Sam by Jack Ketchum & Lucky McKee

Posted on 06/07/2023 by Lenn

Title: I’m Not Sam

Author: Jack Ketchum & Lucky McKee

Publication Date: January 1, 2012

Number of Pages: 127

Format: E-book

Publisher: Cemetery Dance Publications

Genre: Horror, Psychological Thriller

Synopsis:

Now I’m way beyond confusion.

Now I’m scared.

I’ve slid down the rabbit-hole and what’s down there is dark and serious. This is not play-acting or some waking bad dream she’s having. She’s changed, somehow overnight. I don’t know how I know this but I sense it as surely as I sense my own skin. This is not Sam, my Sam, wholly sane and firmly balanced. Capable of tying off an artery as neatly as you’d thread a belt through the loops of your jeans.

And now I’m shivering too.

In some fundamental way she’s changed… Continue reading →

Book Review: Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

Posted on 06/06/2023 by Lenn

Title: Dark Matter

Author: Blake Crouch

Publication Date: July 26, 2016

Number of Pages: 352

Format: Hardcover

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Genre: Suspense, Thriller, Sci-Fi

Synopsis:

A mindbending, relentlessly surprising thriller from the author of the bestselling Wayward Pines trilogy.

Jason Dessen is walking home through the chilly Chicago streets one night, looking forward to a quiet evening in front of the fireplace with his wife, Daniela, and their son, Charlie—when his reality shatters.

“Are you happy with your life?”

Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious.

Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits.

Before a man Jason’s never met smiles down at him and says, “Welcome back, my friend.”

In this world he’s woken up to, Jason’s life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible.

Is it this world or the other that’s the dream?

And even if the home he remembers is real, how can Jason possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could’ve imagined—one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe.

Dark Matter is a brilliantly plotted tale that is at once sweeping and intimate, mind-bendingly strange and profoundly human–a relentlessly surprising science-fiction thriller about choices, paths not taken, and how far we’ll go to claim the lives we dream of. Continue reading →

Book Review: Mommy Dearest by Willow Rose

Posted on 06/05/2023 by Lenn

Title: Mommy Dearest

Author: Willow Rose

Publication Date: July 12, 2017

Number of Pages: 118

Format: E-book

Publisher: Amazon

Genre: Thriller

Synopsis:

Do you really know your mother-in-law? A Spine-chilling Horror novella from the Queen of Scream
We all know a relationship with your mother-in-law can be quite tricky from time to time. We jokingly call them things like Monster-in-law. However, sometimes, there is actual truth to that joke, isn’t there? Some of them do act like true monsters, don’t they?

When Crystal meets her future mother-in-law for the first time, she is excited. She knows it might be a challenge to have her live with them for an entire month, but still. It’s an old woman we’re talking about here. How much trouble can she cause?

Mommy Dearest is a short story thriller from the Amazon #1 Best Selling author Willow Rose. It will NOT improve your relationship with your mother-in-law. Continue reading →

Book Review: The Things He Heard by Matt Shaw

Posted on 06/03/2023 by Lenn

Title: The Things He Heard

Author: Matt Shaw

Publication Date: November 25, 2022

Number of Pages: 68

Format: Paperback
Publisher: Independent

Genre: Horror

Synopsis:

A tragic, violent

The boy didn’t have cancer. He had something else buried deep within which he named “his Cancer”. Others didn’t know it was there, even though he tried telling them. Instead, they said he was “fine” and being “silly” and “melodramatic”. Even when his anger turned to frustration and streams of tears, they continued to say he was okay. He knew he wasn’t though and, the more they doubted him and didn’t listen, the more the “cancer” grew.

He could feel it inside and, it scared him. He knew that, one day, it was going to explode. What he didn’t know was who would be caught up in the explosion.

From award-winning author Matt Shaw, the author of Sick B*stards, The Octopus Trilogy and Roe V. Wade. Continue reading →

Book Review: The Boy From the Woods (Wilde, #1) by Harlan Coben

Posted on 06/02/2023 by Lenn

Title: The Boy From the Woods (Wilde, #1)

Author: Harlan Coben

Publication Date: March 1, 2020

Number of Pages: 384

Format: Paperback
Publisher: Century

Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, Crime

Synopsis:

Thirty years ago, a child was found in the woods. He had been living a feral existence, with no memory of how he got there or even who he is. Everyone just calls him Wilde.

Now another child has gone missing – Naomi Pine – who may be playing some sort of disappearing game. No one seems concerned about her whereabouts, not even her father.

No one – except criminal attorney Hester Crimstein, whose grandson knows Naomi is being bullied badly at school and is concerned for her safety. Hester is determined to find Naomi so she calls Wilde – now ex-military and an expert in security issues – and asks him to track her down.

But even Wilde can’t find Naomi. One day passes, then another, then a third.

Four days later a finger shows up in the mail.

And Wilde knows that what may have started as a game has now spiralled into something far, far darker… Continue reading →

Lenn of Spades ♠

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