Category: books

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The Seven Day Switch

The Seven Day Switch by Kelly Harms

Celeste Mason and Wendy Charles can’t stand each other. Celeste is the epitome of a stay-at-home mom, while Wendy is the ultimate working mom and a productivity consultant to boot. Then after a neighborhood potluck where they drink too much sangria, they experience their very own Freaky Friday and wake up in each other’s bodies.

What follows is a humorous, messy week as they try to live one another’s lives while figuring out how to get back to their old selves. I appreciated how they each move back and forth between trying to change things they don’t like about the other person’s life and having moments of empathy for each other.

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The Cyprian

What a great way to start the year! The Cyprian by Mercedes Lackey was my first book of 2026, and it did not disappoint! I have been reading Mercedes Lackey’s books since the 1980s, when she started the Valdemar fantasy series, so I am definitely a long-time fan.

This book is number 18 in her Elemental Masters series, which is set in an alternate reality where magic exists. They take place in the early 1900s, mostly in England, and an Elemental Master is someone who has magical control over air, water, fire, or earth. Each book has its origin in a famous fairy tale, this one being Hans Christian Andersen’s The Wild Swans, but that is just the starting point for Lackey’s magical storytelling.

In The Cyprian, we meet Elena Whitstone and her seven brothers. Their mother has fled and now their father is bringing home a new stepmother, who is certainly neglectful and possibly evil. I don’t want to give any spoilers, so I’ll just say how much I enjoyed this story and highly recommend checking it out. It can be read as a standalone book, although you may want to go back and read them all afterwards!

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Get Lucky

Get Lucky by Katherine Center

This is a fun book. I enjoyed getting to know Sarah Harper as she finds her way after making a dumb mistake and losing her job in New York City. She goes home to Houston to visit her sister Mackie, who is dealing with infertility issues, and ends up offering to be her surrogate! On top of all that, she also runs into Everett, the sweet guy she dumped in high school.

There were a lot of humorous moments between the pregnancy, her old boyfriend, and her new job. Center also does a good job exploring the ups and downs of the sister relationship, and I really liked how things ended up with them.

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The Half of It

The Half of It by Juliette Fay

This may be a weird take, but I had trouble enjoying the first half of this book because we are told early on that the two main characters (Cal and Helen) have been estranged for 40 years, but it takes many chapters and several jumps between the past and the present before we find out what the event that broke them apart was. I have a hard time relaxing into a story when I know there is something coming but have to keep waiting for it.

Once we had the whole story of what happened, it was easier for me to care about the characters and enjoy letting the story unfold. I especially liked Helen’s colorful friend Francie; she was a lot of fun.

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2026 Reading Goals

I have been thinking for a while about my reading goals for 2026. In 2025, my main goal was to read 75 books in the course of the year, and I finished with 126. I also had a goal to read 12 nonfiction books, which I met exactly.

Early in the year, I came across the #25in2025 tag on Instagram and decided to participate by making a list of 25 books I wanted to read in 2025. By the end of June, I had finished that list, so I made another one for the second half of the year, which I finished in December.

I am really pleased that I met all my goals for 2025 and am looking forward to some more great reads in 2026. This may change as the year progresses, but here are the goals I am starting out with for 2026:

  • Read at least 100 books.
  • Read 6 nonfiction books.
  • Join Kindle Unlimited to read the books from my TBR that I can’t get from the library. (I have gotten a headstart on this one as I recently was able to get a three month free trial.)
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Week in Review: January 4, 2026

This was a nice, quiet week. I worked Monday-Wednesday and then had the rest of the week off. I also had no appointments or planned events for either Michael or myself, and he went to his dad’s for the weekend. It was lovely!

I did spend some time looking back over my progress on my reading and puzzling hobbies. I am a total nerd and love tracking things, so I track my puzzles in an app called Puzzle Tracker and also on a spreadsheet (so I don’t lose the information if anything happens to the app). This image shows my puzzle stats for 2025:

I also compiled some stats for my 2025 year in books. I am pretty happy with what I read last year, especially since there were only 5 books that I rated 2 stars and 2 books that I DNF’d.

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Top Books from the Second Half of 2025

I love looking back over my reading log to see what books rise to the top. A few months ago, I posted my top books from the first half of 2025, and now I am sharing my top books from the second half of the year.

These were all 5 star reads for me:

  • Happiness for Beginners by Katherine Center
  • Catch Us When We Fall by Juliette Fay
  • This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
  • Flirting Lessons by Jasmine Guillory
  • How to Stop Time by Matt Haig
  • Funny Story by Emily Henry
  • Loveless by Alice Oseman
  • The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston
  • After I Do by Taylor Jenkins Reid
  • Woodworking by Emily St. James
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What I’m Reading – January 2026

What I’m Reading Now

The Cyprian by Mercedes Lackey – Elemental Masters #18 – I have been a fan of hers since she started writing almost 40 years ago and am so thankful she is still writing books!

The Seven Day Switch by Kelly Harms – I am working my way through her backlist, so this one is up next!

What I Recently Finished

Fiction

  • Goblins & Greatcoats by Travis Baldree – Legends & Lattes #0.6 (short story)
  • Get Lucky by Katherine Center
  • The Bright Side of Going Dark by Kelly Harms
  • Wherever the Wind Takes Us by Kelly Harms
  • Catch Us When We Fall by Juliette Fay
  • The Half of It by Juliette Fay
  • The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston
  • Feeling the Fireworks: Starting Over in Devon by Rebecca Paulinyi (South West #3)
  • The Best Christmas Ever: A Wedding in Devon Novella by Rebecca Paulinyi (South West #4)
  • Trouble in Tartan: True Love in Devon by Rebecca Paulinyi (South West #5)
  • Summer of Sunshine: Missing Devon Novella by Rebecca Paulinyi (South West #6)
  • Healing the Heartbreak: Moving on in Devon by Rebecca Paulinyi (South West #7)
  • Dancing Till Dawn: First Love in Devon by Rebecca Paulinyi (South West #8)

Nonfiction

  • Queer & Christian: Reclaiming the Bible, Our Faith, and Our Place at the Table by Brandan J. Robertson

What I Added to my TBR

  • An Ancient Witch’s Guide to Modern Dating by Cecilia Edward
  • This Book Made Me Think of You by Libby Page
  • The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen

TBR Stats/Updates

  • I currently have 179 books on my TBR. Of those, 6 are nonfiction and 173 are fiction.
  • At the end of June, I created a focused reading list of 25 books I wanted to read by the end of the year. I have completed that list with 24 read and 1 DNF.
  • I read 126 books in 2025 (my goal was 75).
  • My nonfiction goal for 2025 was 12, which I achieved.
  • Here are some more stats from StoryGraph:
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Nonfiction I Read in 2025

I don’t read a ton of nonfiction, but I set myself a goal at the beginning of 2025 to read at least 12 nonfiction books over the course of the year. 

My plan was to read one each month, and I kept pretty close to that plan. I doubled up one month and missed one month, so it evened out to 12 total for the year. Most of them were related to Christianity, but I did also read one memoir and one autism-related book. Here’s a breakdown by month:

January – Followers Under 40: The journey away from church for Millenials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha by Rachel Gilmore and Kris Sledge

February – The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism by Jemar Tisby

March – Baby Dinosaurs on the Ark?: The Bible and Modern Science and the Trouble of Making It All Fit by Janet Kellogg Ray

April – The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You’ve Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended by Sheila Wray Gregoire, Rebecca Gregoire Lindenbach, and Joanna Sawatsky

May – Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope by Esau McCaulley

June #1 – God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships by Matthew Vine

June #2 – How to Fight Racism: Courageous Christianity and the Journey Toward Racial Justice by Jemar Tisby

July – Becoming the Pastor’s Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman’s Path to Ministry by Beth Allison Barr

August – The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say about Human Origins by Peter Enns

September – Autism Out Loud: Life with a Child on the Spectrum, from Diagnosis to Young Adulthood by Kate Swenson, Adrian Wood, and Carrie Cariello

October – I missed this month, but thankfully I read two in June so I was still on track to meet my goal for the year!

November – Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop: A Memoir by Alba Donati

December – Queer & Christian: Reclaiming the Bible, Our Faith, and Our Place at the Table by Brandan Robertson

Do you read a lot of nonfiction? Were there any standouts this year?

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Catch Us When We Fall

Catch Us When We Fall by Juliette Fay is the story of Cass Macklin, who finds herself broke, homeless, and pregnant after losing her boyfriend Ben. Ben & Cass had spent most of their twenties drunk, and now Cass is faced with the challenge of sobering up for the sake of her baby. She turns to Ben’s brother Scott, who plays for the Boston Red Sox, for help. Scott takes her in despite his longstanding issues with his brother and his lack of faith in Cass’s ability to stay clean.

Even though this book deals with the heavy subjects of alcoholism and dysfunctional families, I found it very uplifting. I really enjoyed the relationships in this book, and I found the characters very realistic and relatable. It was good to see both Cass and Scott grow and heal as they face their childhood trauma. Fay does a good job of showing how much a support system means in the struggle to overcome addiction while also revealing how necessary it is for a person to get and stay sober for themselves rather than for someone else.

I highly recommend this book!