Month in Review: January 2026

January continues to earn its reputation as the longest month of year, haha. I might be in the minority, but I don't typically mind it because I feel like it gives me plenty of time to adapt to a new year... but maybe that's just me. This post is up a bit later than I intended, but this past week has just been hectic as hell so I'm glad I'm getting it up at all. I have felt very fortunate to live in Southern California this month as I've seen the crazy winter storms hit so many places throughout the country, so I hope if you are somewhere caught up in all of that that you are safe and doing well!

I also posted my Best Books of 2025 and my 2025 Reading Stats posts if you missed those!

In personal news.. January has been... a lot. The good news is that I started a new part-time job and I still have a couple interviews and leads, so fingers crossed things end up going well and work out in whatever way they are meant to. There's also some less fun personal things that have happened in my life in January, but let's just focus on the positive, haha. 

In reading news, it was a pretty decent reading month. I started out strong, but then fizzled out a bit as the month got crazier. Still, I'm not complaining! I read some great books this and I don't think I really disliked any, so that's always a plus for me. I posted about a review a week which is less than I meant to, but I'm trying to be realistic about what I can feasibly get up right now, haha, so I'm going to just accept it and keep trying to improve each month. 

How was your January and what books have you been reading? How's the new year been? Any reading-related goals?  Let me know how your month was below and what you've been reading!

   

# books read: 11

The Place Where They Buried Your Heart by Christina Henry

Source: Owned | Format: Hardcover
Thoughts: I finally got around to this one and really enjoyed it! I appreciated how unique it felt for a haunted house type of story. 

Native America: The Story of the First Peoples by Kenneth L. Feder

Source: NetGalley | Format: Audiobook

Thoughts: This is a fantastic overview of the history Native American peoples and I thought the author did an incredible job of explaining things clearly and in a very readable manner. It has more of an introductory vibe to me, so if you're new to learning about Native American history, this is a great place to start. 

The Temple of Fortuna by Elodie Harper

Source: Owned | Format: Hardcover
Thoughts: I'm not sure why it's taken me so long to finally finish this trilogy, but I'm so glad I finally did because it was a very solid ending to a fantastic trilogy. 

Patchwork Dolls by Ysabelle Cheung

Source: Publisher | Format: Physical ARC
Thoughts: This was an incredibly thought-provoking and weird (good weird!) collection of stories and my review for it will be up next week!

Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham

Source: Library | Format: Audiobook
Thoughts: For some reason, I though I read this years ago. And then I realized I hadn't, so I decided to finally check it out and it was very informative. I still hold true to the belief that it is exceedingly rare for any catastrophic event/etc. to ever be handled well by any government/people in power... and this was not an exception.

Just Watch Me by Lior Torenberg

Source: NetGalley | Format: eARC

Thoughts: This was a bit of an adrenaline-fueled fever dream that I was hooked on for the entire ride. 

The Compound by Aisling Rawlee

Source: Library | Format: Hardcover
Thoughts: I started reading this a couple months ago, but couldn't really get into it so set it aside. But then I started hearing so many mixed things about it that I was tempted to try it again, so I did and I was much more engaged this time--I found it to be surprisingly compelling and an interesting look at social dynamics and individual nature. 

Detour by Jeff Rake & Rob Hart

Source: NetGalley | Format: eARC
Thoughts: Detour is a sci-fi/space thriller with a super intriguing concept. It's a bit slow to start, but places with some fun ideas and I'm eager for more.

Eden of Witches, Vol. 2 by Yumeji

Source: Library | Format: Ebook
Thoughts: I've been enjoying checking this one out, though I wouldn't say I'm overly hooked on it. I really love some of the art!

The Aftermyth by Tracy Wolff

Source: Publisher | Format: Hardcover
Thoughts: This was such a fun Greek mythology-inspired middle grade read, and my review is already up for it!

The Power of Guilt by Chris Moore

Source: NetGalley | Format: ALC
Thoughts: My focus hasn't been great with fiction books on audio lately, so I've been trying to stick to more nonfiction and this was one I saw on NetGalley so decided to give it a read. Although I didn't find too much to be necessarily "groundbreaking," I think it does make some really interesting points about guilt and where it manifests, its effects, guilt vs. shame, and more--I'd recommend it!

To-Be-Finished:

For Human Use by Sarah G. Pierce
I really tried with this one, but it just wasn't working for me. I really love the concept and thought this book would be amazing, but the directions it took and how it explored the concept were pretty disappointing and, honestly, a bit boring, so I've set it down for now. 

 

City of Others by Jared Poon
Detour by Jeff Rake & Rob Hart
Just Watch Me by Lior Torenberg
The Aftermyth by Tracy Wolff

 Posts:

Month in Review: December 2025
Best Books of 2025
2025 Reading Stats
Anticipated February 2026 Releases

Blog Memes:

Can't-Wait Wednesday:
1/7: The Iron Garden Sutra by A.D. Sui, She Made Herself a Monster by Anna Kovatcheva, White River Crossing by Ian McGuire
1/14: After the Fall by Edward Ashton, The Renovation by Kenan Orhan, & The Pohaku by Jasmin 'Iolani Hakes
1/21: The Forest on the Edge of Time by Jasmin Kirkbride, The Fox Hunt by Caitlin Breeze, & Eradication: A Fable by Jonathan Miles, & The Aftermyth by Tracy Wolff
1/28: Operation Bounce House by Matt Dinniman, The Fourth Princess by Janie Chang, & Patchwork Dolls by Ysabelle Cheung

Can't-Wait Wednesday: On Sundays She Picked Flowers by Yah Yah Scholfield, The Last of Earth by Deepa Anappara, This House Will Feed by Maria Tureaud, & This House Will Feed by Lior Toreneberg

  

 Can't-Wait is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings that spotlights exciting upcoming releases that we can't wait to be released

On Sundays She Picked Flowers by Yah Yah Scholfield
Publication: January 27th, 2026
S&S/Saga Press
Hardcover. 240 pages.
Pre-order: Bookshop.org | Amazon

From Goodreads:
"“A ferociously talented writer. Scholfield writes with insight, beauty, and the wildness of real art.” —Victor LaValle, author of Lone Women

In this sinister and surreal Southern Gothic debut, a woman escapes into the uncanny woods of southern Georgia and must contend with ghosts, haints, and most dangerous of all, the truth about herself.

When Judith Rice fled her childhood home, she thought she’d severed her abusive mother’s hold on her. She didn’t have a plan or destination, just a desperate need to escape. Drawn to the forests of southern Georgia, Jude finds shelter in a house as haunted by its violent history as she is by her own.

Jude embraces the eccentricities of the dilapidated house, soothing its ghosts and haints, honoring its blood-soaked land. And over the next thirteen years, Jude blossoms from her bitter beginnings into a wisewoman, a healer.

But her hard-won peace is threatened when an enigmatic woman shows up on her doorstep. The woman is beautiful but unsettling, captivating but uncanny. Ensnared by her desire for this stranger, Jude is caught off guard by brutal urges suddenly simmering beneath her skin. As the woman stirs up memories of her escape years ago, Jude must confront the calls of violence rooted in her bloodline.

Haunting and thought-provoking, On Sunday She Picked Flowers explores retribution, family trauma, and the power of building oneself back up after breaking down."

This sounds like an incredible mix of ideas, and I'm always excited about debuts!

The Last of Earth by Deepa Anappara

Publication: January 13th, 2026

Random House

Hardcover. 352 pages.

Pre-order: Bookshop.org | Amazon

From Goodreads:

"From the award-winning author of Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line comes a stunning historical novel set in nineteenth-century Tibet that follows two outsiders—an Indian schoolteacher spying for the British Empire and an English “lady” explorer—as they venture into a forbidden kingdom.

“A riveting novel that takes on the hubris of exploration, the pursuit of immortality, and the abiding nature of love and friendship.”—Laila Lalami, author of The Dream Hotel

1869. Tibet is closed to Europeans, an infuriating obstruction for the rap­idly expanding British Empire. In response, Britain begins training Indians—permitted to cross borders that white men may not—to undertake illicit, dangerous surveying expeditions into Tibet.

Balram is one such surveyor-spy, an Indian schoolteacher who, for several years, has worked for the British, often alongside his dearest friend, Gyan. But Gyan went missing on his last expedition and is rumored to be imprisoned within Tibet. Desperate to rescue his friend, Balram agrees to guide an English captain on a foolhardy mission: After years of paying others to do the exploring, the captain, disguised as a monk, wants to personally chart a river that runs through southern Tibet. Their path will cross fatefully with that of another Westerner in disguise, fifty-year-old Katherine. Denied a fellowship in the all-male Royal Geographical Society in London, she intends to be the first European woman to reach Lhasa.

As Balram and Katherine make their way into Tibet, they will face storms and bandits, snow leopards and soldiers, fevers and frostbite. What’s more, they will have to battle their own doubts, ambitions, grief, and pasts in order to survive the treacherous landscape.

A polyphonic novel about the various ways humans try to leave a mark on the world—from the enduring nature of family and friendship to the egomania and obsessions of the colonial enterprise—The Last of Earth confirms Deepa Anappara as one of our greatest and most ambitious storytellers."

Everything about this sounds like something I'd enjoy, and I've been really dying to read some historical fiction. Can't wait to check this one out!

This House Will Feed by Maria Tureaud
Publication: January 27th, 2026
Kensington
Hardcover. 368 pages.
Pre-order: Bookshop.org | Amazon

From Goodreads:
"Amidst the devastation of Ireland’s Great Famine, a young woman is salvaged from certain death when offered a mysterious position at a remote manor house haunted by a strange power and the horror of her own memories in this chillingly evocative historical novel braided with gothic horror and supernatural suspense for readers of Katherine Arden’s The Warm Hands of Ghosts and The Silence Factory by Bridget Collins.

County Clare, 1848: In the scant few years since the potato blight first cast its foul shadow over Ireland, Maggie O’Shaughnessy has lost everything—her entire family and the man she trusted with her heart. Toiling in the Ennis Workhouse for paltry rations, she can see no future either within or outside its walls—until the mysterious Lady Catherine arrives to whisk her away to an old mansion in the stark limestone landscape of the Burren.

Lady Catherine wants Maggie to impersonate her late daughter, Wilhelmina, and hoodwink solicitors into releasing Wilhelmina’s widow pension so that Lady Catherine can continue to provide for the villagers in her care. In exchange, Maggie will receive freedom from the workhouse, land of her own, and the one thing she wants more than either: a chance to fulfill the promise she made to her brother on his deathbed—to live to spite them all.

Launching herself into the daunting task, Maggie plays the role of Wilhelmina as best she can while ignoring the villagers’ tales of ghostly figures and curses. But more worrying are the whispers that come from within. Something in Lady Catherine’s house is reawakening long-buried memories in Maggie—of a foe more terrifying than hunger or greed, of a power that calls for blood and vengeance, and of her own role in a nightmare that demands the darkest sacrifice . . ."

There's also room for more haunted houses stories, right? And with a historical setting, I'm doubly in! 

Just Watch Me by Lior Torenberg

Publication: January 20th, 2026

Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster

Hardcover. 288 pages.

Pre-order: Bookshop.org | Amazon

From Goodreads:

"Fleabag meets Big Swiss in this bold debut about a charismatic misfit who livestreams her life for seven days and nights to raise money to save her comatose sister—a poignant and darkly funny exploration of grief, forgiveness, and redemption.

Dell Danvers is barely keeping it together. She’s behind on rent for her studio apartment (formerly a walk-in closet), she’s being plagued by perpetual stomach pain, and her younger sister, Daisy, is in a coma at a hospital that wants to pull the plug. Freshly unemployed and subsisting on selling plants to trust fund kids, Dell impulsively starts a 24-hour livestream under the username mademoiselle_dell to fundraise for private life support for Daisy.

Dell is her stream’s dungeon master, banishing those who don’t abide by her terms and steadily rising up the platform’s ranks with her sympathetic story and angry-funny screen presence. Once she discovers she has a talent for eating spicy food, her streaming fame explodes and her pepper consumption escalates from jalapeño to ghost to the hottest pepper on earth: the Carolina Reaper. Dell is finally good at something—but as her behavior becomes riskier and a shadowy troll threatens to expose her dark past, Dell must reckon with what her digital life ignores, and what real redemption means.

Narrated in seven taut chapters, one for each day of Dell’s livestream, Just Watch Me careens through a week in the life of this misguided striver with a heart of gold. Voyeuristic and visceral, audacious and outrageous, Lior Torenberg’s debut is both a razor-sharp tragicomedy about the internet economy and a surreptitiously moving tale about the desire to be watched, and the terror of being seen."

I'm honestly just so intrigued by this premise and cannot wait to see how it all plays out and how this author tackles such interesting topics!

Anticipated January 2026 Releases

January is almost upon us--which is a little scary, I won't lie!--but the best part of that is all of the incredible books coming out! 2026 is looking to be a great year for books if January is any indicator and I'm so excited for so many of these.  I am woefully behind on posts for December (and at this point, I'm just calling it my holiday blogging break, haha), but I had to make sure to get this post up so you can all check out January's books. I'm especially excited for To Ride a Rising Storm because it's a sequel I've been waiting for for years and I'm so excited to continue the story. Be sure to let me know which books you're most excited, and happy reading!

A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing by Alice Evelyn Yang || January 27th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

A Spell for Drowning by Rebecca Ferrier || January 27th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

To Ride a Rising Storm by Moniquill Blackgoose || January 27th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org 

Hemlock by Melissa Faliveno || January 20th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

Pedro the Vast by Simon Lopez Trujillo || January 13th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

Detour by Jeff Rake, Rob Hart || January 13th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

The Poet Empress by Shen Tao || January 20th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

Through Gates of Garnet and Gold by Seanan McGuire || January 6th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

The City of Others by Jared Poon || January 13th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

The Bookbinder's Secret by A.D. Bell || January 13th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

Vigil by George Saunders || January 27th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

Escape! by Stephen Fishbach || January 27th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

Humboldt Cut by Allison Mick || January 27th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

On Sundays She Picked Flowers by Yah Yah Scholfield || January 27th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

Crucible by John Sayles || January 20th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

Kokun: Girl from the West by Nahoko Uehashi || January 20th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

The School of Night by Karl Ove Knausgaard || January 13th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

Polar War by Kenneth R. Rosen || January 6th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

This House Will Feed by Maria Tureaud || January 27th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

Nine Goblins by T. Kingfisher || January 20th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

This is Where the Serpent Lives by Daniyal Mueenuddin || January 13th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

Dragon Cursed by Elise Kova || January 6th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

Call Me Ishmaelle by Xialou Guo || January 6th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

The Last of Earth by Deepa Anappara || January 13th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

Neptune's Fortune by Julian Sancton || January 27th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

The Great Shadow by Susan Wise Bauer || January 27th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

Crux by Gabriel Tallent || January 20th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

The Sea Child by Linda Wilgus || January 20th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

A Great Act of Love by Heather Rose || January 27th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

The Storm by Rachel Hawkins || January 6th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

A Box Full of Darkness by Simone St. James || January 20th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

Women of a Promiscuous Nature by Donna Everheart || January 27th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

George Falls Through Time by Ryan Collett || January 20th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

Just Watch Me by Lior Torenberg || January 20th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

The Elsewhere Express by Samantha Sotto Yambao || January 20th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash || January 13th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

How to Lose a Goblin in Ten Days by Jessie Sylva || January 20th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

When the Museum is Closed by Emi Yagi || January 27th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

One Aladdin Two Lamps by Jeanette Winterson || January 20th -- Amazon | Bookshop.org

What are your anticipated January releases?