D. W. Brooks’s Homecoming Chaos is as its name implies. It’s a homecoming full of chaos that culminates into a story worth reading. I thoroughly enjoyed this romantic suspense and look forward to reading more from this author.

Beautifully written, Okra Stew: A Gullah Geechee Family Celebration is heartwarming, and compelling, and shines throughout with themes of family and food, and their emphasis on passing down cultural traditions.

The setting and atmosphere of You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight is isolated and creepy. Kalynn Bayron creates a work experience at Camp Mirror Lake for Charity Curtis with just as many perks as hiccups. Taking advantage of an unsupervised summer job, Charity is living her best life curating a full-contact horror experience for those who are brave enough to face Camp Mirror Lake. It’s tainted, but hidden history is the main attraction. What happens when hidden history is revealed and tries to repeat itself? Strange things start happening, and what a ride it was!

In October 2022 I managed to read 4 books. I say ‘managed’ because I traded my reading time for setting up my blog. It was important to me that I establish what I wanted the blog aesthetics to be before posting content more frequently. That and my sanity only allowed me to get through 2 picture books, a graphic novel, and an adult fiction novel. Book blogging is new for me and deciding what I want to post has been a constant back and forth. Thankfully I approach most things with the goal in mind to accomplish whatever’s at hand…

What’s On My Nightstand is a sometimes weekly blog post, composed to update you all on what I’m currently reading. Why? Because I’m terrible at updating my social cataloging apps. I know. Shame on me.

I had a raggedy Winter Break, but at least I got some reading done :-).

Scrolling through social media has its perks. Now and then I stumble on something that inspires me to share my thoughts and experiences with you all. The post that inspired this blog post is from the Grand Central Publishing Facebook Page and it poses this question: If you could read a book for the first time again, what book would you pick?

I recommend Cameron Battle and the Hidden Kingdoms to readers who like their middle-grade fantasy, fast-paced, full of adventure, combat, history, and West African-inspired mythology.

Remember when I said I had Darknesses on my nightstand and needed to read it soon? Well, I finally did it; it was quite an adventure. Darknesses by Lachelle Seville is a sapphic, gothic, Dracula-inspired novel that has had traction in the book community circles I follow. I chose the book purely by faith in the readers that suggested, and as usual, I didn’t know what I was getting into. That’s nothing new. Now, having finished the book, I wish I would have asked them why they enjoyed it.

Veronica G. Henry’s The Foreign Exchange is reminiscent of a cozy mystery with Haitian voodoo elements.

If you aren’t following me, I’ll have you know that I’ve been taking my time to post more regularly on YouTube. Clap. Clap. Clap.

I read 5 books in January 2023: 1 x Short Story Collection, 1 x Graphic Novel, 2 x Audiobooks, and 1 Fiction Novel. More details in the post! Let’s get into it!