What I Read in January

Easing my way into 2025.

The longest month of the year is finally over, and I don’t know about you, but January took it out of me. Even escaping into a book wasn’t the respite it usually is. Here’s the four books I finished in January:

Somewhere Beyond the Sea, TJ Klune

I will buy anything TJ Klune writes. (Case in point: I just snagged his newest in my Book of the Month box for February without even reading the synopsis.) Catching up with the gang on Marsyas Island was the perfect way to kick off the month.

Things are good for Arthur Parnassus and his brood of magical orphans. But when he’s invited to make a public statement about his past, he unintendedly becomes the figurehead for the fight to protect not just his own family, but all magical people.

This book may be about fictional, magical people, but it is very much a statement on the prejudices real people labeled as “different” face every day.

The Three Lives of Cate Kay, Kate Fagan

A lot is packed in this relatively short book. Cate and her childhood best friend Amanda are inseparable. After high school, they plan on running away to Hollywood to become famous actresses, but when tragedy strikes just before they’re slated to leave, Cate finds herself on the run.

The novel follows Cate through several names, identities, and relationships as she tries to build a new life and forget her past. She eventually writes a hit book series that becomes a major motion picture trilogy, and despite her best efforts to stay out of the limelight, her past begins to catch up with her.

Ultimately, I enjoyed this book, but it definitely had a lot of plot holes. Cate changed her name multiple times with relative ease, considering she was an 18-year-old runaway. She also wrote a best-selling book series in her late teens/early 20s, which, while not impossible, seems highly unlikely for a girl who mentions several times she’s from a small town and hasn’t experienced anything. There’s more than that, but if you let all that go and just enjoy the ride, it’s a good read.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl

I will explore this more in a Reading Rewind post, so I won’t say too much here. Besides, we probably all know this story.

I read this to my 6-year-old over the course of a few weeks and I do think I enjoyed it more than her. She’s just learning to read on her own but still prefers books with lots of pictures, and while this was illustrated, it didn’t quite contain enough visual entertainment for her.

This book is part of an entire Roald Dahl box set I snagged at Costco for like $20, and I am now forcing her to read all of them with me.

Onyx Storm, Rebecca Yarros [Amazon | Bookshop]

Finally, we all got our paws on the third book in the Empyrean Series!

And we were all promptly confused as hell.

I spent the first third of this book having no idea who anyone was or what the hell was going on. Based on the reactions I saw on the Internet and discussions I had with friends, I wasn’t alone. It definitely could have used tighter editing, and I wonder how many of our issues would have been resolved had they waited a bit longer to publish.

Once things started to pick up and I just accepted my confusion, I did get hooked. And half the fun is reading and forming theories about what will happen in the next book. Not a spoiler, but I think it’s Brennan. Sound off on who you think it is with a (spoiler-free!) guess in the comments.

That’s it for January! My 3-year-old is yelling at me that he wants to go to Home Depot (???), so I’m signing off here. But tell me - what was your favorite read of January?