Monthly Blog Review: December 2024

Blog Updates

Nothing crazy on the blog this month!

Posts

Book Reviews
♥ Bury Your Demons by Timothy King (3★)
♥ Flesh Party by Jordan Thiery (5★)
♥ Fuck Them Kids by Timothy King (4★)
♥ Silver Platter by Jennifer Osborn (5★)
♥ Tapewyrmin’ by Judith Sonnet (5★)
♥ Test Town by Leigh Kenny (3★)
♥ Dollface by R.J. Powell (2★)

Film Reviews
♥ Queen of the Damned (2★)

Game Reviews
♥ Ravenous Devils (4★)

Manga Reviews
♥ Anyway, I’m Falling in Love with You Vol. 1 by Haruka Mitsui (3.5★)
♥ Confession by Nobuyuki Fukumoto & Kaiji Kawaguchi (5★)

Other Posts
♥ January 2025 New Release Horror Books

Media This Month

I got to read quite a few books and manga over the Christmas holiday and I had so much fun!

Books
♥ Abigail by Daemon Manx (4★)
♥ Abomination in Wax by Judith Sonnet (5★)
♥ Bury Your Demons by Timotny King (3★)
♥ Dolls by Eve L. Fell (2★)
♥ Flesh Party by Jordan Thiery (5★)
♥ Fuck Them Kids by Timothy King (4★)
♥ Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang (5★)
♥ Silver Platter by Jennifer Osborn (5★)
♥ Test Town by Leigh Kenny (3★)
♥ The Considerate Cannibal (3.5★)
♥ To Be Devoured by Sara Tantlinger (5★)

Manga
♥ Anyway, I’m Falling in Love with You Vol. 1 by Haruka Mitsui (3.5★)
♥ Anyway, I’m Falling in Love with You Vol. 2 by Haruka Mitsui (4.5★)
♥ Anyway, I’m Falling in Love with You Vol. 3 by Haruka Mitsui (5★)
♥ Anyway, I’m Falling in Love with You Vol. 4 by Haruka Mitsui (5★)
♥ Confession by Nobuyuki Fukumoto & Kaiji Kawaguchi (5★)
♥ Suicide Circle by Usamaru Furuya (5★)

Anime/Shows
I got very invested in a romance manga series, Anyway, I’m Falling in Love with You, which I also found out has an anime adaptation coming soon. So I’m excited to watch that when it airs! I haven’t watched Squid Game Season 2 yet, but I am looking forward to starting that soon as well, especially since I found out that T.O.P is on the cast!

Life and Other Things

December was a busy but happy month. I’m thrilled I got to spend the holidays with my husband, he was overseas for work last year and we were both bummed that he missed holidays with family. Christmas and New Years’ were both a blast and I was in a real reading mood during my vacation days, and it did me a lot of good mentally.

My husband gifted me the new Kindle Scribe and it’s been a game changer for me, since I really like highlighting and taking notes on ebooks for reviews. I do not like annotating or marking up physical books, so the scribe has been nice for scribbling my notes as I read physical books as well without distraction. The problem I had was that in the past, I’d pause reading a physical book to type up notes on my WordPress draft, and then get sidetracked and just start surfing the internet. So the Scribe kind of deters me from doing that, especially since I’m more tempted to walk over to the couch to read rather than sit at my computer. Plus, the bigger screen and ability to adjust warm lighting is just nice for me as my vision has gotten worse.

I’m not one to set New Years’ Resolutions, but for 2025 I do have some goals I’d like to work on:

A) Spend less time doing “time wasters” and more time on hobbies I love, namely, reading and playing the games I actually paid for on my PC. In 2024 I played a crazy amount of freemium mobile games and listened to a lot of junk drama channels on YouTube. No disrespect to either of those things, but it’s left my books and especially my Steam games on a shelf to collect dust, and I’d like to get through my existing backlog.

B) Workout more, which I know is pretty standard. Now that I’ve recovered some from the near constant illnesses I experienced after COVID in 2023, I’d like to do a little more walking and biking to get my strength up and hopefully improve my immune system over time.

C) Spend less money on books, every reader’s struggle. I have a massive library of books that I need to read at home, but then I get tempted to jump on Kindle Unlimited promos or borrow books from my local library (it is literally less than a block from my house). So for at least the first few months of 2025 with a few exceptions (namely my Twisted Retreat subscription and the books I bought at the end of December that haven’t arrived yet) I’d like to take more time to catch up on the books and ebooks I already own.

D) Knock out more ARCs from all sources. I’d love to up my NetGalley percentage some, and to catch up on all my ARCs from BookSirens. Not to mention the ones I’ve received from Cemetery Dance. I read a few ARCs over the Christmas holiday and it felt good to help out some indie authors whose books I’ve enjoyed in the past and I’d like to get back on board with ARC reading regularly.

Books Hauled

Look December was a crazy month don’t come for me, lol. I received a lot of books as gifts. My most exciting acquisition of the month is a copy of Almost Transparent Blue by Ryu Murakami. The book is long out of print in English and I had held off on purchasing it because of the obscene prices that people charge for it, but I got lucky to get a copy of an edition I really like for a reasonable price (50% of the normal price), and it is in stunningly good condition. The seller sent it wrapped in a plastic and I’ve kept it because I was to preserve it definitely, and plan to gently read it this year.

Book Boxes
♥ It Came Upon a Midnight Clear by Dorian J. Sinnott
♥ The Darkest Night by Lindy Ryan (editor)
♥ The Resurrectionist by A. Rae Dunlap
♥ To Be Devoured by Sara Tantlinger
♥ We Kept Her in the Cellar by W.R. Gorman

eARCs (Author/Publisher)
♥ Trading Bullets with the Devil by Kirsten Cross & Mark Steensland
♥ Waste Ground by Marc Ruvolo
♥ Where Dreams Are Entombed: Creator by Chase Will

eARCs (NetGalley)
♥ Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
♥ Free Burn by Drew Huff
♥ Home Office Romance by Kintetsu Yamada
♥ Listen to Your Sister by Neena Viel
♥ Sheltering Eaves 1 by Rie Aruga
♥ Something in the Walls by Daisy Pearce
♥ The Curious Kitten at the Chibineko Kitchen by Yuta Takahashi
♥ The Divine Flesh by Drew Huff
♥ The Lost House by Melissa Larsen
♥ The True Happiness Company by Veena Dinavahi

Ebook Purchases
♥ Abomination in Wax by Judith Sonnet
♥ Among the Living by Tim Lebbon
♥ Antibody by Chris Williams
♥ Bloat by Rob Ulitski
♥ Crushing Snails by Emma E. Murray
♥ Debasing Seth by Aiden E. Messer
♥ Dreamwhispers by M. Ennenbach
♥ Earth Angel by Madeline Cash
♥ Helloween by Duncan Ralston
♥ OH FUCK OH FUCK IT HURTS by Ruth Anna Evans
♥ Real Love by B.C. Hollywood
♥ Rest Stop by Nat Cassidy
♥ Sick! Sick! Sick! by Robert Essig
♥ Skins by Audrey Rush
♥ The Bug Collector by Wrath James White
♥ The Long Trial of Nolan Dugatti by Stephen Graham Jones
♥ They Eat You From the Inside by Jacob Perrett

Gifts
♥ Bloom by Delilah S. Dawson
♥ Cold Snap by Lindy Ryan
♥ Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh
♥ Ghost Summer by Tananarive Due
♥ Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman
♥ Invaginies by Joe Koch
♥ Pink Slime by Fernanda Trías
♥ She’s Always Hungry by Eliza Clark
♥ The Queen by Nick Cutter
♥ The Reformatory by Tananarive Due
♥ Uncanny: Origins of Fear by Junji Ito

Giveaways
♥ Books of Blood 1-3 by Clive Barker
♥ Download by Rob Ulitski
♥ Hideaway by Dean Koontz
♥ October Screams by Kenneth W. Cain (editor)
♥ The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born by Peter David
♥ The Fury by Alex Michaelides

Physical Purchases
♥ Almost Transparent Blue by Ryu Murakami
♥ Flesh Party by Jordan Thiery
♥ Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros
♥ Our Greatest Enemy by Jordan Thiery

Amazon First
♥ Bitter Passage by Colin Mills
♥ When She Returned by Lucinda Berry