Monthly Wrap-Up: January 2021

It feels like the first month of the year both lasted forever and flew by so fast. Or is that just me?

I didn’t think I was going to do monthly wrap-ups this year as I don’t want to focus on how many books I’m reading. It’s about enjoying reading rather than the quantity. But this month has been jam packed with AMAZING books that I just had to share with you all, so I decided a wrap up post was needed.

I’ve had a fantastic start to my reading year and I think it is in part due to the quality of the books I’ve read, but also because I managed a lot of free reading. It’s been a long time since I was able to choose about half my books I read in a month simply by what I fancied reading, and I loved it. I do have quite a few tours in the next few months – damn so many incredible sounding books being released – but am renewed in my determination to do less of them this year and read more of what I feel like at my own pace.

So here is what I read in January:

• Victoria Park by Gemma Reeves
• Single Mother by Samantha Hayes
• The Shadow Man by Helen Fields
• The Summer Job by Lizzy Dent
• The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex
• Into The Woods by David Mark
• Rescue Me by Sarra Manning
• Dead Head by C. J. Skuse
• Last One at the Party by Bethany Clift
• Before I Saw You by Emily Houghton
• Everything Is Beautiful by Eleanor Ray

BOOK OF THE MONTH:

All but one of my reads this month were four stars or more, with most of them being 4.5 or 5 star reads. The quality of books being released at the moment is phenomenal, particularly in terms of debuts, but it makes choosing a book of the month impossible. For that reason, I have chosen five favourites this month: The Shadow Man, The Lamplighters, The Summer Job, Dead Head and Everything Is Beautiful. Three of these –The Lamplighters, The Summer Job and Everything Is Beautiful – are debuts by authors I am excited to read more from.

There were three others I could have easily added to the list, but eight books of the month seemed a little too much.

Did we read any of the same books this month? Are any of these books in your tbr? Let me know in the comments.

You can see my reviews and more information on each book by clicking on the link in the title*. Thank you to the tagged publishers for my gifted review copies.
*Some reviews are yet to be posted and will be up in the coming week.

Happy reading Bibliophiles. Until next time, Emma xx