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Ready for #booklrsleepover!

I've got this one and a stack of books next to me from the library and water since I already aced my iced coffee 😁

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Book Review: I'm Your Huckleberry by Val Kilmer, Narrated by Will Forte, Mare Winningham and George Newburn

★★★ ½ ✩✩

I'll preface this with saying I enjoy non-linear memoirs. I feel like it sets a more casual tone and for Val Kilmer that fits better than I expected. His overall manner of speaking in general throughout this book is casual and sometimes lofty. Some might say pretentious and they might be right but what I was hoping for was depth.

He speaks a bit here and there about spirituality, his childhood, his relationships but romantic and friendly, his marriage and the divorce, and his movies in a general way to give you enough of all of that means for him but he never goes into details and I'm not sure whether to applaud him for making a decision to keep somethings private, which we all have the right to, or to shake him because I want to know more details primarily about certain movies and how they were made because I'm curious about some films.

Maybe it's the non linear writing or his choice to not divulge details but there's distance between the reader and Kilmer which I caught halfway through the book. He names drops, as most celebrities do, I find, which is interesting because I had no idea of his dating history outside of Cher and Joanne, whom he married so that was a lot of new info but funny enough not what I was after but it might be for some people. All in all I'm left wanting to talk to him about stuff, art mainly, due to the casual nature of this book, but I was left wanting for more and I'm not sure of what exactly.

Surprising to find that Will Forte and Mare Winningham took turns narrating this audio book. Understandable considering that Kilmer had gone through throat surge so struggled to speak but I say surprising because I'm used to Forte being a big character and so to hear him so serious and yet calming in his turns was nice. Winningham has a great voice for narration and she read what I think were some of the more personal moments or poetry in Kilmer's life and that took a different turn as they knew each other for years and were friends and ex's.

All in all a surprising read. I do think if you liked the documentary film 'Val', this book is for you as it's written in a similar vein and covers the same topics. Some moments are spoken in depth in the film and others in depth in the book so I consider them to be accompaniments to each other if you will.

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Book Review: The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling

★★★✩✩

I was intrigued by the book blurb and the beautiful cover that I knew I wanted to read this from my TBR this year!

Let me say that at least 60% of the book was everything that the book blurb mentioned and it was interesting. The tone and pacing as well as the hints of ghost were creating a intriguing story set in a darker version of a post-war England that had me turning the pages into the wee hours and way past my bed time.

But then the last 40% was just so weird and off putting. A jumble of words and sentences that didn't explain the magic or the science of it but wanted hard for the reader to know. It was convoluted and unfortunately for me, made me wonder why I was still reading it but I knew I was hoping it would get better and that the premise of the ghosts and gothic nature would come back but it was left behind so many pages back.

The premise was intriguing and despite not loving this, Starling wrote a book with great pacing and I enjoyed the atmosphere in this but she lost me at the end with trying to add so much at the end that it was distracting.

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Book Review: Behooved by M. Stevenson

★★★★1/2✩

This book took me by surprise in a fantastic way.

I was expecting a slow burn, marriage of convenience, a dash of adventure and a horse and I got so much of that and more.

This was fun, charming, whimsical, and once I got into it was such a a fun read full of sharp and smart characters with some representation of LGBTQ and chronic pain.

I'm really glad I decided to bump this up and read it—it's such a fun read that I r ad way faster than I expected due to the quick pacing, the marriage of convenience, the MCs catching actual feelings, and saving a kingdom.

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Book Review: Alien Bug Hunt by Various Authors

★★★★✩

I wasn't sure what to expect from this anthology but I was very much in awe of every author for creating this stories within the world of the 4 films.

I can clearly see how each author is a fan of the series, including the editor due to their exploration and original characters but also the attention to detail to the world building and the Xenomorphs themselves. I love the Xenomorphs, and to see some variation was an eerie highlight.but I loved them, even the centipede version.

My favorite stories were in no particular order: Broken, Reclamation, Blowback, Exterminators, No Good Deed, Dark Mother, and Empty Nest.

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Rereading one of my faves so I can finally get to the last book in the series.

It's been so many years since I read the first two that I might as well reread them so that the third book makes sense now that I bought a copy.

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Book Review: Blood on Her Tongue by Johanna Van Veen

★★★★ 1/2 ✩

This was so many different things.

A mix of gothic horror, family bonds, an illicit affair, socialism, misogyny, toxic codependency blended together and have me a creepy but exceptional read from an author I've never read before.

The author's note highlights a lot of triggers for readers, which I appreciated because it was a fair warning to the content of the story because once I got past the 20% mark it was non stop.

I had to pause reading at different times just so I wouldn't see the vivid images she created in my head before eating or sleeping because she rights with so much detail.

For me, this read as atmospheric due to the author's rich details, her world building, and the relationships but wow these characters are different shades of morally grey and that too added a complexity to the story.

Fantastic and creepy, and I would definitely read one of her other books.

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2025 Challenge Wrap Up

I know this is late but also RL stuff happened so I needed to figure out stuff, so here it is. I didn't expect to have read as many books as I did because it turns out I read 154 books in 2025.

Let me let that sink in... 154 books. That's.... I haven't hit such a high number in ages and I'm still like how... and looking back, it was a lot of mangas. Haha, which is great because I am one volume away from finishing an entire series while reading other ones also from my TBR so that's a win for me. But I didn't actively try to hit a high number as my goal is really just to read in general.

I read at least 78 new authors that took me to new places and adventures that gave me all sorts of feels ranging from sadness to completely being smitten, to just shaking my head like WTF did I read sentiment. Some in Spanish which was also a new one as I don't normally read in Spanish but some books had no translation and I wanted to read them.

Challenge 1: Read 80 books - Smashed this goal to pieces. Ended up with 154 reads and 7 DNFs. Thanks to mangas for being a highlight of my year. (MY GR reads 161 which is incorrect due to the DNFs)

Challenge 2: Read 25 books from my TBR - Another challenged I smashed and I was so excited to do it too! Tackling my TBR is a yearly mission so this was such a high when I got to my goal and then I wondered how many more could I read. I ended up reading reading 57 books off my TBR total.

Challenge 3: Trying out new reading challenges - I added two more challenges in 2025 that I found on Storygraph. An A-Z reading challenge and the Storygraph's Onboarding challenge and both of those were fun challenges. I completed the Storygraph challenge and got to 85% on the A-Z one which isn't bad for a first try since I was already reading books anyway.

Challenge 4: Actively choose more books from the TBR that fit reading challenges - This was a harder task but one that I was gun-ho about because my TBR is massive and I really want to get that number down.

But all in all, with just me going through my TBR and weeding some, and no kind of application or AI nonsense to sort and filter, I feel like I did pretty solid. Like 93% on PopSugar, 100% on the Pantone and 85% on the A-Z, while hitting 228% percent on my TBR challenge!! Queue the confetti! 🎉🎊🪅

Putting that in writing is pretty amazing and it's making me feel great! Considering the RL ish that is happening, this is a bright spot of serotonin and I want to continue reading some more.

Past reading goals

2016 Reads | 2017 Reads | 2018 Reads | 2019 Reads | 2020 Reads | 2021 Reads | 2022 Reads | 2023 Reads | 2024 Reads | 2025 Reads