By Ela@The Queer Bookish on January 3, 2025 ( 1 Comment )

Let’s Talk Bookish: First Read of the Year

2024 is finally over and done with! It still needs to sink in completely, but I am ready for 2025. I bought a few queer books last year that I haven’t yet read, and there are already two ARCs on my Kindle waiting to be devoured (hopefully).

About Let’s Talk Bookish

Let’s Talk Bookish is a bookish meme created by Rukky @ Eternity Books where bloggers write posts discussing the week’s topic each Friday! Now it’s run by Aria @Book Nook Bits. Here are the other prompts for January 2025.

First Queer Book of 2025

Around September, I picked up Cole McCade’s Criminal Intention series, and so far, I’ve read 21 instalments – one after the other. I kinda wanted to read all 29 books in one go, but at the end of December, my reading pace slowed down, so I am at the end of book 22 right now.

Theoretically speaking, that would make Ocam’s Razor my first queer novel of 2025. Practically, it doesn’t feel like it because I started it in 2024, and to me, that means it kinda belongs to last year. Once I’m done with that one, I’ll start 2025’s reading.

There are four candidates to be chosen from.

Fractal Recursion – Book 23 of the Criminal Intention series
Ben Chalfin’s The Prince’s Heart – an ARC that will be published at the end of February 2025
Johanna van Veen’s Blood on her Tongue – the other ARC I’ve received, which will be published at the end of March 2025
T.J. Klune’s Somewhere Beyond the Sea

Bookish Thoughts on the importance of the first read of the year

While I don’t put much importance on starting things on January first, I do feel that the first queer book of the year shapes my reading journey. Mostly because it either motivates me or slows my reading down.

Starting the year with a good book means I devour it, and I am hyped to start the next one. But if the first book I pick up is one I don’t enjoy, my reading slows down. It either takes me weeks to get through it, I skim-read it, or I DNF it. All three options usually result in me not feeling motivated to sit down and read. I don’t quite understand the reason behind this, since I enjoy reading.

So, which queer book will I choose?

Fractal Recursion would be a safe choice. But if I choose that one, I will be caught in the series and “have to” finish the whole thing before picking up another book. I just know I will end up doing that, so this one will have to wait a bit.

I am really excited to read Blood on Her Tongue, but considering it will be published at the end of March, I should read The Prince’s Heart first. That would be the smart thing to do. Since I haven’t read anything of Ben Chalfin or Johanna van Veen yet, I don’t know what to expect. The risk of not enjoying either ARC as much as I hope to is too high for my first read of the year.

Considering how excited I was when I first read there will be a sequel to my beloved The House in the Cerulean Sea – which I haven’t reviewed, by the way– I’d say it’s a safe bet to choose Somewhere Beyond the Sea. When I bought it, the plan was to reread the first one before diving into the sequel, but then the whole Criminal Intentions binge happened. Oh well. Still not sorry about that.

So, there’s a high chance of Somewhere Beyond the Sea being the first review of 2025 on The Queer Bookish.

Speaking of reviews, I took some time off from this blog to focus on my career. But now I am back and I am excited about blogging again!