**My recent reads sit on my table, and I take note of the fact that this is the last time this year that I will stack my books on my table to recount what I read for the month. I pull my hair back and button my cardigan up tight. It looks ready for snow outside. I flip through my books and read the annotated parts in each, causing a smile to spring to my face as I remember some of my favorite scenes.**

Welcome to the last monthly wrap-up of 2024 (even if it is 2025 now). Before we can get into my best and worst books of 2024, we need to do my wrap-up. I am also still curating my top books list, but that will be out on Monday. Anyway, I only read two books in December. So let’s get into what they were.

The first book I read in the month of December was The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S.Lewis. I have been making my way through the Narnia series since 2023, and this was the latest I read in the series. This is book 5 in the recommended order and it follows Lucy and Edmund’s trip back to Narnia along with their cousin Eustace that they don’t get along with. Caspian is also back in this installment as he is looking for lords that his father banished several years ago. I have to say that I was very pleasantly surprised by this one. After reading The Horse and His Boy, my least favorite book in the series, it was a great surprise to find one of my favorites in the series. I love the books following the Pevensies and this was no exception. There was a great adventure in this book and the writing was very engaging. This is probably my second favorite in the series so far after The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, though it is actually very close.

My other read of December, and my last read of the year, was Forging Silver Into Stars by Brigid Kemmerer. Brigid Kemmerer is one of my favorite authors, and I love her writing and the worlds that she writes so much. This is a spin-off series of the Cursebreakers series, starting with A Curse So Dark and Lonely, which I read in 2021. I enjoyed this one and especially loved the cameos we got from characters in the original trilogy. You do not have to read that original series to read this one, but I highly recommend it. I have a review on this book that will be coming out sometime this month, so I will have more in-depth thoughts there. I did enjoy this but some of the perspectives were better than others.

As a bit of a spoiler, both of these books are contenders for my top 10 books of 2024, though I haven’t quite finished the list. I really enjoyed both for different reasons, but throughly enjoyed my time reading both. These books have such magical worlds and engaging stories. I can’t wait to continue both series and look forward to my 2025 reads.

xoxo,

Just another reader