Open Thread for Readers for January 2020
Misc / Need A Rec!book-pimp / Open Thread / Promotion12 Comments
Got a book you want to talk about? Frustrated with a book or series? In love with a new one? Found a buried treasure? An issue that keeps popping up in the books you are reading? Just want to chat about stuff in general?
I’d love to hear what books everyone is most looking forward to in the new year.
Before commenting on what I’m looking forward to next year, I’d like to offer something I discovered in 2019. This year I was fortunate in encountering a couple promotions that included favorite authors and others who were brand new to me. The more recent was a big bundle of authors offering their works in support of part of the Kit Rocha team who faced expensive emergency surgery. The earlier was sponsored by The Seasoned Romance Group. I wanted to let the authors in both campaigns know that my participation led to my discovery and subsequent glomming and fandom of new authors. Two examples are Rebekah Weatherspoon and Jackie Lau. I’ve since snapped up everything I could find from both and reveled in the great reads they provided.
There are so many great books out there yet undiscovered and my e-reader groans under the electronic weight of an enormous TBR list. I count myself fortunate indeed for the joint campaigns that helped me thread my way to discoveries of great stories. I thought authors might enjoy knowing that for me any way, their participation paid off in many subsequent purchases and affirmative reviews.
Right now, I have 13 (13!) new books lined up for January 2020. These are new books from many of my favorites including Jackie Ashenden, Caitlin Crews, Eve Dangerfield (two new books scheduled for January publication), Willow Winters (ditto), Molly O’Keefe, Skye Warren, Natasha Knight, Sybil Bartel, Adriana Anders, and Ruth Cardello. I’m also very interested in Rachel Reid’s upcoming TOUGH GUY. Reid’s HEATED RIVALRY is my favorite book of 2019 and I’m looking forward to another of her m/m hockey romances.
I should add that there’s a reason my family knows the number one gift they can always give me and which will always be appreciated is Amazon gift cards—Christmas, birthday, Mother’s Day…I’ll take the gift cards and spend the rest of the day downloading books to my kindle.
On my list for 2020’s much anticipated books are: Jackie Lau’s Fake Girl Friend for Chinese New Year; Helena Hunting’s Favor for a Favor; Ben Aaronovitch’s False Value (Rivers of London Book 8); Sawyer Bennet’s Dominik; Lisa Kleypas’s Chasing Cassandra: The Ravenels, Patricia Briggs’s Smoke Bitten; Shelly Laurnston’s Badger to the Bone from the Honey Badgers Chronicle; Kristen Callihan’s Dear Enemy; Ilona Andrew’s Emerald Blaze: A Hidden Legacy Novel; and Penny Reid’s Engagement and Espionage (Handcrafted Mystery Book 1).
I have my fingers crossed that there will also be another Secret Service book from Sandra Antonelli following the adventures of Major Kitt and Mrs. Valentine.
I’ve already preordered 4(!) books for 2020 which is unheard of for me. I usually play it safe and wait for the book to come out so I can read a sample, but these are all by authors I’ve read and really liked so I feel confident that I’ll like these. Lucy Parker’s Headliners, A Heart of Blood and Ashes by Milla Vane, Network Effect by Martha Wells (in hardcover! I don’t even know myself!), and the paperback reprint of The Serpent Sea by Martha Wells. I already own the ebook and audio of Serpent Sea; I’m buying the paperback in an excess of fannishness and author support. Milla Vane (aka Meljean Brook) wrote a (fantasy romance!) short story in the same world that I really liked.
Ashley Gardner is supposed to be publishing the first book in her Roman series sometime in 2020. I’ve been anticipating it since I read the prequel short story, and I’d preorder it too if I could.
I’m also looking forward to The Switch Up by Beth O’Leary and Dear Enemy by Kristen Callihan but am following my more usual wait and see pattern.
@MaryK: I had missed that Lucy Parker has another London Celebrities book coming out. Parker hasn’t let me down yet. Click for the preorder, and thanks for the tip.
@Mzcue: DA readers – joyfully enabling each other. ;)
@Mzcue: Nick and Sabrina. Enemies to lovers, trapped together.
I am astonished to discover this evening that the Romance Writers of America has suspended the membership of former RWA Board Member Courtney Milan. I hope that Dear Author will show support for Ms Milan with the same determination that she has demonstrated repeatedly for Romance readers and authors over the years.
@Mzcue: I love discovering wonderful authors whose work I was unaware of before. It’s thrilling.
@DiscoDollyDeb: Wow, thirteen in January alone. That is a lot. I have about fifteen or twenty in all of 2020 at this point.
@Mzcue: I need to look into more of those. Chasing Cassandra and Emerald Blaze are high on my list.
@MaryK: I’m about to start A Heart of Blood and Ashes. The O’Leary is high on my list too.
@Mzcue: RWA has made so many bad moves. They drummed DA Jane out a long, long time ago. They wanted to define romance as between a man and a woman. And I could go on. I stopped paying membership dues around about ten years ago and i don’t regret it. But for them to drum out Courtney Milan, a former board member, is still shocking.
A few books I’m looking forward to are by SK Dunstall, Katherine Addison (I’m not sure if Witness for the Dead will appear in 2020), Martha Wells, Patricia Briggs, and Lucy Parker.