TBR Challenge – Vintage: Reading Note 96

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It has been a sweltering, wet, gluggy February, and I am not enjoying the humidity. Breathing thick muggy air is not conducive to good sleep. The consequence of less sleep is more reading and I have had a stellar reading start to this year, already clocking 16 books to-date. So far, I have only had one five-star fiction read and it is my TBR book for February with this month’s TBR challenge theme being Vintage. Though my book of choice is relatively recent (a 2025 publication), I spent 3 months on the library holds list, sadly missing the festive holiday reading period that the book pitches itself towards, before receiving it late in January. But first…the blurb.

Reading Note 96: Vintage

Grace and Henry’s Holiday Movie Marathon by Matthew Norman

Blurb: The new year had barely begun when Grace White and Henry Adler both lost their spouses. Now, nearly a year later, the first holiday season since their “Great and Terrible Sadnesses” approaches. Although their mothers’ scheme to matchmake the two surviving spouses, it’s clear that neither is ready to date again. Yet no one understands what they are going through better than each other, and a delicate friendship is born. When Henry sees an ad for a Christmas movie marathon-once an annual tradition for him and his wife-Grace offers to watch some films with him, despite her aversion to a few of his picks. Her two young kids, Ian and Bella, also join in whenever possible bedtimes permitting, of course. With each movie, Grace and Henry’s shared grief eases as they start to see a life beyond the sadness. But as they draw closer, other romantic possibilities leave them uncertain about their future together. Is their bond merely the result of loneliness and shared circumstances, or have they found something that’s worth taking a shot at . . . again?

The book’s two protagonists Grace and Henry were both widowed earlier in the year. Their concerned mums (who are in the same bookclub) orchestrate their widowed adult children to meet-up, much to the horror of both Grace and Henry who are just not ready to start moving on from their grief (I had to control my “WHAT!? It hasn’t been a year yet? Are these mothers OK???). Though Grace and Henry completely rule out a romantic connection, they do admit that perhaps they could try towards a friendship of kind. One where they connect while viewing vintage holiday films over the holiday season, occasionally including Grace’s two young children, and other people to also watch.

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TBR Challenge – Still here: Reading note 95 and Observation Note 119

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I am still here but in my own rushed interpretation of the SuperWendy’s TBR challenge, I am posting super-late (so late that it is February). I have also decided to change up my book review template this year, including a discussion of each book’s metadata, so it may get a bit technical in my tiny corner of the internet. And just a tad ranty and sweary.

Book cover: has a pink sky and a green gabled house with a green fence. A blond man on one side of the fence and a woman with a fox at her feet reading a book on the other side of the fence.

Sangu Mandanna’s A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping

Blurb: “Sera Swan used to be one of the most powerful witches in Britain. Then she resurrected her great-aunt Jasmine from the (very recently) dead, lost most of her magic, befriended a semi-villainous talking fox, and was exiled from her Guild. Now she (slightly reluctantly and just a bit grumpily) helps her great-aunt run an enchanted inn in Lancashire, where she deals with her quirky guests’ shenanigans, tries to keep said talking fox in check, and longs for the future that seems lost to her. But then she finds out about an old spell that could hold the key to restoring her power…. Enter Luke Larsen, a handsome and icy magical historian, who arrives on a dark winter evening and might just know how to unlock the spell’s secrets. Luke has absolutely no interest in getting involved in the madcap goings-on of the inn and is definitely not about to let a certain bewitching innkeeper past his walls, so no one is more surprised than he is when he agrees to help Sera with her spell. Worse, he might actually be thawing. Running an inn, reclaiming lost magic, and staying one step ahead of the watchful Guild is a lot for anyone, but Sera Swan is about to discover that she doesn’t have to do it alone…and that the weird, wonderful family she’s made might be the best magic of all”.

I felt like I waited forever for my library hold to come through to me. I placed it in July 2025 just to receive it in January 2026. I really enjoy magic (and witch) books set in the real world. I have no patience for trying to read through other worlds being built while also trying to understand a plot. Set in very pretty Lancashire in the UK, the titular inn is quaint with splendid gardens in abundance.

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My 2025 Year of Reading

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Happy New Year, everyone! I want to start out by thanking all of you who read my blog. I know that I only have a small(ish) group of subscribers, and I also have regular commenters and I want to convey to you how important you all are to me. I have tried to do some private writing (in my offline space) but it is only when I start thinking of my now 17 year old blog and its readers that I can find flow for my thoughts. 2025 seems to have flown but it isn’t until I take stock of my reading that I realise that it has been a long and eventful year both personally, as well as in world events. I started with the Nikos Papastergiadis’s memorable John Berger and Me and finished with Maisey Yates’s Cowboy It’s Cold Outside with its delightful cover but forgetable story.

53 books

Fiction: 29 – Romance fiction: 25

Audiobooks: 0

Picture Books and Junior fiction: 0

Non-Fiction: 24 (note: 22 but I reread two books)

Graphic Novel memoir:  4

Australian authors – 9

YA – 0

DNFd but counted: 3

Of the 53, I only bought 6 books (and 3 of those were given as gifts after I loved them). All the rest were library eloans. No library fines were accrued this year.

18 book covers A complete list of my 2026 reading is available here: https://www.goodreads.com/readingchallenges/gr/annual/2025
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TBR Challenge – Change of Plans: Reading Note 94

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It is TBR Challenge time again and I am only a week late. This month’s theme is Change of Plans. My choice this month was to read an early 21st century Sarah Morgan novel. She has been a favourite author who used to be an auto-read for me until she moved away from romance fiction to women’s fiction. Sarah Morgan wrote one of my favourite ever Harlequin/Mills & Boon novels Playing by the Greek’s Rules so I was interested to read an earlier iteration of its theme: a gazillionaire power-broking Greek male protagonist, a much poorer though determined (feisty???) English female protagonist, settings that go between an Anglosphere country and a (sometimes made-up) Greek island, dysfunctional family backstories, and the power of lurrrrrve to overcome all the money-mongering, maniacal, master-manipulated machinations by the mercurial and macho main-man (I am LOLing at my stupid alliteration).

Did I approach this novel with a jaded, exhausted soul? Yes, I did. Did the storytelling carry me away, wiping the cynicism far from my heart? Wellll…read on, my friends. You will find out. And turn away if you don’t want any spoilers (seriously, it is a 20 year old book – it’s perfectly fine to reveal all at this point).

Red cover, a couple in bed kissing.

Sarah Morgan’s The Greek’s Blackmailed Wife

“Zander Volakis is a ruthless tycoon who’s used to getting all he desires. Now, in order to secure the Greek island resort he’s always wanted, he needs an image change—fast!

The only person who can help him is the woman who betrayed him five years ago: his wife, Lauranne O’Neill. But Lauranne refuses to work with Zander again. He ruined her life once and he has the power to do it again. The sexual chemistry between them might be sizzling, but Lauranne knows that to play with Zander is to play with fire. As for Zander, her refusal to help leaves him with only one option…”

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TBR Challenge – Friend Squad and Here There be Monsters: Reading Note 93

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So I am going to cheat here and I am going to use two (yes two!) TBR challenge themes for the one book. WILD! Has this ever been done before? I don’t know but maybe SuperWendy will know. Am I breaking the TBR rules??? I don’t know but also I am throwing caution to the wind. Because when it comes down to it, the book I read had sooooo much going on, has two distinct parts to it, that it deserves two themes.

MAJOR SPOILER ALERT, MAJOR CONTENT ALERT, MAJOR BLUE LANGUAGE ALERT! I am going to be discussing disturbing and upsetting details including abuse being part of the backstory for one of the characters. And I am giving away MANY plot details so just don’t read further if this is on your TBR.

Cover Art: Blue sky then orange (sunset) sky then blue/purple sea with a houseboat on it and an amorous cartoon couple on the houseboat.

The Book: Swept Away by Beth O’Leary

The Blurb: Lost at sea . . . with your one-night stand

Lexi is looking for no-strings-attached fun with a stranger. She deserves one night for herself, doesn’t she? Zeke is looking for love. But for one night with a woman like Lexi, he’ll break his rules. Sparks fly at the pub, one passionate kiss leads to another and they end up stumbling home to the marina together. The next morning, hungover and shaken by an amazing night together, Lexi is more than ready for Zeke to leave. There’s just one small problem . . . the houseboat they stayed on has been swept out to sea. As their supplies start to run dangerously low, and the waves pick up, Zeke and Lexi soon realise there’s much more on the line than their new relationship. How long can they really survive on a drifting houseboat in the North Sea? Will search and rescue find them? And who will they be if they both make it back to dry land?

This novel is written in two parts. There is the lost at sea section and then there is the back on land section. Each of these sections are quite distinct from each other.

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TBR Challenge – Do the Hustle: Reading Note 92

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I am behind on my TBR challenge for this year so I am going to try to write several posts over the next few days to play catch up. This post is actually on the topic for August. And a BIG SPOILER ALERT! should you be planning on reading this book.

Reading Note 92: August 20 – Do the Hustle

The book cover is a cartoon of two people standing on a ferry looking over a sunrise (or sunset), orange sky with orange sea, the two people in blues with the statue of Liberty on the horizon.

Promise me Sunshine by Cara Bastone

The blurb: Lenny’s a bit of a mess at the moment. Her best friend, Lou, recently passed away after a battle with cancer, and her death has left Lenny feeling completely lost. She’s avoiding her concerned parents, the apartment she shared with Lou, and the list of things she’s supposed to do to help her live again. The only thing she can do is temporary babysitting gigs, and luckily, she just landed a great one, helping overworked, single mom Reese and her precocious daughter, Ainsley. It’s not perfect: Ainsley’s uncle, Miles, always seems to be around, and is kind of… a huge jerk. But if Lenny acts like she has it all together, maybe no one will notice she’s falling apart.

Miles sees right through her though. Turns out, he knows a lot about grief and, surprisingly, he offers her a proposition. He’ll help her complete everything on her “live again” list if she’ll help him connect with Ainsley and overcome his complicated relationship with Reese. Lenny doubts anything can fill the Lou has left behind, but she begins to spend more time with Miles, Lenny is surprised to discover that, sometimes, losing everything is only the first step to finding yourself, and love, again.

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TBR challenge – another catch up post: Reading Notes 87-91

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It has become a terrible habit of mine to blog only a few times a year, and most often, just to catch up on Wendy the Super Librarian’s TBR Challenge. And just like clockwork, I am doing it again. A full admission that I am just matching books I read to the themes. Few of them were actually read in the month I have listed them under.

A cartoon cover. Bright reds against mountain white with peaks, a moose and a he-bro chopping down a tree stump. A cottage in the background.

Reading Note 87: February 19 – Previously, In Romance… 

Any Trope but You by Victoria Lavine. This was so fun and cheeky. A burnt-out cynical yet successful romance author Margot Bradley is outed on social media as a fake by her angry fans so she travels to Alaska to escape the criticism and to try to write a book in a new genre. In Alaska she meets Dr Forrest Wakefield who ridiculously encompasses every romance trope. Margot eventually discovers that tropes are too surface level and people can be complex beyond the stereotype.

My favourite line in the book is “Cradled against his warm chest, I am a woman transformed. Never again will anyone catch Margot Bradley scoffing at a trope. If I were wearing a bodice, I’d rip it myself”.

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Greek-Australian Writers’ Festival 2025 – Reading Note 86: Koraly Dimitriadis

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Reading Note 86: I first heard of Koraly Dimitriadis in the early-2010s when I came across her Twitter discussions. I looked up her books and saw them described as “portraits of life”, “ghosts of the old country”, “emotional self-examination” and at that time, I just couldn’t engage, purely based on my own personal situation where I was overwhelmed with life demands that I couldn’t bear reading someone else’s take filled with gritty reality.

A book cover The Mother must must die" by Koraly Dimitriadis A dark blue sky, red earth sea with a person looking to the horizon. The o in mother is a moon.

However, it is more than a decade later, the Greek-Australian Writers’ Festival is hosting Koraly Dimitriadis, and though I can’t really say that I am not busy, I am certainly not as overwhelmed by life’s demands as I used to be (the amazing liberation of no longer tending to the physical and emotional needs of teenagers while also working and studying)! So during the semester break, I sat down with Dimitriadis’s collection of short-stories The Mother Must Die and it had this deep, clawing impact upon me.

The opening story “They Put Me in my Grave” was an amalgam of so many Greek mothers’ voices I have encountered in my life, including my own mum. The mother in the story grieving the shame that is brought upon her life by her daughter divorcing her husband, refusing to acknowledge her daughter’s pain. The mother looking back at the betrothal remembering the couple’s “Promise” to her to stay together echoed my own mother telling my Anglo boyfriend (and now husband of nearly 30 years) that “it is better you kill me than shame my family with divorce”. In that first page, I felt ill at reading further but also damned if I didn’t as the writing was compelling.

Every short story is a telling of modern-day Australia where there is a negotiation of cultural expectations, personal grief and lost dreams. Of the 15 stories, the ones that stood out to me were “They Put Me in my Grave”, “Theo and Haroula”, the devastating “Smelly Francesco”, and “The Bridal Wars” where Tasha belligerently casts her vote following her father’s preferences, on the eve of finally becoming self-aware through her viewing a documentary on Fast Fashion, regretting her vote and seeing life and wedding processions through an ethical fashion lens – a lazy Saturday night watching TV changing Tasha’s life trajectory.

I absolutely loved this book which was felt so close to so many people I knew, including myself, but also so distanced from my own life. It was like a sliding door to a life I somehow avoided. Dimitriadis’s writing style mirrors so many Greek-Australian writers like Peter Polites and Will Kostakis who occasionally inject a local Greeklish (or is it Greenglish???) vernacular which makes each story accessible and personal.

Koraly Dimitriadis will be at the Greek-Australian Writers’ Festival on Sunday 27th of April. Buy tickets here: https://www.trybooking.com/events/landing/1347314

I read a print copy of this book, borrowed from a NSW public library.

The Blurb from Koraly Dimitriadis’s publisher:

The fashion industry is killing the planet but I really need that new designer handbag… Her daughter is divorcing and she’s going to die because of it… The mother must be medicated… I’m in Australia but I just want to be in Cyprus… She’s never had an orgasm and still lives with her parents…Anything my boys want they get… He’s got a whole bank of chicks on his phone… Ever since I came to this country I been in bed… Until her children can get her the new drug for the MND, she will dream of her village in Greece…Conquests are about scoring the chicks, but he’s never going to turn out like his nonno… They never talked about what her uncle did again… The money made him go mad… My mummy is sad, she keeps talking about ‘court and custody’, but I’m going to take the potion and make everything better…

Broken people trying to make their way back to hope. Stories of identity, divorce, sexuality, parenting, domestic violence, and the working-class migrant experience. Bestselling poet Koraly Dimitriadis’s debut collection will transport you into the minds of disenfranchised characters, troubled men, children who live in two homes, and women trying to break free.