This week’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt is the books I plan to read this Winter! I’m in the mood for a lot more mystery/thrillers, cozy mysteries, fantasies, and romances as well so that is what I am going to try and pick up over the next couple of months. These are the ten that are at the top of those genre’s:
Since we’re about half way through 2025 I thought it would be the perfect time to list all of my 5 star reads from the first half of the year. I only have 1 five star read so far which is a little disappointing but I swear as I get older it gets harder for me to feel all the feels I need for a 5 star… I do however have a few that almost made it and I still love that I had to share as well! Hopefully I at least double this number for the second half 2025 and I read a lot more great books 🙂
Harriet Tubman Live in Concert by Bob the Drag Queen
LitRPG isn’t something I’ve ever really been into but this book completely surprised me.
A man. His ex-girlfriend’s cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible. In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth—from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds—collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground. The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot. A dungeon so enormous, it circles the entire globe. Only a few dare venture inside. But once you’re in, you can’t get out. And what’s worse, each level has a time limit. You have but days to find a staircase to the next level down, or it’s game over. In this game, it’s not about your strength or your dexterity. It’s about your followers, your views. Your clout. It’s about building an audience and killing those goblins with style.
I listened to the audiobook and I’m so glad I did. The narrator is hilarious, he reminded me of Kronk from The Emperor’s New Groove. It totally elevated the experience. The banter between Carl and Princess Donut had me cackling way more than I expected. Their back and forth honestly made the whole book for me.
What I didn’t care as much for was the repetitiveness of the leveling up, stats, crawler “gifts”, all that stuff. That part kind of lost me and brought down the story a bit, but the characters and comedy more than made up for it. It’s not just funny either. There’s this one scene where they go out of their way to help some elderly residents, even though it puts them at risk, and that’s when I realised this book actually has a lot of heart too.
So even if LitRPG isn’t your thing, this book still might be. It’s wild, weird, unexpectedly touching, and genuinely funny. I gave the characters a solid five stars, emotional impact a four, and the rest sits around a three for me. But overall? Way better than I ever expected.
⭐️4/5 stars the audiobook for this was TOP TIER.. I highly recommend!!!
Hello friends it’s time for another WWW Wednesday update:
Severance by Ling Ma
Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman
Finlay Donovan Digs Her Own Grave by Elle Cosimano
I am a channel member to the lovely BooksandLala on Youtube and for the month of June she is hosting the Cell Your Soul Readathon that I am going to join in on! There is a bingo board of prompts that correspond to a spreadsheet that all her channel members have added to and where I am going to draw my TBR from! I decided my best chance of completing a bingo is the first column I have highlighted… I am choosing from either the list of book recs Kayla has created for Aquarius signs and of course I will find a fave of someone from the spreadsheet that I have a fave in common with. Also a form of self care for me is reading so this felt like the perfect way to finish off my bingo!
And my TBR is:
Amy Leigh Reads 