Welcome to 2025 friends – I feel like I’m maybe a bit late to wish you all a happy new year considering that 2025 is now well and truly in its toddler era.

With everything else going on in the world, 2024 became the year I got back into books in quite a big way. I would love to say it’s the year I got back into reading, and in a lot of ways I guess it was the year when I got back into reading, but a lot of the books I consumed were audiobooks and while I do agree that audiobooks count I cannot bring myself to say I read them. I didn’t. I listened to them, largely while commuting.

So if you didn’t read the title, I consumed 53 books in 2024 using a combination of my eyes and my ears. This was a slight increase from the three-ish which I indulged in the year before. So yeah…that’s what I meant when I said I got “back into books in quite a big way”.

Let’s break it down:

5 physical books

17 e-books

31 audiobooks

The average rating of the books I consumed was 3.48 stars, spread from 1.5 stars to 4.25 stars. I can’t explain it, but I just can’t bring myself to rate a book 5 stars. I don’t know if I believe that there is such a thing as perfect.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll be wanting to know what the 1.5 star read was. It was a little self-published smut story I acquired on a Stuff Your Kindle Day called Sinfully Shared. Yeah, I know. Ew. Also at the lower end of my ratings were Cut & Thirst by Margaret Atwood and Fowl Feast by Jen Booker and Gwen Taylor, both of which I gave 2.5 stars.

I know that it’s more important to share some of the best books I consumed last year. My 4.25 star ratings went to A Court OF Mist And Fury by Sarah J Maas (AKA ACOTAR 2) and The Happiest Man On Earth by Eddie Jaku, two vastly different books. I also gave four stars to A Court Of Wings And Ruin (SJM), A Court Of Silver Flames (SJM), House Of Earth And Blood (SJM), House Of Sky And Breath (SJM), Hunting Adeline (HD Carlton), Lights Out (Navessa Allen) and The Last Witch Of Scotland (Philip Paris). As you can see I have accidentally become one of those Maas girlies…and a dark romance girly.

I can hear you now, “why aren’t you telling us more about these books that you rated so highly? This is a terrible review.” This isn’t a review, it’s more of an update and a round up. I’m going to write a separate post on my favourite books from the year because, as I’m sure you’ll understand, highest rated does not always mean the favourite. I might even review a couple of books individually, we’ll see.

My 5 print books, if you were wondering, were

87% of the books I read were fiction. I do like a little non-fiction but fiction is just more enjoyable, and if a story isn’t enjoyable then you’re not going to read it. My most consumed authors were Sarah J Maas (7 books), Guillermo Del Toro/Chuck Hogan (6 books, but I’m definitely going to write a separate post about this one), HD Carlton (4 books) and JRR Tolkien (3 books). My most consumed genres were fantasy (no surprise), romance (quite a surprise), contemporary (I don’t even really know what this means to know if I’m surprised or not) and horror (definitely a surprise).

If you’re also on your story consuming journey, you can find me on Goodreads @kirstyttlg and Storygraph @kirstyttlg.

I think that brings an end to my reading round up for 2024…bye!