Hello! I hope all your 2022’s have been off to a good start. The first book I read this year was a 5 star read for me, and I’m hoping that’s a sign of whats to come. December was a pretty mixed reading month for me, I found a few new favourite authors, but also read a few meh books and a few that I just didn’t end up loving. However, there were two books that really stood out to me. One was the sequel to one of my other top reads of the year and the other was buy a new to me author. What was your favourite read from last month? Let me know in the comments.

A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske

Robin Blyth has more than enough bother in his life. He’s struggling to be a good older brother, a responsible employer, and the harried baronet of a seat gutted by his late parents’ excesses. When an administrative mistake sees him named the civil service liaison to a hidden magical society, he discovers what’s been operating beneath the unextraordinary reality he’s always known.

Now Robin must contend with the beauty and danger of magic, an excruciating deadly curse, and the alarming visions of the future that come with it—not to mention Edwin Courcey, his cold and prickly counterpart in the magical bureaucracy, who clearly wishes Robin were anyone and anywhere else.

Robin’s predecessor has disappeared, and the mystery of what happened to him reveals unsettling truths about the very oldest stories they’ve been told about the land they live on and what binds it. Thrown together and facing unexpected dangers, Robin and Edwin discover a plot that threatens every magician in the British Isles—and a secret that more than one person has already died to keep. 

Favourite Quotes!

“You look like a Turner painting and I want to learn your textures with my fingertips. You are the most fascinating thing in this beautiful house. I’d like to introduce my fists to whoever taught you to stop talking about the things that interest you.”

“It didn’t take long to become so accustomed to something that you could describe the exact shape of its absence.”

“Because if even a single woman was involved, they wouldn’t have decided that a man who’d been working there one day was a more likely source of information than a woman who’d been there for years.”

The Liar’s Knot by M.A. Carrick

Trust is the thread that binds us . . . and the rope that hangs us.

In Nadezra, peace is as tenuous as a single thread. The ruthless House Indestor has been destroyed, but darkness still weaves through the city’s filthy back alleys and jewel-bright gardens, seen by those who know where to look.

Derossi Vargo has always known. He has sacrificed more than anyone imagines to carve himself a position of power among the nobility, hiding a will of steel behind a velvet smile. He’ll be damned if he lets anyone threaten what he’s built.

Grey Serrado knows all too well. Bent under the yoke of too many burdens, he fights to protect the city’s most vulnerable. Sooner or later, that fight will demand more than he can give.

And Ren, daughter of no clan, knows best of all. Caught in a knot of lies, torn between her heritage and her aristocratic masquerade, she relies on her gift for reading pattern to survive. And it shows her the web of corruption that traps her city.

But all three have yet to discover just how far that web stretches. And in the end, it will take more than knives to cut themselves free…

Favourite Quotes!

“If Renata was a burden she couldn’t put down and Arenza was a reminder of the life she’d never had, the Black Rose was her refuge from all that.”

“Renata might have been able to lace them herself, but not easily. And Grey had seen her use flirtation as a tool before. It had failed when she tried it on him as the Gloria. It was annoyingly more effective now that he knew the face behind the mask.”

“His gaze flicked briefly to her bare shoulders. Scrambling to be Renata, she said the first thing that came into her head. ‘Are you flirting with me?’ ‘Make no mistake, Renata,’ he said, his voice deepening. ‘When I flirt with you, you’ll know.”