This month’s list of reads is a short one (but the books were amazing). I blame my lack of time for reading this month on the combination of Applied Algebra and a cold that just won’t stay away.
All of the authors who are on this list are ones that you’ll have read about if you’ve been following for the past few years. So enjoy and happy reading!
A Bride’s Guide to Happiness and Homicide | Kristen Bird
In the final book in the Dakota Green trilogy (although I had hoped to have a novel where she gets married to her boyfriend, Sheriff Charlie Strong), we join our friends in Aubergine, Virginia, for the wedding of Dakota Green’s best friend. Lacy’s future in-laws and cousins are determined to do everything they can to stop the wedding, including ruining her wedding dress and forcing themselves into the bachelorette activities.
When the officiating priest (who doesn’t appear to be a priest at all) turns up dead, the Sheriff becomes the prime suspect, and Dakota must do everything she can to prove his innocence and get her best friend married, if that’s the last thing she does.
If you enjoyed the first two books in the series, you’re not going to be disappointed with the final novel in the series. It arrived on bookshelves, 1/23/2026.
Rating: A+
When Dakota Green’s best friend asks her to be the maid of honor, she expects champagne toasts and bouquet tosses—not a dead priest in the holly bushes of The Rose Palace estate. But in Aubergine, Virginia, something borrowed and something blue might just include a corpse or two.
A winter getaway in the Blue Ridge Mountains should be a wonderland of bliss for pre-wedding festivities. Instead, it’s a blizzard of suspicion as the groom’s Texas relatives arrive with secrets as deep as the falling snow.
Just when Dakota thinks she can’t handle one more wedding disaster, the officiating priest takes a fatal plunge from the fourth floor, with a bullet through his heart, and Dakota’s boyfriend, Sheriff Charlie Strong, becomes the prime suspect.
With Charlie behind bars and the wedding hours away, Dakota must clear his name while ensuring her best friend gets her perfect day. Between a gun-wielding father of the groom, a scandalous romance and a bride who refuses to postpone, Dakota faces her greatest challenge yet. Can she unmask a killer before the wedding march? Or will this matrimony end in mayhem?
Releases 1/23/2026
The First Time I Saw Him | Laura Dave
When I first started reading this book, I kept wondering which Laura Dave book I’d read (The Night We Lost Him) and loved. I hadn’t read The Last Thing He Told Me yet, so after reading the first few chapters and a synopsis of the first novel, I decided to give the Apple+ series (starring Jennifer Garner) a watch before digging into the sequel.
This book is everything you’d hope for in a Laura Dave novel, and you just never know when you’re going to be surprised with a new element of the story. I love it when an author creates characters that you can cheer on throughout the book (along with not being remotely predictable).
I will tell you, without giving anything away, that the sequel has a very satisfying ending, so if you have already read The Last Thing He Told Me, you’re going to want to pick up a copy when it comes out on 1/6/2026!
Rating: A+
How far would you go for a second chance?
Five years after her husband, Owen, disappeared, Hannah Hall and her stepdaughter, Bailey, have settled into a new life in Southern California. Together, they’ve forged a relationship with Bailey’s grandfather, Nicholas, and are putting the past behind them.
But when Owen shows up at Hannah’s new exhibition, she knows that she and Bailey are in danger again.
Hannah and Bailey are forced to go on the run in a relentless race to keep their past from catching up with them. As a thrilling drama unfolds, Hannah risks everything to get Bailey to safety—and finds there just might be a way back to Owen and their long-awaited second chance.
A gripping, rich, and deeply moving novel about the power of forgiveness, The First Time I Saw Him picks up right where the epilogue for the “genuinely moving” (The New York Times) The Last Thing He Told Me left off, giving readers the eagerly awaited and absolutely exhilarating sequel to Dave’s global blockbuster.
Releases 1/6/2026
The Shark House | Sara Ackerman
My first novel that I received an ARC (advanced reader copy) for was The Uncharted Flight of Olivia West, followed by this year’s The Guest in Room 120, for which I had the honor of doing a Q&A with Sara before the book’s release. While most books go back and forth between the past and the semi-present. This novel only went back to the early 1990’s via diary entries, while spending most of its time in the book’s present (1998). Minnow Gray, a marine biologist, goes to Hawai’i after a series of shark attacks along the Kohala coast.
She also runs into the mysterious Luke, whom she feels drawn to, but also knows that he is hiding something from her at the same time. Driven by a tragedy in her past and the resurfacing of long-lost memories, she works against the clock to prevent a shark hunt that will further disrupt the balance between humans and sharks.
As someone who has always been fearful of sharks in general, I found myself watching different shark videos featuring researchers who have visited the Hawaiian islands. Definitely a must-read for those who enjoy novels set in Hawai’i and revolving around the natural world.
Rating: A+
A haunting mystery beneath the ocean’s surface. One woman’s reckoning with the past. Long-buried secrets waiting to rise.
Hawai’i, 1998. When a string of rare shark attacks unsettles the once-peaceful Kohala coast, marine biologist Minnow Gray is called in to investigate. Known for her uncanny connection to sharks, she is the island’s best hope for uncovering why the attacks are happening—a mystery that has both the local community and the tourism industry on edge—and for determining whether the same great white still haunts the coastline.
Witness to an unspeakable tragedy involving a white shark and her own father, Minnow has carried a darkness with her ever since. She knows, deep inside, that unlocking the memories of that long-ago morning is the only way to truly heal. And as she searches for answers, the past and present collide, revealing shocking and unexpected truths that cut deep as the sea itself.
The longer she’s in Hawai’i, the more she comes to see that her journey here might be as much about finding herself as finding the shark.
An atmospheric exploration of the intricate/fragile dance between humans and sharks, set against a backdrop of stunning Hawaiian landscapes and deep-sea danger, The Shark House is a tale of resilience, redemption, and the raw power of the natural world—and of the courage to face what lies within.
Dive in, if you dare.
Releases 1/13/2026
New Release
The Midnight Carousel | Fiza Saeed McLynn
1920, Chicago
Maisie Marlowe has come to America for a fresh start. After discovering an antique fairground carousel, she is seized by the idea of running a glittering amusement park. But little does she know that the wondrous object has a sinister past of its own.
Paris
A decade ago, fairgoers inexplicably vanished riding an extraordinary carousel, and Detective Laurent Bisset closed the case with a suspect behind bars. So when rumors of fresh disappearances in Chicago, also linked to a carousel, make their way across the Atlantic, Laurent sets out for new answers to an old mystery.
Maisie and Laurent both hold clues to this dark puzzle.
But can they piece it together before the carousel claims someone else?
Books
December recommendations
