Tag: The Housemaid

Monthly Wrap-Up – December 2025

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Happy New Year friends and welcome to my last monthly wrap-up of 2025! In today’s post I take a look at reading progress in December 2025. In summary, I didn’t touch much of my December TBR. Once my reading obligations were over and I’d completed my Goodreads Reading Challenge, my brain kinda switched off. 

Nevertheless, I have some progress to share and after a slow, steady festive period and end of the month I’m ready to get back into it! 

 

Books Read 

 

Death of a Billionaire 

Early in December I had a blog tour obligation to review Death of a Billionaire by Tucker May. With a number of ongoing books from the end of November, I had to pick up and finish this one pretty quickly. 

One light night and a review later, I safely ticked Death of a Billionaire off the list. It’s a fun, humorous murder mystery and I enjoyed the lighter tone. If you want to take a look at this for yourself, here’s a link to my review. 

 

Empire of the Dawn

A book I made slow progress with in December was Empire of the Dawn. Unfortunately, this book wasn’t working for me as I had hoped. It’s a chunky book, and I think having the limitation of a heavy, hardback copy is the primary reason I struggled to pick this up. 

Unfortunately, I couldn’t get an alternative copy of this book to carry on in another format without additional cost. After trying p persevere with it a little longer, I ultimately soft DNF’d it partway through the month. I love the series and where the story is going so far, so I WILL absolutely revisit this one in the near future! 

 

A Crucible of Souls

I wrapped up listening to A Crucible of Souls mid-month after starting the book in November. Overall, I enjoyed this fantasy book and it was a decent recommendation I picked up as part of a ChatGPT recommendations challenge I started a few months ago. 

However, I did finish this book a little disappointed. The book has a lot of detail and an engaging storyline. That said, the book is very light on explanation or backstory on Caldan so we finish the book with as many, if not more questions, than when we started. 

No doubt the rest of the series would catch up with this intel later. I, however, have decided not to continue with it.

 

Beyond Redemption 

The final book I have picked up towards my ChatGPT recommendations challenge is Beyond Redemption. Admittedly, progress on this book was also light in December. 

In total, I made it 15% into the book. I initially started reading it on my phone at the hairdressers during my appointment mid-month. However, I prefer to read digital books on my kindle and don’t get it charged up till much later in the month. Also, I’d hit my lull by this point despite enjoying what I’ve read to date. With my Goodreads Challenge for 2025 exceeded, my brain switched off from reading and turned to craft projects and downtime instead. 

So, Beyond Redemption will be carried forward into January. To get my reading mojo back I’ve started a short read today. Once that’s done though, I’m going to launch into Beyond Redemption full force. I’m excited to see where this grimdark fantasy takes us.

 

The Housemaid is Watching

Where progress with physical and digital books has been on the slow side this December, today’s monthly wrap-up features far better news on audiobook progress! 

After listening to The Housemaid’s Secret last month, I added The Housemaid is Watching to my December TBR as a contribution to completing my 2025 resolution of finishing 10 series. 

Thankfully, listening to The Housemaid is Watching proved as compulsive as its predecessor. I listened to the entirety of this audiobook in just a few days – a complete change from the lethargy that I have to hold my hands up to otherwise in this monthly wrap-up! 

 

The Doors of Midnight 

Another audiobook I made great progress with in December, but inevitably I’m carrying over into January, is The Doors of Midnight by R.R. Virdi. 

I listened to around 10 hours worth of audio in December (at x1.15 speed for this one, so about 8 1/2 hours of actual listening time). However, as of today, 1st January, I still have 35hrs and 8mins (30hrs 30mins at x1.15 speed) to go! This book is over 800 pages long, so I didn’t really expect completion by the end of December. Still, it was an attempt towards my series completion 2025 resolution. I can’t knock myself given I gave it a good go! 

Now that I’m immersed back into Ari’s life and escapades, I’m excited for this carryover to hopefully be one of my first highly-rated completions of 2026. 

 

Summary 

Audiobooks saved the day again! Whilst I expected this monthly wrap-up to be short (given a lack of reading progress in the second half of December), I haven’t got much to complain about. I picked up a good few, even if they didn’t result in a green, shiny tick before 31st December. 

What was your final read of December? Did you meet your 2025 reading resolutions? I’ll be deep-diving into my progress on last year’s reading resolutions in the next day or two. I hope you can stick around for that! ☺️

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Sunday Summary – 23rd March 2025

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Happy Sunday readers – welcome to this week’s instalment of my regular Sunday Summary feature! Have you picked up any good books lately? I sure have, but before I get ahead of myself, let’s take a minute to go through what else I’ve shared on my blog this week!

My first post of the week was a book review of the illustrated novel, Rise of the Dragon by George R. R. Martin. If you’re interested in the backdrop to the world of A Song of Ice and Fire (A Game of Thrones), this is the approachable edition. Should you like more hardcore lore, go for Fire and Blood instead. If you’re watching House of the Dragon, this is a fantastic book to explain events.

Next, in this week’s Shelf Control post, I feature a graphic novel retelling – The One Hundred Nights of Hero. It’s unlike a lot of books on my TBR, and it’s for that reason I want to give it a go!


Books Read


The Housemaid

Earlier this week, I finished the final couple of hours of audio of The Housemaid. It took a turn I wasn’t really expecting – and the ending was worth the wait!

I really enjoyed this thriller, and if this is a genre that appeals to you, please read this one. My favourite aspect was the characters and dynamics of the story so much. I wasn’t originally planning on picking up the subsequent series… but I am now!


Normal Women

Picking up where I left off last Sunday, I’ve read another 100 pages of Normal Women this week.

I like how the book recaps how the rights and living conditions of women change across time. The chapters are broken down into recognised periods of history and cover a broad range of topics affecting women. From  legal rights to how they had relationships with each other, Normal Women covers a wide spectrum.

This isn’t the type of book I can binge, so I’ve ended up reading this in multiple short bursts. However, I’m engaged to keep coming back, so I’ll be chipping away at this one in the next few weeks.


Calamity

Finally, I started my next audiobook. I recently listened to Firefight by Brandon Sanderson. Whilst events are fresh in my mind, I wanted to listen to Calamity and finish the trilogy.

So far I’m a little under 3 hours, or just shy of 25%, into the audio. I’m listening to the audiobook at x1.2 speed, so I’ve got just under 8 hours left to listen to.

I don’t think I’ll listen to a lot early next week as I’m off work. However, once I’m back into normal routine later in the week there will be opportunities to keep going and see if Calamity can live up to the rest of the series to date.


Books Discovered

The only book I’ve added this week is The Housemaid’s Secret, the sequel to The Housemaid. I’ve decided to stick with the audiobook format for the series and thankfully I had a credit I could use towards it.


Coming Up…

Next week, I’m leaning into enjoying my time off before another busy stretch at work. I’ve decided that next week’s posting schedule is going to be quite light.

I’ll be back this time next week for another Sunday Summary post, but that’s all. I’m going to enjoy the last few days of my annual leave without obligation to post here and pick up my reads and hobbies as much as I can. That way, I’m fully recharged to pick up again and catch you up on my latest reads in next week’s Sunday Summary.

Until next week, I hope you have a good one!

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Sunday Summary – 16th March 2025

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Good evening friends and welcome to another Sunday Summary! It’s been a fun week and I’ve picked up some good books.

Before we get into that though, let’s take a look at the blog posts I’ve shared this week. First, I shared a blog tour review of Woden’s Spear by Donovan Cook. It feels weird talking about this in this post because I drafted that post this time last week. However, it went live on Monday… so it counts.

Later in the week, I shared my First Lines Friday post. This week’s feature is one of my current reads. I decided to feature this book having started it this week and really enjoyed the book. The intro really caught my attention, even if I wasn’t reading this for book club, it would have made it onto my reading list anyway.


Books Read

 

A Promised Land

I’m pleased that I can finally report the completion of A Promised Land by Barack Obama this week!

It’s been an interesting read and opened my eyes to perspectives I didn’t imagine. If there was any book on my February TBR that I expected to not finish, it was this one. However, I’d say it was probably one that I enjoyed the most.


The Housemaid

After finishing listening to A Promised Land, I moved on to The Housemaid by Freida McFadden.

This is our book club read for March, and I decided to pick it up in audio format as I’m getting through audiobooks a bit quicker than regular ones at the moment.

It’s been a good choice! Although I am spending a good deal of the narrative questioning the actions and reactions of some of the characters, it’s an interesting story. As of this Sunday Summary post, I have listened to the vast majority of The Housemaid and I only have a couple of hours also left.


Normal Women

I’ve picked up Normal Women a couple of times over the course of this week. I haven’t made a lot of progress with the book, but I have moved on from the 20-odd-pages I’d read last week to just over 100.

I like the idea of this book, and I’m looking forward to reading further into more familiar modern history. If you’re unfamiliar with the book, it looks at how women in society shaped Britain’s modern history, even when they were talked about in the history books. It’s not about the famous individuals, but rather women as a whole.


Books Discovered

I haven’t added anything new to the reading list this week, so nothing to update you on here!

 

Coming Up…

The first book post I share next week will be another book review. I confess that as of the point of drafting this post, I haven’t decided which book it is that I will feature all. However, it’s 25 to midnight locally; I’m not going to spend the time looking through my reading list to see what’s coming up next. It’ll be as much a surprise for you as it is for me! 😂

Friday, I’m back with my regular Friday feature, Shelf Control. In this series, I take a look at upcoming books on my reading list, and I’m excited to read them.

Finally, next week, I’m back with another Sunday Summary post. I’m excited to share some more bookish completions with you, so stay tuned!

A fairly quick update from me this week in the interest of time and getting this out on time.

What are you reading?

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