January Wrap-Up | 2026

My reading this January started off a little shaky, but I have managed to read every day which is a huge improvement from last year (the last few years?). The StoryGraph featured a January Pages Challenge, tasking readers to track reading progress every day, which was a tremendous motivator for me this month.

FINISHED READING

The Lost Bookshop Evie Woods (eBook – Libby)

For too long, Opaline, Martha and Henry have been the side characters in their own lives.

But when a vanishing bookshop casts its spell, these three unsuspecting strangers will discover that their own stories are every bit as extraordinary as the ones found in the pages of their beloved books. And by unlocking the secrets of the shelves, they find themselves transported to a world of wonder… where nothing is as it seems.

This was such a marvelous read. I will be posting a review of this next month (aiming for this upcoming week) where I will go more in depth with my thoughts, but I was just as captivated by the characters, through their tragedies and self discovery, as I was by the magical realism and wonder within the narrative. Lucky for me, Evie Woods’ next book, The Violin Maker’s Secret, is out at the end of February!

PAUSED

The Road to Dalton Shannon Bowring (eBook – Libby)

In most small towns, the private is also public. In the town of Dalton, one local makes an unthinkable decision that leaves the community reeling. In the aftermath, their problems, both small and large, reveal a deeper understanding of the lives of their neighbors, and remind us all that no one is exactly who we think they are.

 

It’s 1990. In Dalton, Maine, life goes on. Rose goes to work at the diner every day, her bruises hidden from both the customers and her two young boys. At a table she waits, Dr. Richard Haskell looks back on the one choice that’s charted his entire life, before his thoughts wander back to his wife, Trudy, and her best friend.

Trudy and Bev have been friends for longer than they can count, and something more than lovers to each other for some time now–a fact both accepted and ignored by their husbands. Across town, new mother Bridget lives with her high school sweetheart Nate, and is struggling with postpartum after a traumatic birth. And nearer still is teenager Greg, trying to define the complicated feelings he has about himself and his two close friends.

The Road to Dalton offers valuable understandings of what it means to be alive in the world–of pain and joy, conflict and love, and the endurance that comes from living.

This novel took more of my breath away with each chapter, and in fact, I needed to stop reading just shy of the halfway point. To call Shannon Bowring a writer does not even begin to capture the power her words hold; the truth in each sentence and chapter became a little overpowering for me. I wasn’t sure if I could bear the topic I assumed would be covered in the chapter of which I stopped short, so I have put this novel on an indefinite pause. Even though this novel is set in Maine, you could likely see your own small town reflected in the pages.

 

The Best American Short Stories 2025 Edited by Celeste Ng with Nicole A. Lamy (Mariner paperback)

I paused this for a similar reason as above; the first two stories deal with heavy themes, and as a result I felt myself getting a little burnt out. Maybe I’ll open it back up in February.

 

CURRENTLY READING

Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë (Barnes & Noble paperback)

When young orphan Heathcliff is adopted by a wealthy gentleman, he quickly forms a close bond with his benefactor’s daughter, Cathy. But over the years, their childhood friendship morphs into a desperate, twisted, possessive love, as they wrestle with the violent and tyrannical rule of Cathy’s brother and the confines of social class that keep them apart. What follows is an ingenious and darkly captivating narrative of frustrated passion and tortured heartbreak reverberating through the generations, wrought with all the brutality, power, and wildness of the Yorkshire moors.

With the trailers for the new movie flooding my Instagram and YouTube feeds on the daily, and Emily Brontë playing a significant part in The Lost Bookshop, I thought now would be a great time to reread this. It has been years (nearly a decade?) since I last read Wuthering Heights, and I’m taking it a chapter or two at a time to really relish the prose.

 

One Golden Summer Carley Fortune (eBook – Libby)

Good things happen at the lake. That’s what Alice’s grandmother says, and it’s true. Alice spent just one summer there at a cottage with Nan when she was seventeen—it’s where she took that photo, the one of three grinning teenagers in a yellow speedboat, the image that changed her life.

Now Alice lives behind a lens. As a photographer, she’s most comfortable on the sidelines, letting other people shine. Lately though, she’s been itching for something more, and when Nan falls and breaks her hip, Alice comes up with a plan for them both: another summer in that magical place, Barry’s Bay. But as soon as they settle in, their peace is disrupted by the roar of a familiar yellow boat, and the man driving it.

Charlie Florek was nineteen when Alice took his photo from afar. Now he’s all grown up—a shameless flirt, who manages to make Nan laugh and Alice long to be seventeen again, when life was simpler, when taking pictures was just for fun. Sun-slanted days and warm nights out on the lake with Charlie are a balm for Alice’s soul, but when she looks up and sees his piercing green gaze directly on her, she begins to worry for her heart.

Because Alice sees people—that’s why she is so good at what she does—but she’s never met someone who looks and sees her right back.

My hold for this book came through today and I am already hooked on the story – I don’t have much more to say than that yet but keep any eye out on Instagram for my reading progress throughout next month.

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My NetGalley and publisher to-read lists are stacked for February; I’ll be posting about those tomorrow or in the next couple of days to welcome in the new month. It feels really good to be a reader again.

What were some highs or lows of the books you picked up this month? Feel free to link a review or your blog in a comment below!