One thing I did in January was to join StoryGraph, which I first heard about from Stephany. So far, I like it better than Goodreads for two reasons: 1. I can choose the specific version of each book I am consuming, whether it’s a hard copy, ebook, or audiobook and 2. the app allows you to generate a fun little chart at the end of each month, detailing what you read with the option of various key statistics (format, genre, language, etc.).
I am also enjoying the “fresh slate” feeling of joining an app that has not been corrupted by years of my own poor organization. Maybe I can do it better this time? And not end up with “Want to Read” list that contains 1,209 books in a way I don’t know how to navigate? Well, you can change the book tracking app but you can’t change the book tracker, so we’ll see how it goes.
The first month of 2026 was a good one, in terms of reading. I read eleven books in January, and it was almost 13 (I finished the other two books on the first two days of February which I am choosing to think of as a head start on February.) According to StoryGraph, I spent a bit over 45 hours listening to audiobooks and I read just under 2,000 pages. Six books were hard copy; the other five were audiobooks. One book was nonfiction, I read one book out loud to my daughter, and all but one of them were pretty great.
Books I Read in January
- Senseless by Ronald Malfi (bookshop.org / amazon): This was a holiday gift from my husband, and it was an unknown quantity. I had never heard of the book before, nor had I heard of the author. But the description intrigued me – it hints at a serial killer, which is a topic that never tires me. And my husband tends to know my reading preferences pretty well, so I gave it a shot. I read it in four days flat, which is fast for me. It’s a multi-perspective murder mystery with some horror elements thrown in, and I found myself champing at the bit to find out how everyone’s stories tied together. I only have a vague recollection of the solution to the mystery (and in that vague recollection I feel slightly let down; I think it may employ a trope I’ve seen too frequently and find a little trite, although to be fair it was well done here), but I have a very strong memory of one of the side characters, who may be among the top creepiest characters I’ve ever encountered in fiction. There’s one scene that was so disturbing I was mesmerized. YES, more of that, please. I want an entire novel about that one person and the motivations and experiences that drove such unnerving behavior. While I love a mystery that ties everything up in a way that feels both surprising and inevitable, I don’t a mystery that ends on a less spectacular note, as long as the pacing and writing are strong. Both were strong here.
- Strange Pictures by Uketsu (bookshop.org / amazon): This is a book I got for my husband as a holiday gift. He read it during the holiday break and then asked me to read it. It was a very quick read; I finished it in one day. The book contains a series of linked mysteries. Each mystery has a visual element that the reader can use to help solve the mystery alongside the characters. It was different and interesting and kept my attention throughout. It reminded me in a lot of ways of a computer game my husband and I used to play together – man I miss that game! We played all the iterations and it was so fun, solving the puzzles together. (Are there other games like that?) Anyway, Strange Pictures reminded me of Rusty Lake because they are both kind of simplistic, with little character development, and the solutions feel a little lackluster. They also both have some horror elements, although neither felt particularly scary. Despite the shortcomings, the process of trying to puzzle things out was enjoyable enough to carry me through.
- The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman (bookshop.org / amazon): This is my least favorite book in the entire Thursday Murder Club series so far. That doesn’t mean it was bad. I did experience heartache, I did laugh, I did enjoy the silly side characters, and I had fun going along with the plot. It just wasn’t memorable for me the way some of the others were. Maybe that’s a reflection of what Elizabeth is going through in most of the book? Maybe the series will have regained its stride by the time the next edition hits shelves.
- We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer (bookshop.org / amazon): In case you’re counting, this is the third book I read in January that could potentially find itself in the horror category. I’m really into horror lately, what can I say. I liked this book, about a couple who have just bought an old house to flip when the previous inhabitant and his family show up at their door, asking to look around. I liked the main character – Eve – and found her well-crafted and relatable. I thought Charlie was a good balance for Eve, although I wish she would have been a bit more thoroughly fleshed out; she felt like a sketch of a character next to Eve. I liked the awkwardness of this guy showing up and kind of making it so Eve couldn’t say no to him, and I loved the awkward dynamics his family brought into Eve’s life. At the end, the plot went a teeny bit off the rails for me, but not in a way that I minded too much. What I loved was the kind of eerie, unsettling horror of being in an uncomfortable social situation and not knowing how to extricate yourself.
- Chasing the Boogeyman by Richard Chizmar (bookshop.org / amazon): This is a book I probably should have given up on. By the time I realized that, I was already halfway through. I suppose it held my attention well enough. Now that I’m revisiting it for this post, I feel mainly annoyed. I can’t remember the ending. All I remember is that it walked the line way too closely between “real-life journalist recounting his true experience living in a small town during a serial killer’s spree” and “fiction that reads like someone’s not-particularly-compelling summer journal.” My tolerance for the former, FYI, is higher than for the latter. Unfortunately, this is not a true story, it is a fictional story with a fictional character who shares a name with the author. Also, I feel wildly led astray by the jacket copy, which claims that this book is “the ultimate marriage between horror fiction and true crime.” THIS is why you DNF books, folks: not that the author is ever going to read this post, but I feel terrible about how mean and grouchy I’m being because I made the voluntary decision to keep reading a book that wasn’t for me. And it’s not like everyone who reads this book feels the same way; it gets a 3.92 on Goodreads!
- Heart the Lover by Lily King (bookshop.org / amazon): Everyone was in love with this book in 2025, and that made me want to read it… but it also made me feel a lot of pressure to love it, and it just didn’t sound like a book I would like. One of the blurbs calls it “a magnificent and intimate new novel of desire, friendship, loss, and the lasting impact of first love.” Hork. I prefer serial killers. Also, I thought the title was stupid. I even said something wistfully derisive about not wanting to read this book when my husband and I passed it at the bookstore. Turns out he had already purchased me a copy for Christmas. I keep wanting to write a full review of this one, by which I mean I want to blather on and on until I feel like I’ve adequately explained my feelings about it to myself. But I’m not really sure what I’d say other than it’s a magnificent and intimate novel of desire, friendship, loss, and the lasting impact of first love. It’s also about art, particularly writing, and it’s about how little we can know the people we know best. The writing is lovely without being overwrought, the characters feel vivid and real even though the book is compact and covers a ton of ground. The story even redeems the title for me. I loved it. Best book of January by far.
- The Long Night by Christian White (bookshop.org / amazon): Now this is a horror-adjacent book I can get behind. Mother-daughter dynamics. Terrifying kidnappers. Past trauma coming full circle. Yes, yes, and yes. It’s super fast-paced and cinematic and I was totally unprepared for the twist. If you plan on reading it, I will warn you that it is confusing. It is. It made sense to me in the end, but I had to stare into space and think it through a few times to get to that point. This was not a great work of literature, although it did have some very nice phrasing and the writing was good; but it was a fun, heart-pounding read that was the perfect follow-up to the loveliness of Heart the Lover.
- Discipline by Larissa Pham (bookshop.org / amazon): As someone who continues to write fiction with the goal of someday finding an agent and a publisher, I read debuts with both fascination and jealousy. So many people write fiction, it’s a wonder anyone gets published. Those writers who manage it have found the exact right mix of talent, determination, hard work, luck, and timing. And, of course, discipline, which is the title and ostensible subject of Pham’s debut novel. I found this book – about a writer whose novel skewers the former professor with whom she had an affair – captivating. On the surface, it’s a Me Too-era examination of power, consent, truth vs. perception, and forgiveness and blame. That story was interesting and complicated and unsatisfying in the way those stories often are. The plot went in a direction that I felt wholly implausible, but it felt okay, I suppose. What I most loved about the book was the underlying theme about art, and who gets to decide what counts as art, and who has ownership over a work’s subject. The book dips a little bit into how experience shapes not only an artist herself and her artistic output, but the form her art takes, too. That was fascinating to contemplate. It felt quite unfair to the book to have read it in the same month during which I read Heart the Lover. That book is so very good, I think few books could measure up. And Discipline is Pham’s first novel. I very much look forward to reading whatever she writes next.
- Replaceable You by Mary Roach (bookshop.org / amazon): I’m a Mary Roach fan. I own all her books. She manages to communicate complicated scientific information in a clean, easy-to-understand (and, I’m assuming, accurate) way, and she does it while sharing a ton of really weird arcana and making me laugh. Her latest book explores some of the ways humans have used science and technology to attempt to replace and replicate various parts of the body. My dear friend and college roommate was a heart transplant recipient and possessed a prosthetic limb, so I feel extra invested in this book’s topic. Some of the advances that are being made are staggering in their creativity and promise. This is a quick read and full of fascinating information and I highly recommend it.
- The Shape of Darkness by Laura Purcell (bookshop.org / amazon): Someone I trust must have recommended this book, because I don’t think I would have picked it up on my own (I don’t typically gravitate toward historical fiction). The novel follows a Victorian-era middle-aged silhouette artist who turns to a child medium for help when her work and clients become tangled up in a series of murders. Why yes, this is the third serial killer book of the month. The mystery behind the murders is good and I found the solution unexpected. I enjoyed the supernatural elements, as well as the inclusion of a medium and a mesmerist. What I liked most was the undercurrent of dependency the protagonist felt as an unmarried woman in nineteenth century England. It was fascinating and added a wonderfully unsettling layer of extra anxiety and suspicion to the story. The ending was not my favorite, but what came before was strong enough that I didn’t mind too much.
- Janie’s Private Eyes by Zilpha Keatley Snyder (bookshop.org / amazon): This is the last of the Stanley family mysteries that I’ve been reading to my daughter. Someone is stealing dogs from the neighborhood, and people have started accusing Janie’s new friends the Trans of the crime. Although their dad has forbidden Janie and her detective agency from taking the case, David’s newest school assignment gives him the freedom to investigate. But will he learn who’s behind the dognappings before the Trans are forced to leave town? I hadn’t read this book since I was a kid, and it was very satisfying to read again. As always, I love the way Snyder balances a decent mystery with her sharp insights into children’s behavior and their relationships with one another and with adults.
Are you on StoryGraph or Goodreads? Have you ever read a book so not for you that it made you grouchy? Have you ever played the Rusty Lake computer games, and, if so, what else would you recommend?
A Novel Project 