Month: November 2025

Thanksgiving Book Tag (2025)

biblionerdreflections7 Comments

Happy (early) Thanksgiving to those of you in the United States (and anywhere else you may be celebrating)! 🦃 I did this Thanksgiving book tag in 2022, 2023, and 2024 and thought it’d be fun to continue the tradition with choices from books I’ve read this year. Thank you to Anna’s Book Nook for creating this tag!

The Rules

  • Thank the person who nominated you
  • Give credit to the author (Annasbooknook)
  • Answer the prompts
  • Tag others if you desire!

The Questions

1) Friends and Family: A Book with Characters that Feel Like Family

I really love the Adam Binder series, and all of the characters have come to feel like family over the years. Redneck Revenant was a great foray back into that world. I enjoyed seeing how the characters had developed over the years, and dropping back into their lives for an exciting new adventure was a lot of fun.

2) Fallen Leaves: A Book that Fell Flat (didn’t meet your expectations)

I did not expect The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy to be my lowest rated book of the year. Unfortunately, the writing was not great, and the plot felt super repetitive and like nothing was happening. The characters also felt flat to me, and I wasn’t feeling the chemistry between them. 🤷‍♂️

3) Thanksgiving Dinner: A Book You Want to Read Every Year During This Season

I don’t re-read much, and there’s really not anything I can think of that I’d pick for this prompt this year.

4) Turkey: A Book With a Bird in It

The Raven Scholar is one of my favorite books of the year so far, and it had a great bird companion in it. So, this was naturally the first book that came to mind for this prompt. 🙂

5) Ham: A Book that Made Your Eyes Glaze Over (Boring)

I usually fall in love with books by Alexis Hall, but I could not wait for Looking for Group to be over. There was so much gaming lingo in this book that it overtook the story and made it hard for me to read and really connect with the characters.

6) Dinner Rolls: A Book that Melted Your Heart and Made You Feel Warm

Good Spirits was a wonderful holiday romance starring the ghost of Christmas past and the woman he waited over 100 years for. It definitely put me in a mushy mood and filled me with holiday spirit.

7) Mashed Potatoes: A Book With a White Cover

I know this cover isn’t completely white, but the background is. So, it counts. lol. I just recently finished Spellslinger and had such a great time with it. I want a grumpy squirrel cat SO BAD and can’t wait to pick up the next book in the series.

8) Gravy: A Book You’re not Totally Sure Why You Love, but You Do

The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes is another pick that I recently read. This was such a weird story, and I’m not really that big a fan of bugs. So, I’m not quite sure why I loved this one so much. lol.

9) Pumpkin Pie: A Dessert Book That You Love

I never know how to answer this prompt. One year I picked a book that was sickeningly sweet. Another year, I chose a book that was a guilty pleasure. Last year I picked a prequel novella that worked as a great extra tacked on to the main story. This year I’ve decided to pick A Burning in the Bones because it was a stellar finale to the trilogy, kind of like a dessert is the delicious end to a meal.

Bonus: Black Friday: The Top 5 Books on Your “I want to buy them” List

There’s nothing that I can think of for this prompt because I buy anything I really want year-round. lol. I have no self-control, which my shelves do not thank me for.

I Tag

Anyone who wants to participate. So, if you’re bored, feel free to have some fun and consider yourself tagged. Otherwise, bookmark it until next year!

That’s it for this year’s Thanksgiving book tag! I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving full of good food and great times.

Most Anticipated December 2025 Book Releases

biblionerdreflections9 Comments
December 2023 Book Releases - Header

It is time again to look forward to another month of book releases. Thankfully, December seems like it will be a light month for me. There aren’t a ton of books releasing that I feel I must get my hands on. If you missed my post about November’s many releases, be sure to check it out here! Without further ado, here are 8 of my most anticipated December 2025 book releases (covers link to Goodreads):

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The Isle in the Silver Sea – ARC Review

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Book info for The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri. Book length is 496 pages. Publication date is October 14, 2025. Genre is fantasy.

Hello, everyone! Today I’m reviewing the latest from Tasha Suri, The Isle in the Silver Sea. I’ve loved some of Suri’s previous work. So, I was stoked to get an ARC of this one from Orbit. Did it live up to the hype in my head? Read on to find out!

From World Fantasy Award-winning author Tasha Suri comes The Isle in the Silver Sea, a heart-shattering romantasy of sapphic longing, medieval folklore and a love that spans the centuries.

In a Britain fuelled by stories, the knight and the witch are fated to fall in love and doom each other over and over, the same tale retold over hundreds of lifetimes.

Simran is a witch of the woods. Vina is a knight of the Queen’s court. When the two women begin to fall for each other, how can they surrender to their desires, when to give in is to destroy each other?

As they seek a way to break the cycle, a mysterious assassin begins targeting tales like theirs. To survive, the two will need to write a story stronger than the one that fate has given to them.

But what tale is stronger than The Knight and the Witch?

***Thank you to Orbit Books for providing an advanced copy of the book! My review contains my honest thoughts about my reading experience.***

Ugh. I really wanted to be able to sit down and write that I absolutely adored The Isle in the Silver Sea. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite hit the mark. The premise of this one was so interesting, and I was hooked by it all through part one of the book despite my quibbles with the execution of the details. Then part two happened. I’m convinced the two parts should have been fleshed out into a duology. The second part felt rushed while also pretty much resetting everything and negatively impacting the relationship development. I was just seriously underwhelmed.

Despite my general feelings of ambivalence about The Isle in the Silver Sea, I did love some things about the book. Suri’s writing was as beautiful as ever, and it made me want to keep reading even when I wasn’t loving other aspects of the book. The author also did a great job of using imagery, and the general premise of the story, to explore some fascinating themes. I really enjoyed the creativity Suri utilized in pointing out the dangers and horrors of colonialism/imperialism and the use of propaganda and censorship in consolidating power. Although, I do think the book often came across as being written specifically to portray a certain message rather than telling a good story in its own right.

That brings me to all of the things that didn’t work for me in The Isle in the Silver Sea. First and foremost, I wanted intense sapphic yearning, which I know Suri can deliver. Instead, I got barely any romance, and the little I did get felt forced and stiff thanks to the premise of the story. Furthermore, the world-building was rough and didn’t feel well thought out. There were different magical beings in this book, but I still haven’t figured out what exactly sets a witch apart from the others. By the end, I still had so many unanswered questions and parts of the plot didn’t really make sense to me.

All that being said, I didn’t hate The Isle in the Silver Sea. It was a fascinating story with beautiful writing and lots of important things to say. I mostly just wish the romance had a bit more teeth to it and the world was better defined. Therefore, I rate the book 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Rating breakdown for The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri. 2 stars for world-building. 3 stars for plot and re-readability. 4 stars for writing, characters, and enjoyment. 5 stars for themes. 3.5 out of 5 stars for overall rating.

There you have it! My thoughts on The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri. Have you read this one yet? Did you enjoy it more/less than I did? Let me know your thoughts down in the comments!