Happy New Year! What better way is there to start off the year than looking back on accomplishments from 2025? Last year was a good one for the blog, and I read quite a few great books. Here’s a snapshot of how 2025 shaped up for me and the blog.

2025 Reading Stats

I used StoryGraph consistently again over the last year. So, I have all the pretty graphs to show off. Yay! First up is the number of books and pages I read in 2025. In total, I read 133 books and 54,307 pages. This was a slight drop from 2024. It seems that my comfortable number of books to read per month is 10 books, and I’m happy with that number. March had more because of Trope-ical Readathon.

My average star rating for 2025 was 3.96 out of 5 stars, which is slightly lower than last year. Huh. I was surprised that my average in 2024 had dropped to 3.98, but it seems like it might be my new normal. I thought last year’s drop was just a circumstantial thing, but maybe I’ve just become more critical. 🤷‍♂️ However, it is exciting that I found 10 new 5-star reads in 2025!

I read a wide variety of genres in 2025, but fantasy, queer, and romance books definitely dominated the field yet again, which seems to always be the case. Science fiction finally climbed its way up the chart last year, though. I’ve been trying to read more of that genre for years, but it has stubbornly stayed in the middle of the pack on this graph. So, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it had climbed to the number five spot.

One of the things I like most from StoryGraph is that it tracks the moods of the books I read. In 2025, I read a lot of adventurous and emotional books. I also tended to prefer mysterious and dark reads. This graph looks almost identical to the one from 2023 and 2024. So, my tastes haven’t really changed all that much.

I had some repeat authors in 2025, but only one stood out above the others. Someone finally took the top spot from Sarah J. Maas, who was my most read author of 2023 and 2024. I read three books written by Pierce Brown in 2025, the Red Rising trilogy. I also read two books by quite a few authors, but Brown took that top spot.

Progress On My 2025 Reading Goals

Goodreads Challenge

I set my annual reading goal at 100 books for 2025. As mentioned above, I managed to finish 133 books for the year! So, this goal was a success. 🙂

Reading Journal

I gave up on my reading journal before the end of January 2025. lol. I think it is time to accept that this goal needs to die. Keeping up with a journal seems to be something I’m horrible at accomplishing.

StoryGraph Pages Challenge

I managed to read every day in January 2025. So, I completed this one successfully. 🙂

Blog More Consistently

Unfortunately, this didn’t really happen. I started the year off strong, but there was a steep drop off in my blogging during the second half of the year. I’ve been a bit burnt out and pretty much lost all motivation to blog. I’m hoping to figure out how to make blogging fun for me again in 2026.

Read from My Shelves

I set the goal of reading at least 50 books from my shelves in 2025. Physical books, audiobooks, and ebooks were all included, as long as it was a book I paid for. I read 58 books that met the criteria during the year. So, I surpassed my goal! It actually means that almost half of my reading was from books that I purchased, which makes me happy.

Unhaul More Books

I also did a great job with this goal. I sold 45 books on my Pango shop in 2025, which far surpassed my goal of 10-20. I hope to keep this momentum going into 2026 because I still have so many books and so little space left.

Engage with More Blog Content

I really didn’t do a good job of blog hopping in 2025. When my motivation to blog fell off a cliff, so did my desire to blog hop. I do feel bad about this, though, because I enjoy people engaging with my stuff and really want to return the favor. So, I’ll try to do better…

Read Red Rising

Initially, I wanted to start the series and catch up by reading all of the released books. I finished the first trilogy and decided I’d had enough. The books were fine, but I wasn’t enjoying them enough to continue the rest of the series. I’ll probably read the rest some day since I own them, but I’m considering this goal completed.

Read Subscription Box Books

I managed to read quite a few of the Illumicrate books in 2025. Although, I wish I’d been able to get to more of them. Now I really need to focus on actually reading some of the Owlcrate and The Broken Binding backlog that I’ve got stacking up.

Comic Books

My biggest comic goal of the year was to stop buying them. lol. Thankfully, I stuck to my buying ban and plan to continue it indefinitely. I didn’t read many comics in 2025, though. So, I really need to step that up in the new year.

Blogging Review

I don’t ever set any formal blogging goals because a certain number of views and followers is something that is largely outside of my control. I continue to be extremely happy with the progress of this little blog, though. I hovered around 430 WordPress followers for most of the year and received the highest number of views ever in 2025 despite my lack of motivation to blog. SEO has been a game changer, and I’m so grateful that I don’t need to constantly post to attract views anymore. Thank you to everyone who visited and engaged with the blog in 2025! I truly appreciate every view, like, and comment. 🙂

Most Popular Reviews of the Year

This year I’ve continued getting more traffic from search engines. These five posts have done particularly well at bringing in views from search results, especially Google. The top spot was held by my review of The Atlas Complex. My opinion on that one was in the minority. So, I’m not surprised to see it stay at the top for a second year. The rest of my top five are reviews from 2025. Without further ado, here are my top five reviews of the year:

1. Book Review – The Atlas Complex (#1 spot for the second year in a row!)
2. Gifted & Talented – ARC Review
3. Onyx Storm – Book Review
4. The Bones Beneath My Skin – ARC Review
5. Heavenly Tyrant – Book Review

Final Thoughts

I hope everyone has had a good start to the new year. I’m looking forward to continuing to share my thoughts about great books with you all in the year to come!