East and west. Humans and spirits. Breccans and Tamerlaines. The Isle of Cadence has always held itself and its residents in a tenuous balance. But now Bane, the spirit of the North Wind, has pushed everyone and everything in his path off-kilter in a bid to claim dominion over human and spirit alike.

I’m actually quite proud of my reading accomplishments this year as, with a new job, it has been more difficult to find the time. But I set realistic goals for myself. Ones I know I can achieve as long as I try. I set myself up to read 80 books (last year I’d read 100 so I knew this was attainable), I promised I’d get into poetry (which I read but didn’t like), made sure to squeeze in some timeless classics, and actively sought to diversify my reading list every single time I went book shopping. Some amazing reads stood out to me this year above all others so here are the top 12 that I loved this year:

For as long as she can remember, Evangeline Fox as believed in true love and happy endings… until she learns that the love of her life will marry another.

Desperate to stop the wedding and to heal her wounded heart, Evangeline strikes a deal with the charismatic, but wicked, Prince of Hearts. In exchange for his help he asks for three kisses, to be given at the time and place of his choosing.

In her forest-veiled pagan village, Évike is the only woman without power, making her an outcast clearly abandoned by the gods. The villagers blame her corrupted bloodline - her father was a Yehuli man, one of the much-loathed servants of the fanatical king. When soldiers arrive from the Holy Order of Woodsmen to claim a pagan girl for the king’s blood sacrifice, Évike is betrayed by her fellow villagers and surrendered.

A pasture of dead trees. A hostile takeover of the Santa barn by a family of raccoons. And shipments that have mysteriously gone missing. Lovelight Farms is not the magical winter wonderland of Stella Bloom’s dreams. In an effort to save the Christmas tree farm she’s loved since she was a kid, she enters a contest with instafamous influencer, Evelyn St. James. With the added publicity and the $100,000 cash prize, she might just be able to save the farm from its financial woes. There’s just one problem. To make the farm seem like a romantic destination for the holidays, she lied on the application and said she owns Lovelight Farms with her boyfriend. Only… there is no boyfriend. Enter best friend Luka Peters. He just came home for some hot chocolate, and somehow got a farm and a serious girlfriend in the process.

Lana Montgomery is everything the quirky small town Moose Springs, Alaska can’t stand: a rich socialite with dreams of changing things for the better. But Lana’s determined to prove that she belongs… even if it means trading her stilettos for snow boots and tracking one of the town’s hairiest Christmas mysteries: the Santa Moose, an antlered Grinch hell-bent on destroying every bit of holiday cheer (and tinsel) it can sink its teeth into. And really… how hard could it be?

The last few years have been tough on Rick Harding, and it’s not getting any easier now that his dream girl’s back in town. When Lana accidentally tranquilizes him instead of the Santa Moose, it’s clear she needs help, fast… and this could be his chance to finally catch her eye. It’s an all-out Christmas war, but if they can nab that darn moose before it destroys the town, Rick and Lana might finally find a place where they both belong… together.

Marlinchen and her two sisters live with their wizard father in a city shifting from magic to industry. Oblya’s last true witches, she and her sisters are little more than a tourist attraction as they treat their clients with archaic remedies and beguile them with nostalgic charm. Marlinchen spends her days divining secrets in exchange for rubles and trying to placate her tyrannical, xenophobic father, who keeps his daughters sequestered from the outside world. But at night, Marlinchen and her sisters sneak out to enjoy the city’s amenities and revel in its thrills, particularly the recently established ballet theater, where Marlinchen meets a dancer who quickly captures her heart.

Hazel Sinnett is a lady who wants to be a surgeon more than she wants to marry. Jack Currer is a resurrection man who’s just trying to survive in a city where it’s too easy to die.

The shadows have risen, and the line is law. All Bree wanted was to uncover the truth behind her mother’s death. So she infiltrated the Legendborn Order, a secret society descended from King Arthur’s knights - only to discover her own ancestral power. Now, Bree has become someone new: A Medium. A Bloodcrafter. A Scion. But the ancient war between demons and the Order is rising to a deadly peak. And Nick, the Legendborn boy Bree fell in love with, has been kidnapped. Bree wants to fight, but the Regents who rule the Order won’t let her. To them, she is an unknown girl with unheard-of power, and as the living anchor for the spell that preserves the Legendborn cycle, she must be protected. When the Regents reveal they will do whatever it takes to hide the war, Bree and her friends must go on the run to rescue Nick themselves. But her enemies are everywhere, Bree’s powers are unpredictable and dangerous, and she can’t escape her growing attraction to Selwyn, the mage sworn to protect Nick until death. If Bree has any hope of saving herself and the people she loves, she must learn to control her powers from the ancestors who wielded them first - without losing herself in the process.

Cassidy Blake’s parents are The Inspecters, a (somewhat inept) ghost-hunting team. But Cass herself can REALLY see ghosts. In fact, her best friend, Jacob, just happens to be one. When The Inspecters head to ultra-haunted Edinburgh, Scotland, for their new TV show, Cass - and Jacob - come along. In Scotland, Cass is surrounded by ghosts, not all of them friendly. Then she meets Lara, a girl who can also see the dead. But Lara tells Cassidy that as an In-betweener, their job is to send ghosts permanently beyond the Veil. Cass isn’t sure about her new mission, but she does know the sinister Red Raven haunting the city doesn’t belong in her world. Cassidy’s powers will draw her into an epic fight that stretched through the worlds of the living and the dead, in order to save herself.

1828. Robing Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, Robin trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation - also known as Babel. The tower and its students are the world’s center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver-working - the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars - has made the British unparalleled in power, as the arcane craft serves the Empire’s quest for colonization.

It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capital, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to outcharm, outwit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute. The odds are against him. He’s been given the humiliating assignment of mentoring the female tribute from District 12, the lowest of the low. Their fates are now completely intertwined - every choice Coriolanus makes could lead to favor or failure, triumph or ruin. Inside the arena, it will be a fight to the death. Outside the arena, Coriolanus starts to feel for his doomed tribute… and must weigh his need to follow the rules against his desire to survive no matter what it takes.

Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the patter of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.

There is one other person in the house, a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.

I’m not going to lie, after the short novella series this author put out, I wasn’t very excited for this next book no matter how much I loved The Love Hypothesis so I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed this read. I do feel it was different enough from her orignal to stand alone, however there was no mistaking that it was another Reylo story. Just like all the ones before. Don’t get me wrong, I love that trope. I could read 1,000 fics about that pairing. But when I’m looking to actually purchase a romance novel, I’d like some variety. There were enough differences that the plot felt very original however, the two leads were definitely copy and pastes of all her other leads. I liked the story, but I wished it were a little more of a standalone. If this came out first then I’m betting I would have loved it but having seen this done before, I was a little underwhelmed.

Florence Day is the ghostwriter for one of the most prolific romance authors in the industry, and she has a problem: After a terrible breakup, she no longer believes in love. It’s as good as dead.

Romance is most certainly dead… but so is her new editor, and his unfinished business will have her second-guessing everything she’s ever known about love stories.

This book was a wild ride from start to finish. I’ve only read one Riley Sager book in the past so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Apparently supernatural elements are somewhat common for this author which I didn’t know so I was very unsure what to expect with this book. The beginning did grind my gears a bit. The traumatized single woman with a drinking problem who doubts what they see and spies on their neighbours is a little bit OVERDONE at this point in time. Having that trope shoved in my face right off the bat made me feel like this book would be too similar to others with the same trope and that I wouldn’t enjoy it. But I stuck with it and I’m glad I did because, even though the main character was generic, the plot was different enough from anything I’d read that it kept me hooked.

This book was so beautifully written that it was almost too sad to finish. I picked this as one of my reads while vacationing this year. I read it while staying at an Inn on the edge of a cliff right off the Atlantic Ocean and it felt like the perfect setting. Reading this book while exploring various beaches in PEI gave the perfect atmosphere to get lost in this heartbreaking story of love, hatred, betrayal, and perseverance. This book was a mix of written poetry, inner dialogue, and outward action. Even with the mix of style, it was easy to forget that you’re reading words on a page and felt like you were immersed in the story itself even as a witness on the sidelines. I really enjoyed this read, I just felt it ended too soon.

Two sisters go missing on a remote Scottish island. Twenty years later, one is found — but she’s still the same age as when she disappeared.

A brash bounty hunter and an energetic elementary schoolteacher: the murder-solving team no one asked for, but thanks to these pesky attempts on my life, we’re stuck together, come hell or high tide.

In 1977, Claire Lake, Oregon, was shaken by the Lady Killer Murders: Two men, seemingly randomly, were murdered with the same gun, with strange notes left behind. Beth Greer was the perfect suspect - a rich, eccentric twenty-three-year-old woman, seen fleeing one of the crime scenes. But she was acquitted, and she retreated to the isolation of her mansion.

Oregon, 2017. Shea Collins is a receptionist, but by night, she runs a true-crime website, the Book of Cold Cases - a passion fueled by the attempted abduction she escaped as a child. When she meets Beth by chance, Shea asks her for an interview. To Shea’s surprise, Beth says yes.