I decided that this year, I am going to actually give tracking my reading a try! In general, I really don’t care to see how much I read or what demographics were represented, because I am very intentional in my reading year-round. I had nothing against anyone who tracked this information, but I thought that, for me, it would just add more stress to my reading.

But you know what… let’s do it! Let’s give it a little try and, if it gets stressful, I’ll just stop. lol

Anyway, we started the year strong! So let’s talk about everything I read this week.

I came into 2025 finishing four books:

• An Honored Vow by Melissa Blair
• Revive Me by J.L. Seegars
• Inferno’s Heir by Tiffany Wang
• Bones to the Wind by Tatiana Obey.

Since then, I have read three others:

• The Wolf’s Mate by Tati Alvarez
• Lore of the Wilds by Analeigh Sbrana
• The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones.

Let’s talk about all of them!

AN HONORED VOW

​

​

This was a bitter-sweet read for me because it is the fourth and final installment in the Halfling Saga, which has been such a fun journey for me. If you haven’t read the first three books in this series, make sure you grab them, because Kiera’s story is unbelievable! She is a halfling (half elf, half human) who has been forced to become an accomplished assassin for the King who colonized her people about a century beforehand. This story follows her journey as she wrestles with the weight of everything she’s had to do in the name of her oppressor and her struggle to liberate her people using the skills she has learned while being forced to participate in their oppression. This series has massive conversations about indigeneity, colonization, oppression, reconnecting to culture, shame, and so much more. And it does so so beautifully. I loved my experience with Kiera’s story and I am so sad that it’s over.

I will have a full blog on this book soon, so look out for that!

REVIVE ME

​

​

This was a harder book for me. It was very well written, but I don’t know that it was for me. I will say that it was an incredibly REAL story, which I enjoy. I don’t want to spoil too much because the plot was actually very fun to unravel for myself and I don’t want to rob you of that if you choose to dive in. But here is what I will say: It’s a romance that follows a man and a woman who end up in a situation where they are pretending to be partners, specifically because of another person. But when things get real and their fake situationship does what it’s supposed to (kind of), they realize that they accidentally developed something a little more real than they had meant to. Which means the story naturally ends up including a lot of freaking baggage. Which was so REAL. I love a romance that doesn’t shy away from how messy falling in love is. I will say, for me, some of it was a little too real for me. I don’t think it was unwarrented and I don’t think it’ll stop everyone from enjoying the story, but it pulled me out a little bit. Especially because this is the first book in a trilogy and it does not end on a happy note. Which is FINE, but threw me off a bit. I haven’t decided yet if I am going to finish this trilogy, but I may, because I am invested in these characters and I kind of need to know what happens next. Either way, I plan to pick up more of this author's work!

INFERNO’S HEIR

​

​

Look, everyone told me the main character of this story was morally grey. I was told I wouldn’t like her and that I probably wouldn’t be rooting for her. Some people even told me, “Michael, I don’t think this is the book for you.” But here’s the thing… that woman is not morally grey. She is a villain. AND I LOVED IT.

This character was everything I would have expected Azula (Avatar: The Last Air Bender) to become if she had been put in Zuko’s shoes. She is a princess who has been looked down on and hated by her older sibling, and as a result, she has become an outcast in her own kingdom. When her parents die, she knows it is only a matter of time before one of her brother’s assassination attempts is successful, despite all of her power as a fire AND water wielder. So when she finds out that her brother is planning to grant a royal favor to whoever helps him put an end to the growing rebellion in his kingdom, she makes it her mission to infiltrate the rebellion and to bring him their leader. Naturally, she is going to have her ideologies and worldview challenged as she seeks out marginalized people, but yo… this woman is a mess. I didn’t root for her for a single moment in this book, even when she’s doing the right thing. Because truthfully, while she might be scared for her life, she and her brother were carved from the same stone. And she knows it. BUT, there are other characters I fell in love with, and seeing them through her eyes was actually incredibly beautiful.

This story, for me, did a lot. It told a story about oppression, marginalization, oppression and corruption through the eyes of the empire, instead of through the eyes of its victims. And I’m here for it!

BONES TO THE WIND

​

​

This was a very fun, escapey book for me. I read it in two sittings in the same day because I needed to finish it for a partnership I was doing for Tiktok with Ingram Sparks, and that was a little rushed for me. I would typically like to take my time with a book like this, really digest the conversations it’s trying to have. But since I was limited in time, I just made myself comfortable and dove in. And it was a really good time. It follows a couple of young people who have to participate in a coming of age trial. They are split into teams and sent into the dessert to find and defeat a terrifying creature. Rasaria and Nico are put onto the same team, which ends up bringing conflict because they have very different goals. Where Rasaria is focused on breaking records for her family, Nico is focused on helping her brother to succeed in HIS trial, because this is his last chance.

Like I said, this book was a really fun time. The characters irritated me right off the bat, but it did not take long for their sarcastic, snarky personalities to win me over. I found myself rooting for EVERYONE, even when their expectations or plans were…well…never gonna work out. lol.

This book is the first in a series and I will probably be reading the rest.

THE WOLF’S MATE

​

​

Yo, a few months ago, I put out an ask on TikTok for authors to add me to their books. And Tati Alvarez was one of the first to say yes! Now, I ended up being added to like a dozen or so books last year, so I didn’t read them all, but I knew right away I’d be picking up this one because she made me an Alpha Werewolf bad guy. And I just… I needed that boost of confidence! BAHAHA!

This is the second book in the Grym Hollow series, which follows a group of supernatural communities who are on the brink of devastating war. About a century prior to the start of this series, a group of terrifying creatures showed up in their world and almost decemated everyone. But the leaders of five supernatural communities came together with their human spouses and combined all of their magic to save the world. However, those creatures are now free, and the only way to stop them is for this next generation of leaders to find human’s to fight alongside.

This installment follows a powerful Alpha werewolf and the woman who has agreed to marry him so that they can save his people together. Only… they don’t know each other. Also… they don’t like each other. But if they want to unlock their magic and become the force they need to be in order to stop their enemy, they will have to fix that very quickly. Because unfortunatley, marriage alone won’t do the trick. They need to be in love.

And yes… I die in this book.

LORE OF THE WILDS

​

​

I had some complicated feelings about this one—mostly positive. I finished this yesterday afternoon and spent most of the night really wrestling through my thoughts. It follows a young woman from the only human village in their entire world. According to legend, their community was banished to this world by a frivilous god they had angered, and the Fae (the magical people who are from this world) did not take kindly to their arrival. Since their arrival, the humans have been confined to this single village. Until now, because the fae need help and Alemeyu may be the only person who can help them.

When she is summoned to the castle, she assumes she is going to die. But instead, she is offered a deal. If she will help to organize the castle’s library that has been magically locked to the Fae, they will help rebuild her village after the recent earthshake that ruined their entire infrastructure. Naturally, she agrees. But, knowing that she is the only one with access to their precious books, she wants more than what she was promised. She wants to search for a way to get magic for herself.

Now, this was an incredibly written story. I fell in love with the characters, was enraptured by the fight scenes and the descriptions of the magic. I even loved the moments where our character’s are learning about one another’s history and asking questions that I, the reader, have already figured out the answer to. The pacing and execution of this story was beautifully done. But I wrestled with a lot of big questions about the underlying conversations happening, and I don’t feel like I got enough information to really know where I landed on those.

In particular, the humans in this story theoretically came from another world and then were immediately oppressed by the people who lived there already. In my mind, I know that we are going to find out that there is more to the story. Maybe the humans are actually just another type of Fae that has been oppressed and lost it’s history. Or, the humans got here because the Fae actually used magic to summon them in ORDER to oppress them. In both of these scenarios, there is room for BEAUTIFUL exploration of the Black American experience. But we didn’t get that answer and so now I have to read the next book when it comes out—which I will (and no, these em dashes do not mean this was AI)—in order to really know how I feel about this element of the story.

With that said, I really enjoyed my experience with this story and am VERY interested in reading the rest of the series. It was beautiful written and beautifully BLACK.

THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS

​

​

This was my read today and it was excellent. Which is so funny to me, because this was my most notable DNF of 2024. But when I put it down, I knew that my problem with the book had more to do with the fact that I didn’t really enjoy Literary Fiction than it had to do with the book itself. Stephen Graham Jones is a phenomenal writer and this book was no exception. But since then, I have read a lot more Lit-Fic and have gotten a taste for it. So I decided to revisit and I’m so glad I did.

This is an Indigenous literary horror that follows four Indigenous men who are being hunted by the consequences of a mistake they made ten years previously. I don’t want to spoil the story by explaining what that mistake was or in what way it has manifested into their current nightmare, but here is what I will say: this book reminded me that greed (even when it feels harmless) does something to us. Something that isn’t always fixable. Something that we can’t always make right. Especially when that Greed manifests as a weapon against our own culture, people and identity. Throughout this story, we are watching as four men (who we have no reason to think are horrible people) are haunted by the way that they broke away from their own cultural tradition for personal gain. And I found it particularly interesting the ways that they were specifically harmed by the systems that harm all marginalized people (such as racism, police brutality, etc). Because it reminded me that one of the only things in this country that shields us from the horrors around us IS our community and culture. And to betray our people is never a small thing.

CONLUSION

Ok, let me know if you have read any of these books and if so, how you felt about them. And if you haven’t, go ahead and grab copies to any that sounded interesting! I have them all linked down below. Just click the picture of the books you’re interested in and it will take you to links where you can buy them from my affiliate stores at Bookshop.org and amazon. I also included their sequels.

Additionally, if you are a $5 subscriber or higher, please head over to the subscribers-only room in our community discord and drop some books onto my TBR for January!!!

If you are seeing this from outside of Bindery, please subscribe for FREE for regular updates and bookish content. Or commit $5 to $12 a month to helping us in our mission to change the publishing industry for the better.

​

​