News and Updates
Happy almost New Year! We may be a few days early, but we will be starting our 2026 Read With Lindsey Reading Challenges today! If you haven’t already, connect with us on StoryGraph and join our Weekly or Monthly 2026 challenges!
This Week
Do you have fun New Years Eve traditions? Our family likes to stay home, eat junk food, and watch a ball drop somewhere around the world…before going to be at normal time. I always try to stay up and read till midnight but rarely make it past 10!
Monthly Reading Challenge: Science Fiction
Weekly Reading Challenge: New Year
Magical beings, multiple dimensions, and a plot to end the world as they knew it in Melis Caruso’s The Last Hour Between Worlds.
When Kembral agreed to attend the New Year’s Eve party and have her first night out since becoming a mother, she wasn’t planning to get pulled back into her work as a Hound – a magical detective. Now she’s got to face her biggest fears and her biggest secrets to save humanity before the clock strikes midnight…all while getting dropped into the next dimension unexpectedly. Will she be able to stop the insanity and find the evil behind the chaos before more of her friends are killed?
If you’re looking for other great books for this prompt, try one of these reads recommended by our StoryGraph community:
- 300 New Year’s Eves, K.C. Carmichael
- Midnight, Repeated, Dani McLean
- New Year, New You, Chris Campbell
- Oona Out of Order, Margarita Montimore
New This week
Our preview books have been coming in hot and heavy lately, but this is an off week for their releases. With that said, there are still some great books coming out:
- Beautiful Ugly, Alice Feeny
- The Inheritance, Trisha Sakhlecha
In Case You Missed It
Last Week’s Prompt
Pearl’s family has never really been close. Her husband left when the kids were young. The older son always resented the youngest because he was Pearl’s favorite and tried to take away anything the younger son had. The youngest just wanted to fit in and do a good job. And her daughter ended up more like Pearl than she could have ever imagined. Like most families, it wasn’t until after Pearl’s death that the family’s past unraveled in front of them and unlocked all the secrets their family had been built on.
I give Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler 3.95 out of 5 stars. This novel racked up multiple awards when released over 4 decades ago, but I found flaws with the character connections that were more than I think Tyler intended. I also found it difficult to follow these characters completely, with some plot points feeling like a made for TV romance movie, and others feeling like they were meant for a suspense novel. With that said, this reads a bit like a Fredrik Backman meets Jojo Moyes novel. With themes of abandonment and neglect, this may not be best suited to all readers.
Last Week’s Articles
Thursday, we took a look back at our reads for December and chose our top book of the month – The Storm by Rachel Hawkins! We also announced our top book of 2025 – congratulations to Where the Wildflowers Grow by Terah Shelton Harris!
To read more about why we chose these books as tops on our list, or to see all the great books we read in December, read more here.
Last Week’s Preview
Kasey’s mission was to exfiltrate a Chinese tech star who was under surveillance. Beijing knew he had connected with the CIA and didn’t want to lose the tool he created, but, when they moved in, he used that tool to confuse them and give Kasey’s team time to get them out of the country. What he didn’t plan for was his protégé using a tool of her own to bring down their plan in the middle of the Arctic Circle and put dozens of lives at risk. Will Kasey be able to keep her mission on track or will the combined threats of the incoming Chinese forces and those from the environment of their new battleground be too much to overcome?
I give Cold Zero by Brad Thor and Ward Larson 4 out of 5 stars. Read the full review here.
Reading Challenge Prompts
In 2026, we’re reading through the genres in our local libraries, starting with Science Fiction! This isn’t my favorite genre, but I’m having fun digging in so far. Which of our weekly prompts is your favorite type of science fiction?
This post contains affiliate links.
What I’m Reading
- Current print book: Daughter of Egypt, Marie Benedict
- Current audio book: The Red Winter, Cameron Sullivan
- Book I’m most looking forward to: How to Be Okay with Nothing is Okay, Jenny Lawson
Discover more from Read With Lindsey
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
