I’ve always been an avid reader with multiple books on my “to be read” (TBR) list, but since joining Bookstagram in October… my TBR has grown significantly! And the more I connect with other readers or discover new authors, the more this list is growing. Here’s a look at some of my anticipated reads for 2024.
Current TBR Count: 247 books
Where I Find Inspiration For My TBR List
To be fair, I’m a “mood reader,” which means I often just pick and choose what I want to read next based on how I’m feeling in the moment. This also means that I sometimes don’t even consult my TBR list at all, and just scroll Kindle Unlimited until I find something that sounds good.
When it comes to finding new books to read, I get the majority of my recommendations from other bookish pals on Instagram. Sometimes a friend will provide a specific recommendation, and other times I’ll see a post talking about a book that sounds good! I have an entire “saved posts” folder dedicated to book rec posts, and every so often I go through and add them to my TBR list to keep everything in one place.
I also really enjoy participating in reading challenges, although I’m absolutely terrible at fully completing them. My 2024 PopSugar Reading Challenge progress is also outlined below!
How I Organize My TBR List
Like most things in my life, my TBR list is a bit of a mess! I recently started using StoryGraph to keep track of my TBR list, mostly because I have a lot of dark, spicy romance books on the list that I just don’t need my Goodreads pals seeing. (Hi, mom!)
If you want to be friends on StoryGraph, you can check out my profile here! Be warned, though: I read and review a lot of spicy romance books, many of them with taboo themes. If that’s not your jam, I suggest not following me there.
My one wish for keeping my TBR list organized would be to have a “Notes” section where I could remind myself why I added that particular book to the list. Who recommended it to me, what kind of tropes I can expect, etc.
Books I’m Most Looking Forward To In 2024
I’m not going to list out every single book on my TBR, but these are some of the ones I’m most looking forward to diving into this year:
The Hades x Persephone Saga by Scarlett St. Clair (A Touch of Darkness, A Game of Fate, A Touch of Ruin, A Game of Retribution, A Touch of Malice, A Game of Gods, A Touch of Chaos)
Persephone is the Goddess of Spring by title only. The truth is, since she was a little girl, flowers have shriveled at her touch. After moving to New Athens, she hopes to lead an unassuming life disguised as a mortal journalist.
Hades, God of the Dead, has built a gambling empire in the mortal world and his favorite bets are rumored to be impossible.
After a chance encounter with Hades, Persephone finds herself in a contract with the God of the Dead and the terms are impossible: Persephone must create life in the Underworld or lose her freedom forever.
The bet does more than expose Persephone's failure as a goddess, however. As she struggles to sow the seeds of her freedom, love for the God of the Dead grows--and it's forbidden.
The Ever Seas trilogy by LJ Andrews (The Ever King, The Ever Queen, The Mist Thief)
They stole his crown. So, he stole their daughter…
For years Erik, the scarred king of the Ever Kingdom, has thought of nothing but vengeance against the man who killed his father and trapped him beneath the waves, making him a prisoner in his own realm.
Until his enemy’s daughter unintentionally breaks the chains on the Ever, and Erik makes her the unwitting pawn in his vicious game of revenge.
She’s innocent. He’s vicious. But he will take back what he lost, no matter the price.
Unless she steals his heart first.
Welcome to the passionate world of the Ever Kingdom where pirates, sirens, and fae collide with Vikings in a spicy, dark fantasy romance between a made villain and the innocent princess who holds his heart.
The New Camelot series by Sierra Simone (American Queen, American Prince, American King, Cards of Love: The Moon, American Squire)
It starts with a stolen kiss under an English sky, and it ends with a walk down the aisle. It starts with the President sending his best friend to woo me on his behalf, and it ends with my heart split in two. It starts with buried secrets and dangerous desires…and ends with the three of us bound together with a hateful love sharper than any barbed wire.
My name is Greer Galloway, and I serve at the pleasure of the President of the United States.
This is the story of an American Queen.
The Crowns of Nyaxia series by Carissa Broadbent (The Serpent and the Wings of Night, Six Scorched Roses, The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King, The Songbird and the Heart of Stone)
Human or vampire, the rules of survival are the same: never trust, never yield, and always – always – guard your heart.
The adopted human daughter of the Nightborn vampire king, Oraya carved her place in a world designed to kill her. Her only chance to become something more than prey is entering the Kejari: a legendary tournament held by the goddess of death herself.
But winning won’t be easy amongst the most vicious warriors from all three vampire houses. To survive, Oraya is forced to make an alliance with a mysterious rival.
Everything about Raihn is dangerous. He is a ruthless vampire, an efficient killer, an enemy to her father’s crown… and her greatest competition. Yet, what terrifies Oraya most of all is that she finds herself oddly drawn to him.
But there’s no room for compassion in the Kejari. War for the House of Night brews, shattering everything that Oraya thought she knew about her home. And Raihn may understand her more than anyone – but their blossoming attraction could be her downfall, in a kingdom where nothing is more deadly than love.
The Letters of Enchantment series by Rebecca Ross (Divine Rivals, Ruthless Vows)
When two young rival journalists find love through a magical connection, they must face the depths of hell, in a war among gods, to seal their fate forever.
After centuries of sleep, the gods are warring again. But eighteen-year-old Iris Winnow just wants to hold her family together. Her mother is suffering from addiction and her brother is missing from the front lines. Her best bet is to win the columnist promotion at the Oath Gazette.
To combat her worries, Iris writes letters to her brother and slips them beneath her wardrobe door, where they vanish—into the hands of Roman Kitt, her cold and handsome rival at the paper. When he anonymously writes Iris back, the two of them forge a connection that will follow Iris all the way to the front lines of battle: for her brother, the fate of mankind, and love.
Shadow and Bone meets Lore in Rebecca Ross's Divine Rivals, an epic enemies-to-lovers fantasy novel filled with hope and heartbreak, and the unparalleled power of love.
Mortui vivos docent.
The dead teach the living.
After watching my mother succumb to a mysterious illness, I promised myself two things. I’d find the cure for what ravaged her. And leave the godforsaken city where she abandoned me.
Four years later, I receive an acceptance letter from Dracadia University, one of the oldest, most prestigious schools in the country. Nestled on a secluded island off the coast of Maine, it’s rumored to be haunted by the souls of the mental patients exiled there centuries before. Those whose bones are said to make up the island’s white sandy shores.
And restless ghosts aren’t even its most daunting peculiarity.
Devryck Bramwell, known on campus as Doctor Death, is a brilliant pathologist in charge of the midnight lab. He’s also my devastatingly handsome professor, who seems to loathe tenacious first-years, like me. Except, his dark and enigmatic gaze tells me all the ways he’d devour me if given the chance, and his stolen kisses burn my lips with forbidden jealousy.
I crave his authority.
He aches for redemption.
Together, we’re toxic. Delicious fodder for the prying eyes hellbent on exhuming the rotted skeletons of our pasts.
For the dead have much to teach, and it’s only a matter of time before Dracadia’s most depraved secret is resurrected.
The Twisted series by Ana Huang (Twisted Love, Twisted Games, Twisted Hate, Twisted Lies)
He has a heart of ice . . . but for her, he’d burn the world.
Alex Volkov is a devil blessed with the face of an angel and cursed with a past he can’t escape.
Driven by a tragedy that has haunted him for most of his life, his ruthless pursuits for success and vengeance leave little room for matters of the heart.
But when he’s forced to look after his best friend’s sister, he starts to feel something in his chest:
A crack.
A melt.
A fire that could end his world as he knew it.
***
Ava Chen is a free spirit trapped by nightmares of a childhood she can’t remember.
But despite her broken past, she’s never stopped seeing the beauty in the world . . . including the heart beneath the icy exterior of a man she shouldn’t want.
Her brother’s best friend.
Her neighbor.
Her savior and her downfall.
Theirs is a love that was never supposed to happen – but when it does, it unleashes secrets that could destroy them both . . . and everything they hold dear.
Smoke Show by B. Perkins and Aimee Vance
When the dean of Bishop College in Boston threatened to close Petra Ambrose’s Pre-Revolutionary American History department, she could feel all of her work towards her dream career slipping through her fingers. To her dismay, students weren’t interested in American Puritanical culture and the status of women in their time, not unless it involved trendy witches glamourized in modern society.
In a last hope to save her job, Petra was tasked with finding something new and exciting to draw in more students. Not exactly sure where to start, she headed up the coast to explore sites other than cliche and touristy Salem.
Small-town Maine had her imagining a quaint village straight out of a romance novel on the water. To some extent, she found it, with the quirky, nosy neighbors, but Deadlights Cove was entirely too dingy to be run by its no-nonsense mayor. Plus, everyone in town seemed to be in on some joke at her expense, none more so than the mischievous and overly friendly bartender, Blaze. Far too handsome for his own good, the man had the unfair ability to irritate her more than anyone else ever had while simultaneously setting her heart racing.
With obstacles popping up at every turn, Petra was ready to throw her hands up and go back to the drawing board for a new strategy until she wound up at the center of a murder investigation.
Nothing was as it seemed in Deadlights Cove, and Petra could have just unearthed more than she’d ever imagined. But was discovering the truth about this town worth giving up everything she’d worked so hard for?
My 2024 PopSugar Reading Challenge Progress
In addition to a never-ending TBR list, I’m also tracking books related to the 2024 PopSugar Reading Challenge! The challenge consists of a series of prompts designed to encourage readers to broaden their horizons and read a wider variety of books.
*Some of these titles will be rereads for me, but there’s something about a reread of a good book that feels like visiting and catching up with an old friend.
**Some prompts I haven’t assigned a book to yet.
- A book with the word “leap” in the title — Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make The Leap and Others Don’t by James C. Collins
- A coming-of-age story — The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
- A book about a 24-year-old — Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman
- A book about a writer/author — Chasing the Boogeyman by Richard Chizmar
- A book about K-pop — XOXO by Axie Oh
- A book about pirates — Fable by Adrienne Young
- A book about women’s sports or a female athlete — Cleat Cute by Meryl Wilsner
- A book by a blind or visually impaired author — From Blood & Ash by Jennifer L. Armentrout
- A book by a deaf or hard-of-hearing author — True Biz by Sara Novic
- A book by a self-published author — Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree
- A book from a genre you typically avoid
- A book from an animal’s POV — The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
- A book originally published under a pen name
- A book recommended by a bookseller
- A book recommended by a librarian
- A book set 24 years before you were born
- A book set in a bucket-list travel destination
- A book set in space
- A book set in the future
- A book set in the snow
- A book that came out in a year that ends in ‘24’ — House of Flame & Shadow by Sarah J. Maas
- A book that centers on video games — Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
- A book that features dragons
- A book that takes place over the course of 24 hours
- A book published 24 years ago
- A book that was turned into a musical — Phantom by Greer Rivers
- A book where someone dies in the first chapter — Butcher & Blackbird by Brynne Weaver
- A book where the main character is 42 years old
- A book with a neurodivergent main character
- A book with a one-word title you had to look up in a dictionary — The Hacienda by Isable Cañas
- A book with a title that is a complete sentence
- A book with an enemies-to-lovers plot
- A book with an unreliable narrator
- A book with at least 3 POVs — Order of Scorpions by Ivy Asher
- A book with magical realism
- A book written by an incarcerated or formerly incarcerated person
- A book written during NaNoWriMo
- A cozy fantasy book
- A fiction book by a trans or non-binary author
- A horror book by a BIPOC author
- A memoir that explores queerness
- A nonfiction book about Indigenous people
- A second-chance romance
- An autobiography by a woman in rock’n’roll
- An LGBTQ+ romance novel
Advanced Prompts:
- A book where a character sleeps for more than 24 hours
- A book with 24 letters in the title
- A collection of at least 24 poems
- The 24th book from an author
- A book that starts with the letter ‘X’