I'm Not Oprah, but here are my favorite things of 2022 + ARC giveaway

Hi, everyone! Happy December! We’ve made it to the end of the year. I don’t know about y’all, but December always feels like the Friday of the year. I’m just pulling myself to the finish line and hoping for the best lol.

I started my newsletter one year ago! I’m grateful that, given the many newsletter options available to you, you’ve subscribed here and let me knock on your inbox doors every other month. This will be my last newsletter of 2022, and per tradition (or at least a tradition that I’m planning to keep), I’m dedicating this newsletter to my favorite shows and books of the year. I’m also doing an ARC giveaway for The Neighbor Favor (instructions on how to enter will be at the end of the newsletter).

Some quick housekeeping: The Neighbor Favor pubs in a little over two months! It received a starred review in Publishers Weekly, was named a Publishers Weekly Top Ten most anticipated romance novel of 2023, and I announced the pre-order campaign a couple weeks ago with a very cute, exclusive art print. You can preorder from any retailer and get swag but signed copies will be available from my local indie, Inkwood Books. Pre-orders are very helpful to authors because they let our publishers and bookstores know that there is a demand for our work. If you pre-order The Neighbor Favor, not only will I love you forever, I also think you will have a lot of fun reading it! Take it from my mom who is halfway through the book and said that it’s my best one yet. :) Also! I want to send a BIG thank you to everyone who read, boosted, posted about Zyla & Kai this year. Z&K is such a personal and special book to me, and I’m so appreciative of everyone who gave it a chance and loved it as much as I do.

In my October newsletter, I wrote about how I was busy drafting book 5 and hoped to finish by the end of the year. Friends, I have done it! I finished the draft last month and I’ve spent the last several weeks doing a very deep self edit. This is my usual process before sending to my editor. I like to get my vision in place as firmly as possible before sharing. Book 5 = adult romance number 2. There’s not really much I’m allowed to say yet, but I can share that this one will be about Lily’s (main character from The Neighbor Favor) older sister, Violet. The first draft is always the most difficult part of the process for me and I’m happy it’s over lol. Like many people, I got my Spotify Wrapped stats, and my results were severely skewed by the amount of times I listened to the Pride & Prejudice 2005 soundtrack while writing. I listened to “The Secret Life of Daydreams” over 250 times. I’m not sure whether I should feel embarrassed or impressed with myself.

In terms of my favorite television shows, I only had a few this year. I think maybe I watched less television or I’m having a massive brain fart as I write this newsletter. Either way, I know for sure that I enjoyed Pachinko, season 2 of Starstruck, The Bear, Heartstopper, Abbott Elementary, season 2 of The White Lotus (my advice is to skip season 1 and go right to season 2), Firefly Lane, and last but absolutely not least, Crash Landing on You. Not only is CLOU the best show I watched this year (I’m aware it came out in 2019), it’s one of the best shows I’ve watched EVER. If you haven’t heard of it before, it’s a K-drama about a South Korean heiress and business mogul who, through a hang gliding accident, lands in North Korean territory and attempts to escape with the help of a North Korean soldier and of course they fall in love!!! It is fantastic!! It made me laugh!! It made me cry!! It was all I could talk about for WEEKS!!! Gah. I wish I could erase it from my mind just so that I could watch it fresh. And earlier this year the actors got married in real life and they just had a baby! Do yourself a favor and watch this show if you haven’t. Their chemistry is unreal. Also I’m a couple episodes behind on season 2 of The Sex Life of College Girls, but I really like that show, so I’m adding it here as well.

Okay, onto books. As of today (December 14th), I’ve read 41 books this year. Of the 41 books, 27 were romance novels. Over Easter weekend, I read the first seven books in Ruby Dixon’s Ice Planet Barbarians series. Essentially, this is a series about women who are abducted from earth by bad aliens who are planning to sell them, and the women highjack the spaceship and then crash onto a frozen ice planet, where they meet good aliens, who are very attractive, blue barbarians. This series is a FUN time lol. And the books are fairly short. I also did a deep dive into Susan Elizabeth’s Phillips’s Chicago Stars series about men who are affiliated with the fictional Chicago Stars football team (coach, players, agents, etc) and the women they love. If, like me, you tend not to seek out sports romances, never fear! Football plays little to no part in most of these books lol. My favorite was book 2, Heaven, Texas, but from what I can tell, book 3, Nobody’s Baby But Mine is the crowd favorite. I recommend both! Also book 6, This Heart of Mine, has a heroine who writes children’s books. Susan Elizabeth Phillips did a really great guest episode on the Fated Mates podcast, which I recommend as well.

Seven of the books I read this year were YA. I really want to read more YA in 2023. In a previous newsletter, I wrote before about how my day job in publishing required me to read a lot of YA so I tended not to read it in my free time. Now that I don’t have to read YA for work, I’m hoping to get back into reading more of it for fun. The YA books that I did read this year were The Sisters of Reckoning by Charlotte Nicole Davis, One True Loves by Elise Bryant, Nothing Burns as Bright as You by Ashley Woodfolk, Confessions of an Alleged Good Girl by Joya Goffney, Love Radio by Ebony Ladelle, Better Than The Movies by Lynn Painter and Finding Jupiter by Kelis Rowe. I highly recommend them all!

I only have one reading rule and it’s that if I’m not enjoying a book, I allow myself to put it down. So that means I’ve genuinely enjoyed every book I’ve read this year. It’s hard to pick a favorite, but I think I’d have to say my favorite of the year was probably The No-Show by Beth O’Leary. It’s about three women who are all dating the same man; however, there’s more to him and this story than meets the eye. I honestly can’t say much about this book without spoiling it. But I thought it was brilliantly executed, and it stayed on my mind for days afterward. I also read that it’s going to be made into a tv show, so that’s exciting! If you’re into romance/women’s fiction, I definitely recommend this one.

I’m currently reading Jackal by Erin E. Adams, and next I plan to read Pride & Protest by Nikki Payne. I purposely waited a little to read this one because reading a Pride & Prejudice retelling during Christmastime just feels appropriate!

Okay time for The Neighbor Favor ARC giveaway! To enter, comment and tell me 1) your favorite book that you read this year and 2) a book you’re looking forward to reading in 2023. I’ll pick a winner by next Monday, December 19th. US only!

I’m wishing all of you a very happy holiday season and a happy new year!! See you back in your inboxes in 2023! I’ll leave you with this picture of Denzel and Whitney iceskating together in my favorite Christmas movie, The Preacher’s Wife. :)

xo, Kristina