🥳New Year, New Books

Part 2

As the New Year is almost here, I love the opportunity for fresh beginnings.

While I don't typically make resolutions, I enjoy setting intentions and choosing a word for the year. This year, my chosen word is Growth. I'm eager to see growth in both my personal and professional life in 2025. While I know that it can be challenging, it also brings exciting new experiences.

In line with the idea of growth, I've put together a selection of five books featuring characters who have their own journeys of personal growth. I would love to hear your thoughts—whether you've read them or plan to add them to your reading list.

Before we get into the list, I have a question for you.

I often get asked what it is I do as an author assistant. I've been considering sharing occasional bits about my life as an author assistant and COO of

The Austen Pathway

.

To see if you’re interested, I've set up a poll and would appreciate your feedback. Thank you!🥰

Now, on to the books!

Celia Martinez and Brian Young have been best friends since high school and now share an apartment together in Dallas. They are opposites in every way. She’s the extrovert to his introvert, the sunshine to his grumpy, the interior designing fashionista to his online gamer. But he’s been there, quietly cheering her on in every event the highly competitive Celia has entered them into over the years.

Little does Celia know that Brian has harbored a crush on her for more than a decade–and there is no way that Celia can find out. It would ruin their friendship and living situation forever.

But when their friend Katie shows up and begs the two of them to join her team for a city-wide, New Year’s Eve race in their Louisiana hometown, Celia is ready to jump in feet first. After all, the prize is $10,000 and Celia is desperate to use the money to help her sister. Brian wants nothing to do with the race–but he can’t say no to Celia.

Soon Brian and Celia join Katie and her fiancé, Jacob, for the night time competition. Following the clues, they will sing, dance, race, draw, and strategize their way to the finish line. They have built the perfect team, but they didn’t count on Celia’s high school rival showing up and trying to sabotage their sprint to the finish line.

The more they work together, the more Brian and Celia have to confront their deeply buried, smoldering attraction to one another. Can their team overcome the obstacles and odds and start the New Year off with a financial bang?

Check out the book HERE or read in KU.

It’s New Year’s Eve 1982, and Oona Lockhart has her whole life before her. At the stroke of midnight she will turn nineteen, and the year ahead promises to be one of consequence. Should she go to London to study economics, or remain at home in Brooklyn to pursue her passion for music and be with her boyfriend? As the countdown to the New Year begins, Oona faints and awakens thirty-two years in the future in her fifty-one-year-old body. Greeted by a friendly stranger in a beautiful house she’s told is her own, Oona learns that with each passing year she will leap to another age at random. And so begins Oona Out of Order...

Hopping through decades, pop culture fads, and much-needed stock tips, Oona is still a young woman on the inside but ever changing on the outside. Who will she be next year? Philanthropist? Club Kid? World traveler? Wife to a man she’s never met? Surprising, magical, and heart-wrenching, Margarita Montimore has crafted an unforgettable story about the burdens of time, the endurance of love, and the power of family.

As of posting this, the hardcover is only $5.20 on Amazon or shop it Bookshop.org

This book is a spicy one and contains spicy content (Hold onto your hats!)

When these two academics meet on New Year’s Eve and become quiz companions, the cliché seems perfect. Fireworks and sparks fly, but the night ends, and after a misunderstanding that seemed to put the fire out well and truly, will that spark reignite when they meet again?

Lista is a PhD student, studying mechanical engineering. Despite being surrounded by her friendship group consisting of mainly men, romance is far from view. With her physical differences and adverse experiences, she doubts love could be on the horizon anyway.
That is until she encounters a certain tall, dark and intelligent man.

Quin is a biomechanics engineering lecturer who is scared of putting a foot wrong at work after issues with his students. Steering clear of relationships and socialising much in general, his plans go down the drain when he meets a breathtakingly smart woman.
Little does he know how implicating this meeting could be for him.

Check out the book HERE or read in KU.

In this unforgettable story full of charm, wit—and just a bit of magic—a woman down on her luck is given a second chance at fixing her life and trying one year all over again. Perfect for readers of Josie Silver and Rebecca Serle.

Sadie Thatcher’s life has fallen apart in spectacular fashion. In one fell swoop, she managed to lose her job, her apartment, and her boyfriend—all thanks to her big mouth. So when a fortune teller offers her one wish, Sadie jumps at the chance to redo her awful year. Deep down, she doesn’t believe magic will fix her life, but taking a leap of faith, Sadie makes her wish, opens her eyes, and . . . nothing has changed . And then, in perhaps her dumbest move yet, she kisses her brother’s best friend, Jacob.

When Sadie wakes up the next morning, she’s in her former apartment with her former boyfriend, and her former boss is expecting her at work. Checking the date, she realizes it's January 1 . . . of last year . As Sadie navigates her second-chance year, she begins to see the red flags she missed in her relationship and in her career. Plus, she keeps running into Jacob, and she can’t stop thinking about their kiss . . . the one he has no idea ever happened. Suddenly, Sadie begins to wonder if her only mistake was wishing for a second chance.

Daphne Bell believes the universe has a plan for her. Every time she meets a new man, she receives a slip of paper with his name and a number on it—the exact amount of time they will be together. The papers told her she’d spend three days with Martin in Paris; five weeks with Noah in San Francisco; and three months with Hugo, her ex-boyfriend turned best friend. Daphne has been receiving the numbered papers for over twenty years, always wondering when there might be one without an expiration. Finally, the night of a blind date at her favorite Los Angeles restaurant, there’s only a name: Jake.

Check out the book HERE or read in KU or shop it on Bookshop.org

A man consumed by a meaningless life is going to do something he’s never considered doing before. He’s going to enjoy the day…

For hyper-particular publishing heir Jonathan Grief, the day starts like any other—with a strict morning fitness regimen that’ll keep his divorced, easily irritated, cynical, forty-two-year-old self in absolutely flawless physical condition. But all it takes to put a crimp in his routine is one small annoyance. Someone has left a leather-bound day planner with the handwritten title Your Perfect Year in his spot on his mountain bike at his fitness course!

Determined to discover its owner, Jonathan opens the calendar to find that someone known only as “H.” has filled it in with suggestions, tasks, and affirmative actions for each day. The more he devotes himself to locating the elusive H., the deeper Jonathan is drawn into someone else’s rich and generous narrative—and into an attitude adjustment he desperately needs.

He may have ended up with a perfect year by accident, but it seems fate has set Jonathan on a path toward healing, feeling, and maybe even loving again…if only he can meet the stranger who’s changing his life one day at a time.

Check out the book HERE or read in KU or shop it on Bookshop.org

Daphne Bell believes the universe has a plan for her. Every time she meets a new man, she receives a slip of paper with his name and a number on it—the exact amount of time they will be together. The papers told her she’d spend three days with Martin in Paris; five weeks with Noah in San Francisco; and three months with Hugo, her ex-boyfriend turned best friend. Daphne has been receiving the numbered papers for over twenty years, always wondering when there might be one without an expiration. Finally, the night of a blind date at her favorite Los Angeles restaurant, there’s only a name: Jake.

But as Jake and Daphne’s story unfolds, Daphne finds herself doubting the paper’s prediction, and wrestling with what it means to be both committed and truthful. Because Daphne knows things Jake doesn’t, information that—if he found out—would break his heart.

Check out the book HERE shop it on Bookshop.org or grab it from the library like I plan to do!

Have you check out The Tea Shop yet?❤️☕✨

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