January 2018 Wrap-Up & Best of the Bunch

Posted February 3, 2018 by Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction in Best of the Bunch, Monthly Recap / 36 Comments

My Goings On in January:

  • I’ve been working hard on editing my MG project. My goal is to have it done by February 15th because that’s the date I’ll find out if I made it into the writing workshop I applied for (and if I get it, I’ll have to send the book off to them).
  • Teaching! Homeschool co-op classes started back up at the beginning of the month, and they’re keeping me busy. My One Year Adventure Novel kids are writing a chapter a week (they’ll have written 12 chapters total by the end of the semester). They’re finding that writing is harder than they expected, so I’m trying to encourage them to just keep going!
  • Lots of changes with school this month. First off, we visited the local high school for 8th grade orientation and made the decision for my daughter to attend there next year as a freshman. We’re both excited and nervous about this new development! My oldest is no longer attending our homeschool co-op (the story behind that is involved, but I’ll be giving you some version of it soon).
  • I went on a girls’ weekend to Boston and had fun exploring the city (including one bookish destination!)
  • I haven’t been watching much this month, but I have caught up on iZombie and I started watching The Handmaid’s Tale.
  • My oldest started a YouTube Channel for video games. The first three videos are play-throughs of a Switch game called Celeste. If you’re at all interested in Switch games, go check it out!

Features & Discussions:

Top 10 of 2017: Books I’m Looking Forward to in 2018
January 2018 Discussion Challenge Linkup & Giveaway!
2017 End of Year Book Survey
My Writing & Reading Goals for 2018
My Book Outlet Weakness (& Why My Latest Haul Is All Your Fault)
Which Types of Reviews Are Most Effective? Let’s Discuss!
January Monthly Wrap-Up Round-Up Link-Up
It’s Feed Your Fiction Addiction’s 5th Blogoversary Giveaway!

My 2018 Reading Progress:

I’m doing great on my goal of reading less. 🙂 (This graph looks funny so empty!)

January 2018 Reviews

I’m a bit behind on reviews, I still managed to get a decent number posted in January:

  • A Distant Heart by Sonali Dev | Review | Rating: 4.5/5
  • A Bollywood Affair by Sonali Dev | Review | Rating: 3.5/5
  • The Bollywood Bride by Sonali Dev | Review | Rating: 3/5
  • A Change of Heart by Sonali Dev | Review | Rating: 4/5
  • Love, Life, and the List by Kasie West | Review | Rating: 4/5
  • The Young Queens by Kendare Blake | Review | Rating: 4.5/5
  • Seriously Wicked by Tina Connolly | Review | Rating: 4/5

  • The Wolves of Mercy Falls Series by Maggie Stiefvater | Review | Rating: 4.5/5
  • Timekeeper by Tara Sim | Review | Rating: 5/5

  • Chainbreaker by Tara Sim | Review | Rating: 4/5
  • Love, Hate & Other Filters by Samira Ahmed | Review | Rating: 4.5/5
  • Chaos in Kadoma Ward by S.J. Pajonas | Review | Rating: 4/5
  • Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by John Tiffany, Jack Thorne, J.K. Rowling | Review | Rating: 4/5
  • Say You’ll Remember Me by Katie McGarry | Review | Rating: 4.5/5

January Best of the Bunch:

(Best of the Bunch is hosted over at Cocoon of Books. We link up our favorite reads of the month!)

Timekeeper was the clear winner (but Say You’ll Remember Me was also amazing and I adore Stiefvater’s writing, so The Wolves of Mercy Falls Series was also close!).


2018 Reading Challenges/Goals Progress:

Status: 5/31-40 Discussions Posted

Some of these are only kind of/sort of discussions (and I’m not even sure I linked them all up), but I’m counting them for my total. Because I can.

Top 10 of 2017: Books I’m Looking Forward to in 2018
2017 End of Year Book Survey
My Writing & Reading Goals for 2018
My Book Outlet Weakness (& Why My Latest Haul Is All Your Fault)
Which Types of Reviews Are Most Effective? Let’s Discuss!

HOST/SIGN-UP LINK – Feed Your Fiction Addiction & It Starts at Midnight


Status: 15/365 Blogs Commented On

Confession: I keep forgetting about this challenge. Then I’ll remember and go comment on like 6 blogs and then forget again. I think I’ll get better once I’m doing it for longer. I only did half the commenting I should have this month (specifically for the challenge—I’ve done a LOT more commenting than this in January if you count just my friends’ blogs and commenting back). But I still think I can make it up easily.

HOST/SIGN-UP LINK – Read Write Love 28


Status: 20/365 Chapters Read

Again, I got behind (it started when I went to Boston—I was NOT hauling this giant book along with me), but I can catch up!

HOST/SIGN-UP LINK – One Catholic Life


Status: 8 Books Read/5 Reviews Posted

Our team was so close to winning this month. I need to write and post some more reviews!

HOST/SIGN-UP LINK – Novel Knight


Status: 3/61-100 books read (New Release Veteran)

I actually think I may have made this goal too high now that I changed my overall reading goal to only 100 and I’m focusing so much on backlist books. We shall see!

Here’s what applied to the challenge this month:

Chainbreaker by Tara Sim, Love, Hate & Other Filters by Samira Ahmed and Say You’ll Remember Me by Katie McGarry

HOST/SIGN-UP LINK – (un)Conventional Book Views


Status: 3/12 TBR Books Read

Here’s what counted for this challenge from my reviews this month:

Seriously Wicked by Tina Connolly, Chaos in Kadoma Ward by S.J. Pajonas, Dating Down by Stefanie Lyons and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by John Tiffany, Jack Thorne and J.K. Rowling.

HOST/SIGN-UP LINK – Roof Beam Reader


My 2018 Goals Progress:

  • Complete a second edit of my MG novel.Working on this!
  • Attend a writing workshop. We’ll see what happens with the one I applied for.
  • Read more writing craft books/materials. I’m doing okay with this, but not as great as I could be.
  • Finish the first draft of YA novelOn hold until my MG is finished being revised
  • Read one review book for every one that I request/receive. ) I read 10 review books this month and only received 5. That’s great progress!
  • Read more middle grade. I read 2 MG books this month, which isn’t so bad since I only read 13 books.
  • Work out! Um, no. I mean, I did once. Yay me?

Wrap-Up Round-Up!

Don’t forget to link your January wrap-up posts up to the Monthly Wrap-Up Round-Up! And check out the giveaway, which will be posted here on Feed Your Fiction Addiction right around the 7th!

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36 responses to “January 2018 Wrap-Up & Best of the Bunch

  1. I am a little bit jealous over your challenges. I have tried challenges and never remember to do them. Lowe are thinking about doing the discussion challenge though.

  2. Best of luck with your book. I hope you get into the workshop! That is so cool that your students are writing a book. I don’t think I could ever do that. I am not sure how to track the commenting challenge. I go to lots of blogs, and I try to click some from the spreadsheet Nori put out there too. I missed one day. I cannot believe I went a day without commenting, but I had my eye procedure and was stuck in traffic for 90 mins coming back and yada, yada.

    Sam@WLABB recently posted: In a Nutshell Reviews
  3. Damn, you had an amazing reading month, look at all of those books! Not only that, they were rated pretty high so that’s definitely a win for you! I’ve started my year off pretty good and if I keep up my routine, I’ll be officially consistently blogging for a whole month, enough to finally do a wrap-up post . . next month that is lol. Love, Life and the List as well as Love, Hate, and Other filters are definitely on my TBR, I can’t wait to get to those!

  4. Guess this means I have to read Timekeeper, eh? Glad you liked it though, it is one I have been interested in (and the new covers are SO nice). The trip to Boston sounds SO fun, I am glad you enjoyed it. I really hope that you make it into the writing workshop! I didn’t realize you had to apply to such things, but also if they are smart, they’ll accept you 😀 Lots of stuff happening with the kiddos, wow. That is a lot of change, I am glad that it has been working out though. I am going to add Jade’s channel to Lena’s YouTube, she LOVES videos of play throughs! And share whatever you feel okay with whenever you feel okay, you know? And I am here if you need anything at all.

    Are you liking Handmaid’s Tale? I should not even say “like”, because how can you even LIKE it, you just… get consumed by it, I guess? I have not watched iZombie but I always think about it maybe one day. You like it I assume?

    • I don’t think you have to apply for ALL writing workshops, but that’s the way this one works. It’s really in-depth where they’ll review your full manuscript ahead of time and then work with you on it throughout the workshop, so I’m really hoping I get in. I’ve been working on editing based on the feedback I got from the editor from Penguin, and I feel like I have a good handle on things, but I’ve made a good number of changes and I’d really like some feedback on this second draft now. I’m hoping at some point to find a critique group or something, but that hasn’t happened at this point. We shall see!

      I hope Lena enjoys Jade’s channel! And thanks for being there for me—you were honestly a saving grace for me when I was freaking out. 🙂

      Oh, and I totally love iZombie. It’s fun and cheesy in all the best ways. I haven’t watched all of The Handmaid’s Tale—it’s intense, but I do like it. I think I plan to keep watching, but I need to mentally prepare myself before I turn it on.

  5. Sounds like January was an overall good month! I hope you get accepted into that writing workshop. That would be a great thing for you and your book!

  6. Jen

    Wishing you lots of luck for finishing your editing project by February 15th! You can do it!! And I have no clue how I missed your reviews by Sonali Dev *gives Bloglovin a shady look*, she’s coming to RT so I need to check out her books. *runs off to read your reviews*

    Jen recently posted: Monthly Wrap-Up – January
  7. I feel so behind on your updates (I didn’t know you’d applied for a workshop). Fingers crossed you manage to get the book ready in time. I’m sure you will I know you’ve been working on it for a while. I’m surprised to hear about the school changes but hopefully, it’ll all work out for the best. Change can be good.

    Have a good February.

    Becky @ A Fool's Ingenuity recently posted: The Duchess Deal // Tessa Dare Proves Her Books Only Get Better
    • Thanks so much! I finally finished my edits this week (well, this round—I have a feeling there will be many more). I realized I won’t find out about the workshop until NEXT week, but it’s good that this pushed me to finish the editing. (I need a little extra push sometimes.)

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