February Book Wrap-up 2025

February Stats

Number of books read: 4

Number of rereads: 0

Number of physical books: 1

Number of ebooks: 2

Number of audiobooks: 1

Number of ARCS: 3

Number of pages read: 1,962 pages

Average time to finish a book : 6 days

Average rating : 3.31

Summary

Emily Walker hates having her carefully crafted world disrupted by anyone, most of all her legendary nemesis, Jack Bennett. He’s the opposite of the wonderful heroes she dreams up in her double life as a romance writer, which is why Emily was perfectly happy when Jack left Rome, Kentucky, mid-school year, with his fiancée. The last thing Emily saw coming was Jack’s return at the start of the summer after calling off the wedding and ending his relationship, but he’s here to stay—as her colleague and her neighbor.

Jackson Bennett is glad to be back, eager to renovate his house and work on the next mystery novel under his bestselling pen name. But when he realizes he’s now neighbors with the one woman who has always pushed his buttons, he discovers something he’s even more excited for—thwarting Emily and her petty plans to sabotage his return.

With their chemistry-fueled animosity at an all-time high, Emily accidentally sends an email to their school’s principal that could reveal her secret literary side hustle. She needs to steal back her manuscript, and Jack—she hates to admit—is just the man to help her. Surprisingly, Jack agrees. Will their unlikely alliance put an end to their rivalry? Or could it lead to a steamy plot twist they never saw coming?

Summary

Can you lose something that was never really yours in the first place?

When one wrong choice lands him in hot water, Josh Davis has no choice but to make a deal with the Devil. By signing the dotted line, he’ll never have to worry about being implicated in what happened that night.

Elizabeth Cain lost her parents two months before her sixteenth birthday. Per their will, to gain her full inheritance and attend the school of her dreams, she must first be married. When her adoptive mother approaches her with a solution to all of their problems, it’s an offer Elizabeth can’t refuse, even if she wants to. By agreeing to the arranged marriage, Josh and Elizabeth are thrust into a life much different than the ones they imagined.

Over the course of the next decade, they play their parts, make their required public appearances, and successfully fool everyone into thinking they’re madly in love… But not even the perfect ruse can put time on their side. With the terms of their contract coming to an end, Josh and Elizabeth are faced with deciding whether they were meant to stay together or end things once and for all. Elizabeth wants out, but Josh isn’t sure he’s ready to let go. When she invokes the Last Hoorah Clause of their contract, Josh has no choice but to join her on a weekend trip with her friends in Palm Valley—and maybe find a way to keep the woman he never expected to want in the first place.

Summary

If the covers of every romance book ever published hadn’t convinced librarian Evangeline Kelly that she isn’t heroine material, her fiancé calling off their wedding when she lost her hair to alopecia did. But what’s a girl head over heels for love to do when her feelings are unrequited? Matchmake, that’s what. Armed with library patrons’ check-out histories, she’s determined to make at least one love connection—even if it’s not her own.

Tattoo artist Tai Davis is used to people judging him with a single glance, so it doesn’t surprise him when the town’s quirky new librarian does the same thing and believes his bad-boy reputation without giving him a chance. He can’t help being intrigued by her, though, so when he discovers Evangeline’s secret matchmaking scheme, he’s not above striking a bargain with her. She just has to agree to one date with him for every time she uses his hometown knowledge to set up library patrons on a romantic rendezvous. The deal is made, but in the process, they both might learn you can’t judge a book—or each other—by the cover.

Summary

She’s written dozens of smash hit novels as a ghostwriter. Too bad no one knows it.

Aspiring author Bryony Page attends her first writers conference bursting with optimism and ready to sell her manuscript with long-shot dreams of raising awareness for The Bridge, her grandmother’s financially-struggling organization where she teaches ESL full-time. But after a disastrous pitching session, she stumbles into correcting another author’s work in a last-ditch attempt to make a good impression with the agent. And she, as it turns out, is spot on.

No one is more surprised than Bryony when the agent offers her the opportunity to be a ghostwriter for Amelia Benedict, popular rom-com novelist. Bryony agrees on one she’ll write books for this vain, demanding woman just as long as Jack Sterling, literary agent of the legendary Foundry Literary Agency, works to sell her own book too.

What nobody predicted, however, was that Bryony’s books would turn Amelia Benedict into the

Amelia Benedict, household name and bestselling author with millions of copies sold around the world.

And just like that, the Foundry Agency can’t let her go.

But on a personal note, Jack is realizing he can’t either.