Hello and the warmest of welcomes to damppebbles and to the first #CaseClosed post of 2025 (if previous attempts are anything to go by, it may also be the LAST #CaseClosed post of 2025!). If you’re new to the blog and wondering what #CaseClosed is all about then please allow me to explain. This is my monthly wrap up post where I recap everything that has happened in my reading life (not a lot to be fair!) and everything that has happened on the blog throughout January. What I have learnt over the last few years is that I’m pretty bad at it. In that, I often forget to write a post and then, half-way through the next month, have a bit of a ‘d’oh’ moment. Anyhoo, one of my bookish/blogging aims for 2025 is make sure I post #CaseClosed regularly (monthly would be a good start 🤭). Let’s be honest, if I manage six out of twelve months it’s a vast improvement on previous years!

January saw my blogiversary! Nine years of damppebbles.com, which I think is rather ace. I let the date (14th January) pass without mention but I regret that now and feel I should have done something to celebrate . So let’s have a giveaway! If you would like to win a book (sorry, it’ll have to be from Amazon!) up to the value of £20 then please either comment below, OR tag/DM me on the socials and let me know your favourite book of the year so far (you can tag/message me on X, Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, Mastodon or Threads). I will randomly select one winner and send them one book of their choice up to the value of £20. Giveaway is only open to those with a UK address as I’ll be using amazon.co.uk to ship. Closes on Sunday 9th February 2025 at midday (GMT). The winner will need to provide their postal address which, once I’ve sent their book, I will erase from memory, messages and my amazon address book. Also, very important, please ensure I can contact you if you’re the lucky winner. Good luck y’all!

Right, on to the books! During the month of January I read the grand total of nine books. Two of those books I actually started in December so….officially, I read seven books from beginning to end. That doesn’t sound an awful lot but January has been chocker with non-bookish stuff (a special birthday which took a fair bit of planning [not mine!], work has kept me busy and of course, The Traitors on telly!). Also, I’ll admit it, one of the books I read last month was only 184 pages so does it even count? Yes. Yes it counts 🤨 I’m running with nine books for January 2025. That’s fine.

Those nine books were…

➡️ The Contest by Jeff Macfee
➡️ Honeycomb by S.B. Caves
➡️ Other People’s Houses by Clare Mackintosh
➡️ Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito
➡️ The Surf House by Lucy Clarke
➡️ The Lost Victim by Robert Bryndza
➡️ House of Bone and Rain by Gabino Iglesias
➡️ How to Survive a Horror Movie by Scarlett Dunmore
➡️ Calling WPC Crockford by Ruth D’Alessandro

Watch out for my reviews of all of these books in the coming months. I think The Contest is the first one up on 11th February.

During January I posted the following reviews on the blog. And in a change from the end of last year, they were all brand new, shiny reviews (check out my December 2024 #CaseClosed for more info on that).

🖤 The Broken River by Chris Hammer
🖤 The Puppet Master by Sam Holland
🖤 How to Kill With Kindness by S.R. Masters
🖤 The Last Room on the Left by Leah Konen
🖤 The Bridesmaid by Cate Quinn
🖤 Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix
🖤 Skin Deep by Liz Nugent
🖤 The House that Horror Built by Christina Henry
🖤 Middle of the Night by Riley Sager

There were my ‘going to be occasional – definitely NOT every week’ Top Ten Tuesday posts (which I managed to post on every single Tuesday throughout January — they’re occasional, I tell you!)

⚪ Tuesday 7th January – Most Anticipated Books Releasing in the First Half of 2025
⚪ Tuesday 14th January – Bookish Goals for 2025
⚪ Tuesday 21st January – The Ten Most Recent Additions to My Book Collection
⚪ Tuesday 28th January – New to Me Authors I Discovered in 2024

And finally, I also posted five WWW Wednesday posts where I share my previous read, my current read and what I plan to read next.

🟧 Wednesday 1st January
🟧 Wednesday 8th January
🟧 Wednesday 15th January
🟧 Wednesday 22nd January
🟧 Wednesday 29th January

My most popular review on the blog in January was The Broken River by Chris Hammer. It’s the fourth book in the Buchanan and Lucic detective series and was a firm favourite of mine. My most popular post in January was my Top Ten Tuesday post from 7th January – Most Anticipated Books Releasing in the First Half of 2025. Check it out, see what I’m really looking forward to reading over the coming months.

These ten reviews received the most visits in January (more of a ‘count up’ than a ‘count down’!)…

1️⃣ The Broken River by Chris Hammer
2️⃣ Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix
3️⃣ The Last Room on the Left by Leah Konen
4️⃣ The Castaways by Lucy Clarke (from 2021 and helped by the Channel 5 series based on the book!)
5️⃣ The House that Horror Built by Christina Henry
6️⃣ The Bridesmaid by Cate Quinn
7️⃣ Middle of the Night by Riley Sager
8️⃣ Skin Deep by Liz Nugent
9️⃣ How to Kill With Kindness by S.R. Masters
🔟 What Lies Between Us by John Marrs (from 2022)

Last year when I was full of hope and overly confident in my ability to keep up the #CaseClosed momentum, I spent a small amount of time pondering on what I could add to the feature to make it a little more interesting. I thought about what I find interesting when other bloggers talk about their reading schedules/progress and came up with two things. The first being a Goodreads Challenge check-in. The second, a NetGalley check-in. I don’t know about you but I love to see what’s on everyone else’s NetGalley shelf, and, in particular, what their feedback ratio is 🤭😳

But first I’ll share all of my juicy Goodreads Challenge secrets with you (nothing secret about it really, nor juicy. Anyone who I am friends with on Goodreads can see my challenge and how things are going! 🙈) I decided to take the heat off in 2025 and instead of going for my usual ‘one book every four days’ (roughly 92 books a year) I’ve gone with the more sedate 55 books over 52 weeks which I see as one book a week. It’s not 52 for two reasons 1) I started two books in 2024 and finished them in 2025 so they shouldn’t count towards my total. And 2) one of the books I read was only 184 pages long and I only count full novels (not shorter books or novellas) in my challenge total. Makes some kind of strange sense somewhere! So far this year I have read nine books (as you know!) which puts me five books ahead of schedule (16% of the way there). Secretly I’m hoping to smash through the 55 books and hit my usual target of 92 books with graceful ease. But I can’t say that out loud otherwise I WILL jinx it!

So on to my NetGalley shelf. For anyone not familiar with NG it’s a site where you can request early copies of digital books in exchange for a review. I’ve been on NG since I first started the blog in 2016 and we’ve….had our moments…? I find it very easy to get carried away and request ALL the books, only to realise a few days later that I do actually need to find the time to read ALL of the books! One of my bookish goals for this year is to get my NetGalley shelf down to five ‘to-be-read’ books at a time. Five is the absolute limit. Currently I have eleven books to be read (yes, I had a bit of a splurge yesterday 🙈🙊) with another FOURTEEN needing a review. Yup, I currently have TWENTY-FIVE books on my NetGalley shelf. Oh wow, even I’m surprised by that! Not to worry, I’m working through my reviews as we speak and with a little bit of time off work over the coming weeks, I hope to get that down to a much more reasonable level very soon. On the bright side, my approval rating is still reasonably good at 91%. Hurrah for the bright side!!!

This is what I currently have to read on my NetGalley shelf…

💟 The Midnight King by Tariq Ashkanani
💟 Actually, I’m a Murderer by Terry Deary
💟 The Outback by Sara Ochs
💟 The Grapevine by Kate Kemp
💟 Nobody’s Hero by M.W. Craven
💟 Senseless by Ronald Malfi
💟 The Liar by Louise Jensen
💟 Our Last Wild Days by Anna Bailey
💟 The Penthouse by Catherine Cooper
💟 Believe by S.M. Govett
💟The God of the Woods by Liz Moore

So…*sigh*…the long and short of it is, the number of books on my NG shelf has increased since my last #CaseClosed post. This is not good (it’s great in some respects, not so good in others). I hereby pledge, right here, right now, that the number of books ‘to be read’ on my NG at the end of February will be LESS than eleven and the number of outstanding reviews I will have to write will be LESS than fourteen.

I read nine great books in January and it’s been tough choosing a favourite amongst them. The one that stands out in my memory the most is this month’s Book of the Month…

So without further ado, my book of January 2025 is…

Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito

This is the book I’ve mentioned a couple of times already in this post. It’s the shortest book I read in January with only 184 pages. But it packs one hell of a punch! Dark, sinister and oh so macabre. Victorian Gothic like you’ve never seen it before. If you fancy reading something a bit different, this is it! Look out for my review around 18th February.

So that was January on damppebbles. The longest, darkest, dreariest month is finally over and Spring is hopefully on the way. Thank goodness for the books, eh? And what corkers they were in January. Here’s hoping February’s choices are just as good!

I hope you have a wonderful February with plenty of free time so you can curl up with a good book (or ten!). And don’t forget to enter my blogiversary giveaway. You never know, you may win and end up with a book from your wish list that you weren’t expecting. What a way to make February extra spesh, right? 🩷

P.S. If you’re looking for your next read then check out the hashtag #fivestarflashback on Twitter / X. I’ve been re-sharing all of my old reviews from the dawn of time itself (or 2016 if you prefer). It’s been so much fun digging in the DP archives! There are around roughly five reviews posted a day so lots of lovely book suggestions if you’re in need of inspiration.