Most Anticipated Books Releasing in the First Half of 2025

My Most Anticipated Books Releasing in the First Half of 2025

1) Say You’ll Remember Me

2) Deep End

3) Fan Service

4) Wild Side

5) First Time Caller

6) The Love Lyric

7) Shadow's Heart

8) The Listeners 

9) Sunrise On The Reaping 

10) Book Boyfriend

Tweet

Waiting on Wednesday (39)

For this Waiting on Wednesday, I picked Deep End by Ali Hazelwood.

Release Date: February 4, 2025

Book Summary:

“Scarlett Vandermeer is swimming upstream. A Junior at Stanford and a student-athlete who specializes in platform diving, Scarlett prefers to keep her head down, concentrating on getting into med school and on recovering from the injury that almost ended her career. She has no time for relationships—at least, that’s what she tells herself.

 
Swim captain, world champion, all-around aquatics golden boy, Lukas Blomqvist thrives on discipline. It’s how he wins gold medals and breaks records: complete focus, with every stroke. On the surface, Lukas and Scarlett have nothing in common. Until a well-guarded secret slips out, and everything changes.
 
So they start an arrangement. And as the pressure leading to the Olympics heats up, so does their relationship. It was supposed to be just a temporary, mutually satisfying fling. But when staying away from Lukas becomes impossible, Scarlett realizes that her heart might be treading into dangerous water...”

My Thoughts: 

I was genuinely surprised to learn that Ali Hazelwood, known for her nerdy STEM romances, is releasing a college-era sports romance. While a paranormal romance and a video game-centered romance seemed like natural progressions of her geeky themes, a sports romance feels like a new direction for her. Having enjoyed sports romances like The Wall of Winnipeg, I’m curious to see where Hazelwood takes her writing next. It’s clear she’s not afraid to branch out and won’t be typecast as only writing nerdy characters.

Tweet

Waiting on Wednesday (37) Two Can Play by Ali Hazelwood

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme originally created by Jill at Breaking the Spine and now hosted by Tressa at Wishful Endings under the heading “Can’t Wait Wednesday” where bloggers share books they're excited for, that have yet to be released. I’m sticking with the original name “Waiting On Wednesday” because I like continuity.

For this Waiting on Wednesday, I picked Two Can Play by Ali Hazelwood.

Release Date: October 1, 2024 by Spotify

Book Summary: "Viola Bowen has the chance of a lifetime: to design a video game based on her all-time favorite book series. The only problem? Her co-lead is Jesse F-ing Andrews, a.k.a. her arch-nemesis. Jesse has made it abundantly clear over the years that he wants nothing to do with her–and Viola has no idea why.

When their bosses insist a wintery retreat is the perfect team-building exercise, Viola can’t think of anything worse. Being freezing cold in a remote mountain lodge knowing Jesse is right next door? No, thank you.

But as the snow piles on, Viola discovers there’s more to Jesse than she knew, and heat builds in more ways than one."

My Thoughts: Ok, so although I am fairly burned out on the enemies-to-lovers trope right now...being that I am an enormous nerd, a romance involving video games, especially video game developers/designers would be an automatic TBR pile add for me. Having Ali Hazelwood write such a novel, I am sure that the novel will contain a relatable heroine, smoking hot nerd hero, and lots of witty and/or snarky banter that will make me laugh out loud, and stay up way too late.

Tweet

Review: Bride by Ali Hazelwood

 

Bride by Ali Hazelwood

My Rating: 4 out 5

Review: 

Like any longtime vampire and werewolf romance fan (shoutout to the good old ‘90s Buffy days), I was immediately excited when I learned that Ali Hazelwood was releasing her first paranormal romance novel. I readily admit that I’ve been a fan since her Reylo fanfic days (yes, I’m a terrible person 24/7). I found her first novel, The Love Hypothesis, very refreshing because of my favorite fake relationship trope, the fun grumpy-sunshine moments, and the STEM heroine. As a romance fan, sometimes you have to take the good with the bad… every now and then, you find heroines who are too stupid to live—characters I don’t vicariously want to be. However, Olive from The Love Hypothesis was both smart and sweet. Having relatives with science backgrounds, I knew Hazelwood either personally had a biology background or did great research, allowing me to vicariously explore the path not taken, as I almost committed to being a biology major at one point. It was a fun, romantic adventure. With Bride, I felt I was in for a similar mental exploration and real-life escape.

The synopsis reads:

“Misery Lark, the only daughter of the most powerful Vampyre councilman of the Southwest, is an outcast—again. Her days of living in anonymity among the Humans are over: she has been called upon to uphold a historic peacekeeping alliance between the Vampyres and their mortal enemies, the Weres, and she sees little choice but to surrender herself in the exchange—again...

Weres are ruthless and unpredictable, and their Alpha, Lowe Moreland, is no exception. He rules his pack with absolute authority, but not without justice. And, unlike the Vampyre Council, not without feeling. It’s clear from the way he tracks Misery’s every movement that he doesn’t trust her. If only he knew how right he was….

Because Misery has her own reasons to agree to this marriage of convenience, reasons that have nothing to do with politics or alliances, and everything to do with the only thing she's ever cared about. And she is willing to do whatever it takes to get back what’s hers, even if it means a life alone in Were territory…alone with the wolf.”


In summary, Misery fits the willing heroine archetype. She agrees to the ultra-strange arranged marriage to werewolf pack leader Lowe Moreland in order to investigate her best friend’s mysterious disappearance. To Hazelwood’s credit, I had a difficult time predicting the ending, and at times, I even assumed Misery’s friend had been murdered, turning the plot into a murder mystery. I liked Lowe as a hero—Hazelwood did a good job developing him as the reliable, trustworthy, and wise big brother to the members of his pack. I didn’t particularly like Misery, though I didn’t hate her either. Sometimes her language was just too much, to the point of annoyance, and a few times it happened in front of a small child. As a mom, I felt like, come on, let a character call her out on this already. I’m pretty sure Hazelwood and the beta readers for this weren’t moms.

Ultimately, Hazelwood created a sweet connection between Misery and Lowe. However, the spicy scenes were a bit weird. Without going into too much detail, there were some unique werewolf anatomy issues, which was a risky choice. I bet it turned some people off from her work.

All in all, I’m actually surprised that Bride is a standalone novel. Not to spoil anything, but there were plenty of interesting supporting characters who could star in sequels titled Groom, Best Man, Maid of Honor, etc.
Tweet