Posts in Reviews
15 Favorite Fantasy Reads 2025
15 Favorite Fantasy Reads 2025

The last days of 2025 have arrived, and it has been a beautiful and busy year! I’ll be back in a bit to talk about some of the highlights and lessons of 2025, but today is the day we reserve to talk all about READING. Specifically, my reading. Even more specifically, my Fifteen Favorite Fantasy Reads of 2025. AKA Jenelle realizes she didn’t write any book reviews this year (again!) and now has to hope she can remember what she liked about all the books she gave 4-and-5-stars to!

Now, in the past, I’ve tried to have some semblance of rules and regulations over this blog post, and I’ve never stuck to those rules very well… so this year, the only rule is that any book on this list has to have been NEW TO ME.

Yup. 

Get ready for chaos.

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ReviewsJenelle Schmidt Comments
A Fond Farewell
A Fond Farewell

I don’t remember exactly when we started watching Top Gear. It was somewhere between 2008 and 2011, I know that much. I also know that our dear friends, Meg and Jason, were the ones who first brought it to our attention. When they asked us if we watched the show, my first thought was, “A show about cars? Boring!”

But we like our friends rather a lot, and we knew they liked a lot of the same things as we did, and so we decided to watch an episode, if only so we could say we had given it a shot.

I did not expect to enjoy it.

I definitely never expected to fall in love.

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Reviews, Television Shows, PersonalJenelle Schmidt Comments
Fifteen Favorite Fantasy Reads 2024
Fifteen Favorite Fantasy Reads 2024

It’s time to reveal my fifteen favorite fantasy reads of the past year!

This is always one of my favorite blog posts of the year… even though it’s usually the toughest one to write.

How does one really “rank” favorite reads? So many of these books were my all-time favorite as I was reading them. And that’s such a wonderful feeling. Like that moment when you realize you’ve just met a kindred spirit. Or when you quote a movie and someone replies with the next line from that same movie.

That’s what reading a new favorite book is.

And that’s what each of these books was like for me.

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Reviews, Book ReviewsJenelle Schmidt Comments
Fifteen Favorite Fantasy Reads 2023
Fifteen Favorite Fantasy Reads 2023

It’s time for me to reveal my Fifteen Favorite Fantasy reads of the past year!

How is it the end of the year already? How is 2023 already over? I’m not ready!

But I’m also excited, because this is honestly one of my favorite posts to write every year.

It’s so fun to take a minute at the end of the year and peruse over what books I read, reminiscing about which ones I really enjoyed. It’s also always highly entertaining to me to see which books I meant to read versus which books I actually read.

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Book Reviews, Fantasy and Sci-Fi, ReviewsJenelle Schmidt Comments
The Shift: Movie Review
The Shift: Movie Review

Coming out of hiatus briefly because Derek and I went to see The Shift the other night and I feel like I need to talk about it!

It’s been a while since I did a movie review.

Honestly, it’s been a while since I saw anything worth reviewing. Partially because I haven’t been watching much worth talking about, partially because I haven’t been watching much in general, and partially just because the movie industry doesn’t seem capable of making much in the way of “good” lately.

However, The Shift was a notable exception to all of the above.

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Movie Reviews, ReviewsJenelle Schmidt Comment