#52BooksIn2016 | February Reads and Faves

We’re still going strong with our reading challenge.  You can check out our January update here.  We finished out February strong having read a total of 54 books.  That’s an average of two books a day.  Keep scrolling to see all the books we read in February, find out which ones were our favorites and what we’re knocking off our TBR (To Be Read) list this month.

The Honest Life by Jessica Alba

Jessica Alba is the real MVP when it comes to breaking down how to create a naturally healthy lifestyle for yourself and your family.  A lot of times people get turned off from trying to live healthy because it seems so complicated, but it doesn’t have to be.  Also, living naturally looks different for everyone and every family.  What I loved was that this book was filled not only with helpful tips, but recipes, lists, an appendix of resources and more.  If you’re interested in improving your family’s healthy lifestyle, I highly recommend reading this book and then going from there.

 Bad Kittly Meets the Baby by Nick Bruel

Moo is hooked on the Bad Kitty series.  I can’t even remember how she got hooked on it.  I think my niece let her read one of her Bad Kitty books and the rest is history.  Now she’s kind of gotten me hooked on them.  When I say that I haven’t laughed so hard reading a children’s book before, I literally laughed until I cried.  Kitty is a hot mess, but in a kid-friendly/hilarious way.

Kitty is a handful and when her family decides to adopt a baby, she is not having it.  I think Moo really loved this book because being the older sibling she could relate to Kitty feeling threatened by Baby’s presence.  No one likes to feel like they’re being replaced whether it’s kids or cats for that matter.

 Thomas & Friends: The Adventure Begins

It’s no shocker that JJ’s favorite book was The Adventure Begins from the Thomas & Friends series.  He’s been obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine for years now and show no sign of losing interest.  He had never seen or heard the story of how Thomas came to be Sir Topham Hatt’s number one really useful engine before and loved it.  We learned that Thomas actually used to be a green engine stenciled with yellow lettering, but was painted blue because it was one of Sir Topham Hatt’s favorite colors.

In addition to being beautifully illustrated this book comes with a poster that your Thomas lover can hang on his or her wall and boarding tickets so that they can play train.  It definitely worth it to order the paperback copy instead of an ereader version because obviously you won’t get the poster or tickets with that version. 

The first week of March is already under our belt and we’ve been chugging right along still and continuing to read daily as a family as well as individually.  Here’s a sneak peek at some of the books we’ll be reading throughout the month.

 Overload: How to Unplug, Unwind, and Unleash Yourself From The Pressure of Stress by Joyce Myer

Joyce Meyer is another minister that I grew up listening to as a kid and I feel in love with her tell it like it is preaching approach.  She’s very transparent and has been honest about her Christian journey, sharing both good and bad moments.  You don’t find too many ministers who will go into detail about their pasts like Joyce Meyer has and will.  I already own a few of her books and have even gifted her books to family members before.  I was super excited when FaithWords reached out to me and asked if I’d like to check out her new book.

Honestly, their offer came at the right time because unleashing myself from the many stresses in my life is definitely something that I need to work on right now.  My hope is that after reading this book I will come away with some tips and tricks on how to better leave my worries and stresses at the alter so that they don’t hinder with my faith/relationship with God as well as tips that I can put into place to be more present with my loved ones.

Disney Frozen fans don’t have to wait until the Frozen 2 release to find out what Anna, Elsa and the lovable Olaf have been up since their big screen debut.  Your Frozen lover can follow Anna, Elsa and Olaf as they go adventures in this easy to read and magical book series.  

From Princess Anna teaching Queen Elsa the ropes of Arendelle to rescuing a summer queen in a distant land this series sounds like it’s going to be a blast to read.  We have all 8 books and Moo’s already started on reading All Hail the Queen.  I’m going to be honest and admit that I’m quite the Frozen myself!  I’ve been struggling hard to not read ahead in this series since we’re doing a mother-daughter read along, but we’ll see what happens.

Growing up my favorite genre to read were mysteries.  The only issue was that there were little to no mysteries with characters of color.  So my mom got me started with the Nancy Drew series.  I’ve read a few of the old and new Nancy Drew books to Moo and like me she’s noticed that none of the characters are brown skinned.  I did a little research and found out about the Clubhouse Mysteries series from Sharon Draper.

I can’t wait to start reading these Moo.  I wish this series had been around in the late 80s and the 90s when I was a kid because it would have been nice to read about and see more characters that looked like me, but it’s never to late to catch up on these now that I know about them.  These books are fairly short and can each be read in a day.


Kimani Romance

 Aside from mysteries, self-help and Christian books, I do enjoy reading romance novels.  I especially make it my business to stay up to date on all of the Kimani Romances from Harlequin because African Americans are greatly underrepresented in the world of fictional romance.  I’m actually glad that Harlequin saw this void and decided to create Kimani imprint to not only bring forth more African American love stories, but to also give Black writers a way to get their stories in front of a wider audience.  My mom being a minister only purchased Harlequin romances because they were PG or PG-13 at most back in the day.  So it makes sense that I have not only become a few Harlequin lover, but also a Harlequin book reviewer.

This month I’m reading and reviewing, Falling for Autumn by Sherelle Green.  Scheduled for an April 1st release, this is the first book of Sherelle Green’s that I’m reading.  I’m only a few pages in on Ajay and Autumn’s love story, but I’m liking it so far.  I can’t wait to check out the rest of the books in Green’s Bare Sophistication series.

Also this month I received an advance review copy of His Love Lesson by Nicki Night.  This is book two in her Barrington Brothers series and will be released this May, but is currently available for pre-order.  Like Green, this will be my first time reading Nicki Night.  I haven’t started on this book yet, but it’s set in one of my favorite places- New York!  This story also involves a snowstorm and you guys know how much I love snow! I’m really looking forward to reading this book and continuing to support other authors of color.

That’s it for our March TBR/Currently Reading List.  Since we’re reading more chapter books this month, I’m not sure if we’ll read 52 books this month, but I think we’ll be pretty close.  Having also read 54 books last month, we’re only 44 books away from reaching our family reading goal of 150 books for Dani’s 52 Books Reading Challenge.  I’m thinking that I might have to up our goal to 200 or maybe even 300 since we’ll being doing our own 100 books reading challenge for the 100 days of summer.