Cozy Book Recommendations! 📚

hi guys it's regan and welcome back to another video today's video is a little festive a little seasonally appropriate but most important it's cozy today i'm going to be recommending some books that would be perfect to read curled up near a fire real or fake depending on your living situation i personally love a fake fire and honestly would be perfect pickups in the lead up to the holiday season or just in winter time in general but without further ado let's go ahead and dive right in and first chat about this video sponsor which is kirkwell books the first book i'm going to chat about serves as the inspiration for this video and that is the certainty of chance by jacqueline middleton i am a huge fan of jaclyn middleton's writing her romances her stories and so i was honestly thrilled to have the opportunity to chat about her newest release that also has a bit of holiday flair just in time for the holiday season but this is an emotional very layered story that obviously has a romantic plot line is a dual perspective story as well which in general is my favorite type of perspective setup when it comes to romances i love being in the heads of both of our main characters and what they're thinking and this follows one of our main characters madeline and she is feeling much more meh than mary at the beginning of the story there is an icelandic volcanic eruption which basically shuts down the european airspace resulting in our main character madeleine being stranded in london right before christmas before this she was on her way to travel to paris to spend time with her sister especially with the upcoming tragic anniversary of her best friend's passing she was really looking to have that familial emotional support madeleine herself has never felt less festive and she's really just focused on now getting through this season unfortunately for her on her cab ride back for hotel the cute cab driver will not stop talking to her about all the incredible festive things that are surrounding them in london cut to our other main character julian who is a sunny optimist and also a former music journalist but now he has basically embraced his love for the city of london and started his own black cab business where he happily ferries around his customers showing off all of his favorite sites around the city but life has also not always been easy for julian after navigating many major life setbacks including the cruel betrayal of his previous fiance julian now is just looking to hopefully find a kind person he can spend the rest of his life with who also shares his love of music and will love his corgi winnie despite being a very unlikely match these two characters kind of come crashing into each other's life and almost seem brought together by fate again this is a closed door romance it definitely has two wonderful characters and we're able to embrace that through that dual perspective this is a beautifully romantic story first and foremost it is set in london during the holiday season and one of our main characters julian loves the holidays and through him we basically get a tour of in my opinion one of the best cities during christmas and it's just absolutely delightful and just romantic music is also a very central plot line within the story as well which i really enjoyed but i do want to call out that this is a very layered narrative obviously grief is a very central element to this plot as well she has to confront so many of these emotions this i would also say is great for fans of one day in december does not have a pesky love triangle which personally i can find to be a little detracting especially in very emotional romance stories if you guys want to learn more about this particular book i'll have a link for you to learn more in my description again big shout out to kirkwell books for sponsoring this video i love jacqueline middleton's writing i've read many of her romance stories and this one is a perfect emotional but romantic read to check out this holiday season but let's dive into the other holiday cozy wreath inspired by this incredible new release the first book i have to recommend doesn't necessarily have a central holiday plot line but it does have some snowy landscapes it's also set in london and it's a historical romance so in my opinion it's a must read for this time of year and that is bringing down the duke by evie dunmore this is one of my favorite historical romance stories i just feel like it has it all from the characters to the humor to the steamy scenes and just the overall setting and vibe is so transporting and so fun this is also the first book to a series so if you enjoy evie dunmore's writing you can check out other books that she has released i personally am wanting to read the third book really soon i just love saving these types of books or when i'm traveling or just when i need a bit of a pick-me-up but this book is set in 1879 and follows her main character annabelle is a young and very brilliant woman but she comes from a poor family in the countryside but she was able to secure a spot at a very prestigious university but she achieved this by getting a scholarship but in return for receiving this scholarship she must support the rising women's suffrage movement and part of her job is to actually convince a bunch of rich grumpy men to basically back them and move forward their goals within parliament itself she has been given a particularly difficult target sebastian giroux who is a cold and very calculating man and is the duke of montgomery but one that is very politically powerful so you basically read the story as these two characters go back and forth and slowly you begin to see their attraction for each other grow more and more a large part of this book actually takes place in a remote manner home the overall vibes of the story is just so much fun again i love annabelle as a main character and a lot of these side characters that she becomes friends with along the way are great as well and many of them also get their own book and story but it's just truly a very successful steamy historical fiction romance and it has a lot of wintry landscapes so we see your characters traverse through it's cozy it's warm and it will definitely keep you very entertained the next book i have to recommend is a holiday contemporary rom-com option another really quick read and definitely has a very central holiday setting and that is in a holidays by christina lauren i read this last holiday season and honestly flew through it it was a lot of fun definitely put a smile on my face and i also really appreciated the uniqueness the groundhog day element to the plot itself but this follows our main character mei and overall she would describe herself as being rather unhappy she's been in love with the same man despite him not knowing her entire life she hates her job and the one thing she's looked forward to every single year her entire life is traveling with her family to a remote cabin in utah where she spends the holiday season with her family as well as another family they're very close with and that family also contains the brother she has been in love with her entire life unfortunately at the beginning of the story the families have decided to part ways with this cabin and they're all spending one final holiday with each other essentially everything goes wrong that she could possibly think of over the course of this one final christmas and on the way back to the airport may sends a plea out to the universe to show her what will make her happy and from there everything goes black and mae herself wakes up again on the airplane heading back to utah where she then begins to live the holiday season over and over and over again basically allowing her to see where her life could go if she makes different decisions along the way again this is a very family-centric fun holiday rom-com story with a lot of pining as well as a kind of friends to lover situation it's really cute it also is still rather steamy and i honestly found it to be very entertaining it is also as i said a super quick reads if you're looking for a great travel book and one that is very christmas inspired this is a great one to pick up and who doesn't love a remote snowy christmas cabin i know i sure do the next few books i have to recommend are more along the lines of having either a really christmassy vibe or just a really good winter setting the first is a winter's promise by christelle dabos which is a why fantasy story i have talked a lot about on my channel but i do feel like it's been a minute this has an absolutely fantastic and a very wintery vibe as well as an opulence that i do feel like meshes well with the holiday season and in the story we follow our main character ophelia and she just wants to live a quiet life running her museum ophelia herself has two very unique gifts one she can touch objects and basically see the history of everyone else who has interacted with that object and two she can travel through mirrors at the beginning of the story though while she has no interest in getting married or really changing anything about her life her family has other plans after basically turning down every eligible bachelor on her home spire which in this world there's basically different cities or structures sort of floating in the sky philly's family has arranged for her to get married to a very powerful individual on a far away spire so in the beginning of the first book she travels there from there she's thrown headfirst in a very dangerous political game she realizes that she's being used as a pawn for some very politically powerful individuals follow ophelia not only as she fights for herself but also kind of fights for her own future i love this book for so many different reasons one i find ophelia to be a really unique heroine it's very very quiet and very very deliberate but just because she's not boisterous does not mean that she's not strong she is unique in her own power and that's something i really appreciate the setting and just the writing of this book is absolutely transporting it's just beautiful it's very very original and how it's written it's actually a story that was originally written in french so all the books in english are obviously translations and i just love the setting so much more about the setting which is why i actually think it's a perfect holiday type of read the new spire that affiliate travels to is known for two things one it is a very very cold and desolate place and two the powers that kind of originate on this fire have to do with illusions so opulence and grand balls and grand costumes are all very much part of this world it kind of reminds me of a fantastical and more intense russian court so if you're kind of looking for a cold but beautiful full of magic and lyrical writing this is a great book to pick up i mean it's called a winter's promise a great book to read while it's cold outside but if you still want something that's a little glittery and a little sinister underneath the surface this is great i promise it is one of the most unique y books that you will read next up is one of my all time favorite middle grade series and also a series i tend to always read during the holiday season that is nevermoor which is the first book to the trials of morgan crowe this series is just so good it's very beloved for a lot of fantastic reasons and it does in each book have a wonderful kind of holiday-centered scene i don't really want to give too much away but in terms of christmas and holiday influence each book definitely has a flare of that and it's just so excellently done and this follows our main character morgan crowe and she is cursed and she's also blamed for any misfortune that happens to her family or anyone in the town that she lives in and she's also supposed to die on her 11th birthday but on the eve of her 11th birthday a very unusual thing happens and that is a man named jupiter north appears and basically sweeps her away to this unknown magical place called nevermoor only is she introduced to all of the workings of this wondrous place but she's also introduced to jupiter north's magical hotel which basically transforms itself every single night to whatever its guests need but morgan also begins to learn not only about the magic but also when the first one begins to partake in trials to become part of a secret society of explorers we basically in the first one follow morgan not only as she makes friends and kind of learns more about the world or participates in these trials throughout this book the trials themselves are absolutely so fun to read this is a very whimsical and magical story but again there is some really great holiday moments throughout this book as well morgan crowe is a main character is delightful she makes so many friends you'll fall in love with as well if you just love fun middle grade stories this is such a great book to pick up during the holiday season it's a quick read and it's just delightful it's beautiful one of my favorite middle grade series out there and one i think you should definitely read during the holiday season the next book i have to recommend is another middle grade option but is a standalone and that is which would by tahereh mafi this book is a fantastic read for the winter season for a variety of reasons one which i'm sure you can tell by the cover is that it's set in a very cold wintry magical place but two it is one of the most charming delightful stories it's all about the warmth of friendship and kind of finding a new lease on life it will melt your heart i promise you it is so so adorable and this follows our main character laylee bailey can barely remember the happier days before her mother's passing which also resulted in her father losing his way from home as well now laylee is alone now laylee is alone in the sole remaining mortuar and the village of which would this particular duty is not only a hard one but it's also incredibly important because laylee's job is to basically prepare the dead for the next step the afterlife unfortunately with this job she's so reliant upon the village's benevolence as they're supposed to pay and provide penance in her service of preparing the dead but unfortunately the village of which wood has lost its way itself and does not help lately as they should at the beginning of the story laylee is overworked and filled with loneliness until two very familiar people kind of show up in her world and from there laylee's world is turned upside down as she rediscovers magic and love and friendship this book is absolutely delightful first and foremost it's set in this whimsical world called witchwood this is a world full of magic and again it's kind of set in this wintery landscape but it's still full of so much life and its own way tehedra mafi's writing is absolutely delightful it's full of all the middle grade whimsy that you would want and again this is a story that also has a lot of heaviness to it as well we follow a young girl who's undertaken a tremendously difficult task also having to grieve the loss of her mother and throughout the story we see her not only kind of gain some of her own life back some of her own magic back but is also able to begin to rely on people again it's just a story that will hit you right in the feels right in the heart and i love it so much i just feel like it's truly the perfect combination of middle grade magic but also having such wonderful characters and just a story arc that you will fall head first into not to mention again the setting is very holiday winter vibes i mean we have frozen roses on the cover what more could you want speaking of books that will melt your heart the next book i have to recommend doesn't necessarily have a direct like seasonal attachment but i do feel like in terms of the spirit of the story and just how heartwarming it is it's a really lovely story to pick up during this time of year and that is under the whispering door by tj clune this was a recent read for me and i honestly enjoyed it very much from beginning to end and i definitely shed a tier or two so if you're looking for something with a bit of an emotional element to it this is a great book to pick up but this follows our main character wallace and he is a very hard difficult man he's one who has a lot of rules and regulations and he doesn't really let a lot of people close to him in his life and at the beginning of the story he basically finds himself at his own funeral and he's starting to suspect that he might in fact be dead and when he meets a grim reaper named may and she brings him to a very unusual tea shop run by a man named hugo he starts to really come to terms with the fact that he is in fact very dead and from there this truly becomes a story of wallace kind of finding a new lease on life after death not only changing as a person but also starting to accept love in unlikely places both from a friendship as well as from a romantic level this is a story that very much centers found family and it really is wallace's story but it's also so much about may and hugo are other characters present in this tea shop as well it's also a story that dives very deeply into topics such as death and mourning and grieving so i do definitely want to call that out but this is a story that is very emotional it's really beautiful and very very charming tj clune has a wonderful ability of creating characters that you just want to immediately give a hug his dialogue is witty and so so funny but also has so much heart and emotion to it as well i describe his stories kind of like wes anderson stories as they're very very visual and quirky i also feel like adds such a wonderful additional layer especially because his books also have a fantastical element too this is a story that will truly warm your heart from beginning to end and i just feel like is such a delight to pick up but also make a really fantastic bookish gift i feel in my opinion i feel like books by tj clune are so universally appealing i feel like even if you don't do a lot of reading picking up this or the house in the cerulean sea will be an enjoyable time for anyone um so i just feel like for you for someone else in your life this is such a great book to read during this time of year and the last book i have to recommend is the very definition of chili and that is the bear in the nightingale by katherine arden the first book to one of my favorite series of all time i will talk about this book every single day for the rest of my life if i have to but in this series we follow our main character vassia and we actually watch her grow up not only in age and into herself but also in her magic but in this first novel we follow her as a young girl kind of living in a very small and remote village on the outskirts of siberia with her father and her family in this particular town it's very common for vasya her family and everyone else to sort of combine elements of orthodox religion as well as traditional folklore to protect them in their everyday life but after vasya's father gets remarried she is a very devout woman and she basically vows to do away with all folklore practice that's happening in town with this though this creates a grave danger as dark creatures and evil spirits begin to threaten the very village itself from the woods so vasya herself decides to try to save not only her family but everyone around her and begins to learn more about the magic around her this book is so wonderfully atmospheric if you want a cold book set in the remote areas of siberia during winter time this is a great book to pick up if you want something that's chilly and full of magic and miracle writing this is a great book to pick up and just following vasya not only throughout this entire series and seeing her take on so many different challenges and just kind of come into herself is just so excellent not to mention this is set in a historical russian setting and that element is not just a backdrop it's truly a driving force of the plot so it has so many wonderful historical elements to the story as well propel it through the entire series and i just love so many things about this book and i just think it's one of the best books to read during wintertime one of the best books to read in the holiday season one of my favorite books of all time i love it so much alrighty guys those are some cozy holiday book recommendations let me know below some books you love to read during this season as i would love to know and i will see you soon with another video soon goodbye

Channel: PeruseProject

Views: 24,229

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Id: ZNoC3-QGKZs

Length: 18min 52sec (1132 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 12 2021