2026 mystery reads!

My sisters and I carried on our tradition of wrapping TBR books for each other so we have one to reveal and read each month. I'm glad we did, I really loved doing it last year, and I think having those mystery reads has kind of shifted my mindset when it comes to reading from my TBR shelf and purchasing new books. Even outside my mystery books, I made a much more concerted effort to read books from my already owned TBR list over something else, and I specifically pulled from my TBR for my Read Harder books before I looked outside it for ideas. Also, I used the library (yay!) way more, particularly for Read Harder and book club books - I bought less than half the number of new books in 2025 versus 2024. It's interesting, to me anyway, because this honestly wasn't even a conscious thing that I decided to do, it just happened naturally by being more aware of the books I have waiting for me to read.

That said, I did finish 100% of the books I bought in 2024, while I only read about two-thirds of them in 2025...but we don't need to talk about that. It was mostly my monthly subscription books that I didn't finish last year, and I'll get through them!

Anyhow, my shifting book purchasing and reading habits aside, it's mystery read time! I've been giving it some thought, and something I'd wanted to be more consistent with last year and wasn't was actually sharing my thoughts after reading each book. It was tricky posting the book reveal at the start of the month and then either circling back to the last month's in the next reveal post or trying to slot in a review after already having posted about that book once, so after this week's post, I'm going to make a change and start recapping each month's Read Harder progress at the start of the following month and then reveal AND review the mystery book at the END of that month. That way I'll have already read it, instead of posting about a book I know nothing about and being like "shrug, hope I like it!"

All that said, this month's mystery read is Greenwild by Pari Thomson, and "shrug" I hope I like it! 

It's a middle grade realistic fantasy described as The Secret Garden meets A Wrinkle in Time, which seems promising, and I've already read the first few chapters and am very intrigued. It's the first of at least three books in a series, so we'll see if I end up reading the whole series or if I gripe that it didn't need to be more than one book.