​The Rainbow Snippets group on Facebook asks its members to share six sentence snippets from their work each weekend. Check out the group's Facebook page to read all the snippets and add lots of great books to your TBR. You'll find all sorts of books with the common thread that the main character identifies as LGBTQ.

​I'm sharing snippets now from A Harmony of Fire and Earth, the second book in the Elemental Magicae duology (which should be read in order, so I'll try to keep this spoiler free—definitely start with A Dance of Water and Air though!). This series is filled with elemental magic, romance, and intrigue. The first book begins with a betrothal arranged between a prince and the queen of a neighboring country, but when he arrives, something isn't right and he ends up falling in love with her brother instead. When the prince is accused of trying to kill, the two princes go on the run, trying to save themselves and their kingdoms. Harmony picks up the story of the two princes and also introduces others who are important to their ability protect their homes and people from a growing threat. Gaz is a a reclusive Fire wielder with secrets, and Rhys is an Earth wielder and healer who has been in love with him for a long time (and keeps knitting him things). I'm jumping into the second chapter with a scene between them.

Back in November, I recommended some cozy reads (find them here) and I thought this week, if you're like me, you might need some more. If you're in the US, at least, the last few days have been tough—just one horrible thing after another, and though they aren't unexpected to anyone who has been paying attention (...and potentially screaming about these things), they are still rage-inducing and despair-causing. And all we can do is fight as best we can and take care of each other. And take care of ourselves. Part of that for me is sometimes reading something cozy and warm. Sometimes it means reading something entirely else to channel that rage—comfort reads are different for every person and sometimes for every mood.

Today, I'm going to focus on more cozy books, which also exist on a spectrum of coziness or fluffiness, I suppose, and these recs do too. They are also a mix of genres and subgenres, pairings, etc. I hope you find something to escape into and recharge. 

Happy Appreciate a Dragon Day to all who celebrate! And if you love dragon books, you really should be celebrating. If you're familiar with my books, you probably know that I love dragons and dragon books, both writing and reading them. I've always loved fantasy and romance and dragons—I still have the copy of Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C Wrede I bought at the Scholastic Book Fair in elementary school, so you know this goes back a while—and I'm always watching for more dragon books and adding them to by massive TBR. I think To Shape a Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose is up next for me, but we'll see (I'm such a mood reader!). I thought I would share some book recs today. These are generally all romances, some with dragon shifters as the love interest and some just with dragons in the story. 

I've already done my favorite books of 2024 list, but I haven't talked about books I read in December yet so that's today's post. In December, I did a bunch of rereading—favorites that I love around the holidays—mostly in audio as I baked, but I also read some new-to-me books that enjoyed and wanted to mention.