Offbeat Offline: December 2025 (Plus Announcing the First Hiatus of the Year)

Welcome to Offbeat Offline, where I bring you up-to-date with what went on in my life during the month just gone, give you a sneak peek of my next shenanigans, and share my favourite posts of late!

Hello sweeties! and Happy New Year! 🎉

What happened last month to yours truly?...Nothing. I read a little, reviewed a little (adding to my string of under-4-star books), beta-read a little, dined out for my birthday but couldn't eat what I wanted, gave Christmas a wide berth (as per tradition), suffered from the usual ailments, regretted my life choices one time too many. All pretty depressing, right?

2025 Wrap-Up: In Which I Hiatus a Lot but Hold My Ground

Hello my beauties!

Welcome to my last post of the year, where I will wrap my 2025 up. This was the year of hiatuses (5 months out of 12!!!), and yet, I managed to write a fair number of posts and to end it on a high note, blog-wise and comment-wise, so it wasn't a bad one...I even managed to make a new blogging friend (hi Ryan!). Now, life-wise, that's another kettle of fish (as English folks would say) or a whole new ball game (for the American crowd) - but well. So, without further ado, here goes my 2025 recap...

Pt. 1: This Year in Blogging

As of today, I've been blogging for 13 years and a couple of months!

This year was another hard one (because at this point, they're all the same...), but marginally better than 2024, since at least my husband started to go out a little after three years of being bedridden. Blog-wise, I gave myself permission to write more mini reviews, because if I had continued to review in full every book from 4 stars up (as I used to), I'd have read less and made myself miserable (full reviews take a real toll on me sometimes, especially since mine are very structured - but I like them that way...)...Also, even with five months' worth of hiatus in total, I was able to write 47 posts, that is, almost a post a week, which (as usual) was my tentative goal, so I'd call it a win...

This is what happened on Offbeat YA during the year, broken down by number of posts, books I reviewed, other bookish content/activities...plus an off-blog, real-life section!

Taste the Books: Review Morsels #65 Christine Ferko, Carly Racklin, Darya Bobyleva

Intro

Hello beauties!

Welcome again to my own brand of mini reviews! I never thought I'd do minis, until I recapped a few of my long reviews in some digest post in 2014, and then guest-posted some shorties for a blogging event in 2015. And Karen from For What It's Worth started praising my short recs/recaps 😊. Just to be clear,  I'm NOT taking a break from writing long reviews - no such luck LOL (though for anthologies, shorter books or books that I didn't enjoy/I don't have enough to say about, I decided to stick to minis). But while I'm making up my mind about a new book I've read, I might as well give you the short version 😉. Just be warned - this feature will be VERY random!

Note: all the mini blurbs (in italics) are of my own creation.

Tell Me Something Tuesday: Which Superpower Do You Wish You Had?

Tell Me Something Tuesday is a weekly meme created by Heidi at Rainy Day Ramblings in order to discuss a wide range of topics from books to blogging (and some slightly more personal matters throw in for good measure). After Heidi stopped blogging (apparently for good), five of us took over as hosts while providing new questions. The current team is composed of Berls at Because Reading Is Better Than Real Life, Jen at That's What I'm Talking About, Karen at For What It's Worth, Linda at Book Girl of Mur-y-Castell and Roberta at Offbeat YA. This week's question is...

WHICH SUPERPOWER DO YOU WISH YOU HAD?

I would very much like to have something akin to the Doctor's regenerative power, only with conscious purpose and limited to specific body parts, so I could use it to conjure a head of glorious curls for myself 😂 (and to repair this old body LOL). Or I would like to at least be able to go back in time to get proper perms 😭. But since these are very peculiar uses of powers that are meant to work a bit differently, I'll go with a classic...TELEPORTATION!