The title of this post is awful, and I feel bad about it. But it’s true! I forgot to include some books in my 2025 fiction and nonfiction recaps.

This is no reflection on the books. I just didn’t do a good job of tracking my reading. I “found” these by scanning the show notes of Book Cougars episodes for books in our “Just Read” segment.

The kicker is, all of these were fantastic reads!

Fiction

Lucy Undying: A Dracula Novel by Kiersten White. A gothic, sapphic love story with a contemporary setting. This was such a fun read. The titular character is Lucy Westenra from Bram Stoker’s classic Dracula. Lucy has never been one of my favorite characters, but apparently, some readers have believed, as a Kirkus reviewer wrote, that Lucy “deserved better.” In Lucy Undying, Lucy shares the spotlight with a new character: Iris Goldaming, not in the original Dracula. Readers of the classic will no doubt understand that Iris is a descendant of a character in Dracula.

Iris is trying to escape the clutches of her uber-wealthy, highly secretive American family. She flees to an ancestral home in London and there discovers a diary. She also bumps into a woman named Elle. Sparks eventually fly — from the pages of the diary and between Elle and Iris. There are three main storylines: Iris’s, Elle’s, and Lucy’s that take the reader to different time periods and countries. Along the way, a different version of Dracula is revealed. The stakes are high (aren’t they always in a vampire novel?), and I ate it all up!

Upon finishing, I immediately wanted to re-read Dracula and then read Lucy Undying again. Looking around at reviews online, I see that some Dracula purists did not appreciate this novel. I get it. I used to not like anyone messing with beloved characters, but lately I’ve been appreciative of novels that set beloved characters in new situations, such as Beth Is Dead by Katie Bernet (which I wrote about in my fiction recap).

The Vanishing Kind by Alice Henderson. This is the fourth book in Henderson’s Alex Carter series, my new favorite “must-read” mystery. I did include this one in a recap of Q1 books last year, where I wrote, “Alex is a wildlife biologist, and each book finds her studying a different species and fighting different bad guys. In The Vanishing Kind, she is studying jaguars in New Mexico. Alex goes through her worst experience yet. She encounters obstacles to the well-being of jaguars and other wildlife, anti-immigrant extremists, and a vile billionaire.” If you enjoy the great outdoors and care about the environment and animals, you’ll want to check out this series.

A Web of Obsidian by Lydia M. Hawke. An action-packed urban fantasy featuring Sister Monica Barrett, a 69-year-old nun who fights to protect a woman who has been dumped at her door wearing only rags, who might not even be alive. That’s just the beginning of an exciting story that involves a stone with special powers and lots of spider-web-like stuff. Sister Monica is among the younger of her order and steps up to fight an ancient evil, one that an elder knew something about. This is the first in a series of, as of now, three books.

Nonfiction

Jurassic Girl: The Adventures of Mary Anning, Paleontologist and the First Female Fossil Hunter by Michele C. Hollow. This is a biography for middle-grade children. The focus is on Anning at age 12, when she discovered a large fossil. She’d already been finding, cleaning, selling, and drawing fossils she and her father found near their home for years before this. The fossil attracts the attention of others in the field. Locals and others familiar with Anning know of her talents and knowledge, but the men in charge of museums and pursuing paleontology do not believe a mere girl could know what she was doing or be talented enough to draw as she did. They are eventually proven wrong. The rest, as they say, is history. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say “history that is recovered,” and now we know Anning as the “Mother of Paleontology.”

Poetry

Love is For All of Us: Poems of Tenderness and Belonging from the LGBTQ+ Community and Friends, edited by James Crews and Brad Peacock, featuring illustrations by Lisa Congdon. I am a fan of James Crews’s poetry and the anthologies he has coedited. This is the first he’s produced with his husband, and it is a collection that I keep next to my desk. Over on the Book Cougars BookTube channel, we had an hour-long talk and shared poetry with James during National Poetry Month.

When I was Straight by Julie Marie Wade. After a poet friend introduced me to Julie Marie Wade’s poetry last year, I immediately purchased several of her collections. When I Was Straight is a series of poems about before and after coming out as a lesbian. Wade’s voice is clear and warm, and her poems have strong imagery and cover a wide range of coming-out situations and reactions.

Picture Books

I read a bunch of picture books last year. The college where I work has an early childhood education program, and, as part of this, we have a children’s section in the library. A children’s librarian who recently joined the team purchased a trove of new picture books. I read as many as I could as they appeared on the new book displays. Two that stuck out for me are:

How Birds Sleep by David Obuchowski, illustrated by Sarah Pedry. Did you know that some birds can sleep while they’re flying long distances? I did not prior to reading this book. Birds are amazing!

The Leaf Detective: How Margaret Lowman Uncovered Secrets in the Rainforest by Heather Lang, illustrated by Jana Christy. A beautiful biography of Lowman’s work to become a scientist, and her radical new way of studying the rainforest.

I believe this finally and officially recaps the books that I read last year. This year, I am using StoryGraph to track my reading. I upgraded to a paid account and have been doing a daily update. At this time, my account is private to keep the focus on reading rather than socializing or being tempted by other people’s recommendations. The plan is that next year, there won’t be a need for a “Books I Forgot About” post. I’m also keeping a list in my notebook and still use Goodreads, but that is in part due to the friend connections there.