An Open Book: January 2026

Carolyn Astfalk hosts the Open Book linkup: Share what you're reading and get recommendations from other readers.

Welcome to the January 2026 edition of An Open Book, hosted both at My Scribbler's Heart AND Catholicmom.com.

An Open Book is all about what my family is reading this month, from the adults down to the little kids.

Share what you're reading by linking up your blog post below.

Simply write about what you're reading. You can make it personal or, as I do, extend it to the whole family. Your post can be as simple as a few lines about the book or as in-depth as a 700-word review. That's entirely up to you. You can even forego writing all together and record a video or simply post cover photos.

No blog? No problem. Please share what you're reading in the comments.

Here are the books my family and I have read this month:

I fully admit that my last reading selection of 2025 was chosen as a measure of expediency. I was one book away from completing my annual reading goal, and I spotted a glowing review of a short Christmas romance in my Goodreads feed. Enter ‘Tis the Season to Get Married by J.P. Sterling, a friends-to-more clean, Christmasy romance between Nick and Charlotte, two longtime friends who (somewhat jokingly) make a pact to marry in a year if they haven’t found a significant other. When they wake up in wedding attire the morning after their planned marriage unable to recall the evening’s events, they must piece together what happened and reconcile the events with their feelings. 

A Caffeine Conundrum by Angela Ruth Strong is a cozy Christmas murder-mystery. Two rivals for the same property, Marissa and Tandy, become murder suspects when the property owner drops dead in front of them. The women, whose personalities are polar opposites, must work together to find the real killer. No one in their little town is immune to their scrutiny — grandmas, the deputy, a beauty queen, and an ex-boyfriend. Their suspicions and the Christmasy antics are a little kooky, but this is a fun story that ultimately speaks to the value of forgiveness and friendship. 

I wanted some smooth-reading, well-written Christmas rom-coms, and Courtney Walsh is the most dependable author in the genre, in my opinion. My Merry Mistake rounds out tales of the Hart sisters and their professional hockey player beaus. While a light story, the struggles of uptight Raya and fun-loving Finn were relatable and their story, touching. I’m wishing there were more Hart sisters to prolong this series. 

Merry Ex-Mas by Courtney Walsh is a second chance romance for Max and Marin. Of course, their past is filled with young love, misunderstanding, and a world of hurt, but when they are thrust together by family connections and Marin’s pursuit of online Christmas content, they are forced to contend with their feelings. This book is a few years old, so I can’t lay the blame the fact that I’m tiring of social media influencer characters on the author. This book has all the family, couple, and smalltown Christmas charm you’d expect. 

I’ve continued to read selections from An Evergreen Christmas, and my enjoyment of the stories is a little uneven. While I really enjoyed the first story I read, A Gold-Fashioned Christmas by Cathe Swanson and Merry and Right by Teresa Tysinger were just okay. I have one more story to read in the collection. 

For a Christmas novel of another sort, my oldest son and I both enjoyed Andrew Klavan’s When Christmas Comes, the first Cameron Winter mystery. As the first book in the series, it begins to unravel Winter’s tangled past with remembrances of his childhood that impact the present and his approach to the murder at hand. I haven’t reviewed the book yet, but you can read my son’s entire review. Here is an excerpt that I think sums up the salient themes of the novel that shone amidst a whodunit that kept me guessing:   

“Klavan plays with some interesting themes and ideas that are certainly worth revisiting: the simplistic beauty and centrality of the nuclear family, reconciling the good with the bad in history, and the contradictory inability to return home after defending your home, all with the undertones of the Christmas season, bringing in the unstated subtext of the holy Family and the Incarnation.” 

The Great Heresies by Hillaire Belloc is the author’s take on the five major heresies: Arianism, Islam, Albigensianism, Protestantism, and “the modern attack.” The book describes the development of these movements, how they spread, and how they continued to influence the world. My son says that while Belloc is perceived as difficult, his writing is straightforward and accessible, even if you don’t have great historical knowledge. 

American Sphynx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson by Joseph J. Ellis ended up being a two-star read for my son, which was disappointing since he’d had high hopes for this popular and award-winning book. He (and I) presumed that to undertake a biography an author would be predisposed to like their subject, but in the case of American Sphynx, it seemed to my son that Ellis found Jefferson’s idealism foolish. 

While G.K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy is more widely known and highly regarded than Heretics or What’s Wrong with the World, my son preferred those two books to this book on Christianity. He did, however, still greatly enjoy the book, saying it “provides a truly interesting perspective of the uniqueness, purpose, and impact of Catholicism in a way I have not seen it framed before.” 

Our family re-watched the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy over Thanksgiving weekend, and my son proceeded to re-read his favorite book in the trilogy, The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien. For Christmas, his brother gave him a copy of Tolkien’s World from A to Z: The Complete Guide to Middle-earth, which has been a great companion to the novel. He recommends this guide as the best reference to Tolkien’s fictional world with an alphabetical index of terms (creatures, places, events, etc.) with citations from books (and indices). It provides useful background information and etymology. 

My oldest daughter read my Christmas novel, Ornamental Graces (and left me handy notes on some typos she found). She enjoyed the story and the characters in this contemporary romance of a young woman, Emily, whose longing for romantic love is unfulfilled and Dan, whose grievous mistakes and past sins have made it difficult for him to forgive himself and have a healthy relationship. Apparently when your mother writes novels, it’s fun to find all the Easter eggs — events, scenes, and objects pulled from our family life. 

For Christmas, my daughter received 12 Days at Bleakly Manor by Michelle Griep, a Dickensian Christmas mystery novella I read years ago. She found some similarities in plot and setting to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, and she and her younger sister (who snatched the book as soon as it was available) enjoyed the story very much until the ending, which they found too quick and unsatisfying. 

My middle-school daughter read the first book in T.M. Gaouette’s Faith & Kung Fu series, Freeing Tanner Rose. Tanner Rose is a worldly starlet whose shallow, dissolute life stands in stark contrast to that of Gabe, a quiet young man of integrity. They each have fish-out-of-water experiences encountering each other’s worlds, and Gabe’s wholesome, simple, and virtuous way of life eventually appeals to Tanner Rose as her celebrity life loses its shine. 

Ground Zero: A Novel of 9/11 by Alan Gratz alternates between two points of view — one from an American boy in the North Tower in New York City on September 11, 2001, and an Afghani girl on September 11, 2019, in Afghanistan. 9/11 seems so fresh in my mind that it’s hard to believe there are already generations that only know about it from books and other media, not having lived through the experience. 

As a Christmas gift, my daughter received the sixth and final book in Antony B. Kolenc’s Harwood Mysteries, The Devil’s Ransom. There is plenty of suspense and action, on the sea and in Moorish territory, in this final installment as the maturing characters must fight evil in the form of a presumed demoniac. I’m sure others in the house will want to read the conclusion of this series. 

I picked up The Trumpeter of Krakow by Eric P. Kelly from the library, hoping my middle school son would enjoy it, but he set it aside, saying it was boring. Maybe he abandoned it too soon, because he enjoys medieval intrigue and I thought this would be right up his alley. Interestingly, this book created an accepted legend that “a Polish boy was killed by the arrow . . . silencing his trumpet a few notes short of completion of the ‘Heynal,’ the Hymn to Our Lady, as he stood on a little balcony of the Church of Our Lady Mary in Krakow, Poland. Ever since that event subsequent trumpeters have stopped at the same point in the ‘Heynal’ as it is sounded four times on the hour, all day and night as a signal that all is well.” 

We had better luck with Keeper of the Grail by Michael Spradlin, the first in The Youngest Templar series. My son has loved this book so far. His favorite book series (The Killer Species) is by the same author, so I thought this might be another series he’d enjoy. In Keeper of the Grail, Tristan, an orphan, joins the Knights Templar as a squire and goes on crusade with Richard the Lionheart. Tristan is entrusted with safely returning the Holy Grail to Britain, battling those who might steal it along the way.

Join the linkup to share what you're reading — or leave a comment below.

Want more details on An Open Book?

You can also sign up for An Open Book reminder email, which goes out one week before the link-up.

Copyright 2026 Carolyn Astfalk
Images: Canva
This article contains Amazon affiliate links, which provide a small compensation to the author of this piece when purchases are made through the links, at no cost to you. Thank you for supporting our Catholic Mom writers in this way.