New Year, New Books! Here's a look at what's caught our eyes this month.

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We're so excited to share this exclusive interview with Kate Clayborn, who is celebrating the release of her new book, Love Lettering, on December 31. Considering its themes of renewal and reconnection, what better time to read it than as we reflect on the start of a new year and a new decade?

Please enjoy the interview, and if you decide to pick up the book, we'll have links at the end!

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Mini-reviews of Sick Kids in Love, Winterwood, The Magnolia Sword, Rage, and The Night Country, which means an one contemporary romance, one Mulan retelling and three fantasy novels with romantic elements.

These posts are so subjective that I decided not to call mine a Best Of 2019 list this time. Did I read every romance that came out this year? Does every person bring their own preferences and baggage to each book? Yeah, exactly.

This book hit all of my buttons: enemies-to-lovers, witches, historical (AU) France and a very murdery plot. It's a book that I might feel just a little twinge of guilt about loving as much as I do, but that guilt is overshadowed by the emotional ride this book took me on.

Mini-reviews of Irises in the Snow, A Hive of Secrets and Spells, Night of the Scoundrel, and We Met in December, which means an f/f fantasy-mystery, an m/m contemporary, an m/f historical and an m/f contemporary.

As you probably know, we don't review much erotica. But ever since I was handed one of her anthologies in my days at Heroes & Heartbreakers, I've followed Rachel Kramer-Bussel's work with Cleis Press. Kramer-Bussel's curation of these anthologies, particularly the Best Women's Erotica of the Year series, is what really makes them sing. The collections are diverse in both authorship and content and while most readers won't love every story, there's something for everyone in them--as with most anthologies. They're also loosely organized around a theme, this time it's "Outrageous."

Woohoo! Last month of the year! January's absurdly full of new books, so please consider this month a bit of a breather.

And now, for the books we're looking forward to picking up in December!

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Last year Veronica Scott gave Felicia Davin's Edge of Nowhere a glowing recommendation, so when we heard that the second in the Nowhere series was coming out this December? Yeah, we were interested. *eyeballs emoji*

At least half of the LiP team reads lots of young adult books, both fantasy and romance. So we--Andrea and Suzanne--decided to pull together a list of all the YA romance we're looking forward to in the first quarter of 2020! We'll have a list of YA fantasy with romance subplots (think Grishaverse, Margaret Rogerson, etc) up in a bit as well.

Since there are way too many books for one reasonably sized post, here's how we've structured the list:

• Books that we're excited to read will have a cover and a little bit about why we're excited to read them.
• Other books that we're aware of are at the end. They'll have links if you want to find out more! We've tried to include info about the pairing if we know it.
  
• This list is absolutely not any indication of quality. We haven't read these! Stay tuned throughout the year for reviews when we do.
• Books are listed in chronological order and include what we're aware of as of November 2019.
  
• Every book will have a link to its page on Amazon. Yes, we'd love for you to buy the books elsewhere but the reality is that 98% of our clicks are to Amazon. In a list this size, it's just too much time to generate four links for each book instead of one. These are affiliate links, meaning we earn 4% of whatever you buy after clicking. It doesn't cost you anything extra but we have to disclose this for the feds.

Without further ado, on to the books!