LITERATURE

100 Books, One Dream: My Love for Books, and 2024 Challenge

My love affair with literature has always been my secret weapon in academics. It all began in sixth grade when my English teacher turned my essay into the classroom’s gold standard, reading it aloud and setting the bar for my peers. That first spark of validation, hearing her call my work “the best she’d read all year,” was probably the origin story of my serious obsession with praise (oops). Fast forward to college, I naturally chose English as my major, immersing myself further into the literary world, eventually hoping to shape a career out of it. What started as classroom accolades evolved into a full-blown passion.

The start to 2024 was a slightly unusual one. For the first time since I learned how to form complete sentences, I found myself no longer a student within the walls of an academic institution. Here I was, a fresh graduate living alone in a foreign country, with no clue about where life was going to take me. As I worked another weekend shift at Scotty’s Diner in the heart of Galway City, I found my mum’s old Kindle in the pile of junk I brought over from India.

After two years of selectively dipping into my class’s suggested reading list, I finally decided it was time to rekindle my love for leisure reading. And since a new year calls for new challenges, I thought, “Why not make it epic?” That’s how I embarked on the ambitious journey of reading 100 books before the end of 2024.

Having worked my way through the classics for years like any self-respecting English lit major would do, I decided it was time for something different. My Instagram feed, perfectly tuned by its algorithm, kept throwing me into the world of “BookTok” recommendations, so I decided to begin there. Like many smut-curious readers looking for a soft entry into the genre, I kicked things off with Ana Huang’s Twisted Love—and what a start it was!

I dove headfirst into Huang’s Twisted series with Alex and Ava’s wild, unpredictable love story—and let me tell you, it didn’t just pull me in, it dragged me down the rabbit hole. I got hooked on dark romance faster than I ever thought possible, and before I knew it, I was six books deep into the Ana-Verse in just two weeks. Rhys and Bridget, Josh and Jules, and Dante and Vivian? Yeah, they stole my heart and left me with some seriously messed-up expectations for real-life relationships. If I thought men were dull before, the fictional ones—willing to kill or die for their women—absolutely obliterated any hope I had left for dating outside of my Kindle. Turns out, Twisted gave me more than just a few steamy love stories—it gave me an all-new, completely unrealistic idea of what my love life could look like.

From that point on, you couldn’t pry the Kindle out of my cold, dead hands. Every dark romance book I picked up just fuelled my delusions, pulling me deeper into a world where love was messy, unpredictable, and came with a side of danger. Whenever I wasn’t serving up burgers on the restaurant floor, I was glued to that screen, reading like I had something to prove. Two to three books a week? Easy. Reality? Who needs it when you’ve got a fictional mafia lord willing to die for you?

Six books turned into twenty-four, and within just four months, I was convinced I’d breeze through the 100-book challenge before the year’s end. But of course, reality has a way of crashing in like a freight train. Adulting got in the way — job hunting, squeezing in extra shifts to make rent, and dealing with emotional turmoil (because why not add heartbreak to the mix?). It was endless months of sobbing into my pillow, rewriting my resume until it was practically a work of fiction, and coming up with elaborate lies for cover letters (seriously, I could’ve earned a PhD in BS-ing). Suddenly, the fictional worlds I’d been devouring seemed far more attainable than the real one I had to deal with.

I kept reading, though. Whenever I could, I’d dive back into my trusty Kindle for that much-needed escape from reality. And oh, Runyx—she sucked me right into her world with the Dark Verse Series. The twist at the end of the fifth book, though? When the Syndicater bombshell dropped, I just sat there, staring at the ceiling, trying to process it for a solid five minutes. That’s when things got real. The Dark Verse led me to Legacy of Gods, which, of course, paved the way for the darker stuff, like Haunting Adeline. And let’s be real—are you even a dark romance reader if you haven’t imagined yourself in the Hall of Mirrors with Zade?

With every smut-filled book I added to my collection, I found myself slipping further away from the chaos of reality and sinking deeper into those magical, fictional worlds where love is pure, characters are morally grey (but hey, no cheating—so it’s fine), and the danger feels oh-so-real. As December creeps in, I’ve read 54 books. It’s not where I imagined I’d be in my challenge, but given how downright chaotic life’s been with a new job, house hunting, and the usual heartbreak melodrama, I’m honestly proud of carving out those hours for something I truly love.

With just one month left in my challenge, your guess is as good as mine as to how many more books I can manage to squeeze into my list before I’m back crouching under a table at midnight on New Year’s Eve, stuffing my mouth with 12 grapes and wishing for the kind of love I read about.