What happens when you read six books in a month and realize they are all secretly about the same thing?
Not the plot. Not the genre. Not even the writing style.
The thing underneath: how we love people we can’t save, how we witness people who are changing, and how we keep showing up even after everything shifts.
December was supposed to be about cozy reads and holiday cheer. Instead, I accidentally curated a reading list that functioned as an extended therapy session about mortality, intimacy, and what it means to be seen by the people who matter. My TBR wasn’t random. It was a syllabus I didn’t know I was enrolled in, taught by Richard Osman, Peter Swanson, B.K. Borison, and Tim Curry (yes, that Tim Curry).
Six books. 1,769 pages. One unexpected emotional education.
The Monthly Thesis: Love as Witness (Even When It Hurts)
Here’s the pattern I didn’t see coming. Every single book I read this month asks the same question in different costumes. How do we love people who are changing, leaving, or already gone?
Three Thursday Murder Club novels back to back. One gothic holiday thriller. A romantic fantasy about literal ghosts. A brutally honest memoir from an actor learning to live in a body that stopped cooperating.
The thread? Love expressed through presence and witness, particularly when time, illness, or circumstance makes that presence painful.
These aren’t books about happy endings. They’re books about showing up anyway.
The Books: Mini Reviews with Maximum Feelings
1. The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman
Genre: Cozy Mystery | Length: 384 pages
The Premise: The Thursday Murder Club investigates a cold case involving a TV presenter’s disappearance while Elizabeth’s past catches up with her in ways that threaten everything she’s built.
Why It Stuck With Me: This is where Osman stops pretending the mysteries are the point. The real story is how a chosen family navigates secrets, lies, and the terrifying intimacy of being fully known by people you can’t afford to lose. Elizabeth’s moral ambiguity becomes the book’s greatest strength. She’s done terrible things for good reasons, and Osman refuses to let her, or us, off the hook easily.
Read This If: You’ve ever loved someone with a complicated past and realized that loving them means accepting all of it, not just the parts that make sense in daylight.
2. The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman
Genre: Cozy Mystery | Length: 401 pages
The Premise: A diamond heist investigation becomes secondary to the club’s real crisis. Stephen’s dementia is accelerating, and the family he’s built must learn how to love him as he disappears.
Why It Stuck With Me: This book broke me in ways I wasn’t prepared for. Osman has largely abandoned the mystery structure to focus on what actually matters. What happens to a chosen family when one of its members begins to fade. Stephen’s decline isn’t a subplot. It’s the emotional architecture holding everything together. The mystery is just the excuse to keep these people in the same room while they figure out how to grieve someone who’s still alive.
Read This If: You’ve watched someone you love change in ways you can’t control, and you need a reminder that staying present is its own form of heroism.
3. The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman
Genre: Cozy Mystery | Length: 432 pages
The Premise: The club investigates a murder tied to a massive fortune, but the real story is how they continue without Stephen, and how they honor his memory by solving the kind of case he would have loved.
Why It Stuck With Me: This is the grief book. The one where absence becomes a character. Stephen is gone, but his influence shapes every decision the remaining members make. Osman writes grief not as an ending but as a continuation. Love that persists even after the person disappears. The club doesn’t “move on.” They move forward with Stephen, which turns out to be a completely different thing.
Read This If: You’ve lost someone and you’re trying to figure out how to keep living in a world that insists you should “get over it” when you’re not even sure you want to.
4. The Christmas Guest by Peter Swanson
Genre: Gothic Thriller | Length: 112 pages
The Premise: A mysterious Christmas guest at a remote manor. Secrets buried in snow. The kind of twisty psychological horror that makes you question every narrator you’ve ever trusted.
Why It Stuck With Me: This novella asks a deceptively simple question. Who are we when no one is watching? The Christmas setting becomes a trap, a season built on performance, joy, and curated family narratives. Swanson strips all of that away to reveal the ugliness underneath. It’s a reminder that the prettiest stories often hide the darkest truths, which felt particularly relevant in a month when I’m curating content about my own life.
Read This If: You love atmospheric horror, unreliable narrators, and books that make you sit in discomfort long after you’ve closed them.
5. Good Spirits by B.K. Borison
Genre: Romantic Fantasy | Length: 328 pages
The Premise: A small-town antiques dealer falls for the Ghost of Christmas Past who’s supposed to help her heal from her messy past. Instead of fixing her life in one night, he sticks around long enough to fall completely, magically, impossibly in love with her.
Why It Stuck With Me: I needed something cozy and holiday-adjacent but weird enough to keep me interested past page ten. Also, a ghost romance? During the season of too many family obligations and not enough boundaries? The timing felt correct.
Read This If: You want a holiday romance that acknowledges therapy exists, you’re into magical realism without full fantasy worldbuilding, or you’ve ever wished someone would help you gently excavate your past without making you feel broken.
6. Vagabond by Tim Curry
Genre: Memoir | Length: 304 pages
The Premise: Tim Curry’s career memoir, except it’s not really about the career. It’s about a military brat who learned early that home is temporary, identity is flexible, and survival means constant adaptation. And then a stroke takes away his body’s virtuosity, and he has to figure out what’s left.
Why It Stuck With Me: I expected behind-the-scenes stories about Rocky Horror and juicy showbiz gossip. Instead, I got something far more valuable. A survival manual written by someone who refuses to be inspirational about surviving. Curry doesn’t position his stroke as a spiritual awakening. He treats it with pragmatic honesty. This happened. Here’s what I lost. Here’s what I’m still doing. The rootlessness that defined his childhood becomes his actual survival tool in recovery. He doesn’t bounce back. He pivots.
Read This If: You’re building something unconventional, navigating change, or tired of memoirs that insist suffering makes you a better person.
What I Learned: The Pattern I Didn’t Know I Was Following
Here’s the thing about December reading. I thought I was choosing cozy mysteries and holiday vibes. Instead, I was unknowingly constructing a masterclass in how to love people you can’t save.
The Thursday Murder Club trilogy taught me that intimacy isn’t about fixing people. It’s about witnessing them, especially when they’re declining, contradicting themselves, or making morally ambiguous choices. Elizabeth’s secrets, Stephen’s dementia, the club’s refusal to give up on each other even when it’s painful, these aren’t weaknesses. They’re the foundation of real love.
The Christmas Guest reminded me that the prettiest narratives can hide the ugliest truths. In a month where I’m curating content and building a public brand, that’s a necessary warning. Authenticity requires stripping away the performance.
Good Spirits literalized what all the other books were saying metaphorically. Being seen is terrifying. And also necessary. Harriet’s ghost doesn’t fix her. He just refuses to let her hide. That’s love.
And Tim Curry’s memoir completed the lesson. You don’t need a redemption arc to have a life worth documenting. You just need persistence, adaptability, and the willingness to keep showing up even after your body, or circumstances, or plans stop cooperating.
The shared thread? Love as verb, not noun. The most transformative relationships aren’t the ones that resolve neatly. They’re the ones that ask you to keep showing up even after you’ve been changed beyond recognition.
My Reading Method: Investigative Reading Disguised as Comfort
December’s reading wasn’t escapism. It was preparation.
I read like I was gathering evidence for a case I didn’t know I was building. Each book became a reference point for understanding how to navigate grief, aging, visibility, and the terror of being fully known.
My method: read three books in the same series back to back to fully inhabit a fictional universe. Use a gothic thriller as a palate cleanser. Follow with a romantic fantasy that validates therapy. End with a memoir that refuses to be uplifting.
I kept a notes app open the entire month, collecting quotes like they were survival instructions. Turns out they were.
The mood: elegiac, intimate, slightly haunted. Less “festive cheer” and more “sitting by the fire with people you’ve lost and people you’re afraid of losing.”
The Biggest Surprise: Tim Curry Doesn’t Owe You Inspiration
I picked up Vagabond expecting juicy stories about Rocky Horror and behind-the-scenes Hollywood chaos.
Instead, Tim Curry handed me a survival manual I didn’t know I needed.
The surprise wasn’t the stroke. That’s public knowledge. The surprise was Curry’s refusal to treat it as a narrative turning point. No redemption arc. No “blessing in disguise.” Just: This happened. Here’s how I’m adapting.
His childhood rootlessness, constantly moving, never belonging, learning early that home is temporary, becomes his actual superpower in recovery. He doesn’t bounce back to his “old self.” There is no old self. There’s just the person he keeps becoming.
For someone building a business, managing creative output, and navigating visibility, Curry’s pragmatic resilience felt like permission. You don’t have to resolve all your contradictions. You just have to keep going sideways.
What This Month Says About Me (According to My TBR)
My December reading reveals something I wasn’t ready to say out loud. I’m afraid of aging, and I’m terrified of being forgotten.
Three of six books center on mortality, dementia, and what happens to identity after your body changes. I’m reading them not because I’m old, but because I’m aware that I’m getting older, and I want assurance that 40 or 50 or 60 doesn’t mean becoming invisible.
I’m also craving witness. Every book asks: who sees you when you’re not performing? I’m a content creator. I’m constantly visible. But visibility isn’t the same as being seen. These books are teaching me that being seen, really, deeply seen, requires stopping the performance long enough to let someone in.
And finally, I’m craving permission to be contradictory. You can be a business owner and a grieving person. You can be publicly visible and privately complicated. You can be adaptable without ever becoming fully legible to anyone.
My December reading is a love letter to everyone who’s taught me what it means to show up. And simultaneously, it’s a manifesto for how I’m going to show up for others moving forward.
The Numbers (Because Context Matters)
Books completed: 6
Total pages read: 1,769
Average rating: 4.25 stars
Longest book: The Impossible Fortune (432 pages)
Shortest book: The Christmas Guest (112 pages)
Fiction vs. Nonfiction: 5 fiction / 1 memoir
I read fewer books this month, which tells its own story. I went deeper instead of wider. You can’t rush Osman when he’s asking you to sit with complicated feelings about aging and mortality. That takes page time and emotional availability.
5 Key Takeaways: What December Books Taught Me About Living
1. Love Isn’t About Fixing People. It’s About Witnessing Them
The Thursday Murder Club series demolished my assumptions about love and care. Stephen’s dementia doesn’t get cured. Elizabeth’s past doesn’t get erased. The club doesn’t “save” each other. They show up. They witness. They stay present even when it’s painful. That’s the work.
Life Application: Stop trying to fix the people you love. Start asking: how can I see them more fully?
2. The Prettiest Stories Can Hide the Darkest Truths
The Christmas Guest reminded me that curated narratives, especially around holidays, family, and “perfect” moments, often mask the ugliest realities. Authenticity requires stripping away performance.
Life Application: If you’re building a public brand, or just living on social media, check in. Are you sharing your real life, or a version designed to make people comfortable?
3. Being Seen Is Terrifying and Necessary
Harriet in Good Spirits builds her entire identity around not being seen. The ghost who refuses to leave teaches her that intimacy, real, uncomfortable, unglamorous intimacy, is the prerequisite for healing.
Life Application: Who in your life really sees you? And are you letting them?
4. You Don’t Need a Redemption Arc to Have a Life Worth Living
Tim Curry’s memoir rejects the “suffering made me better” narrative. He doesn’t position his stroke as a blessing. He treats it with pragmatic honesty. This happened. I’m adapting. His refusal to be inspirational is its own inspiration.
Life Application: Your life doesn’t need to make sense or follow a tidy narrative arc. Persistence matters more than coherence.
5. Grief Is a Form of Love That Continues After Loss
The Impossible Fortune taught me that grief isn’t the opposite of love. It’s love that persists even after the person is gone. The Thursday Murder Club doesn’t “move on” from Stephen. They move forward with him.
Life Application: If you’re grieving someone, or something, stop waiting to “get over it.” Start asking: how do I carry them forward?
What This Month Taught Me: A Gentle Conclusion
December wasn’t about escapism. It was about learning how to hold grief and joy simultaneously. How to witness people who are changing. How to love people you can’t save. How to keep showing up even after everything shifts.
I didn’t plan to read six books about mortality and intimacy during the most “joyful” month of the year. But maybe that’s exactly when we need them most. December asks us to perform happiness. These books gave me permission to feel everything else instead.
Your reading list is never random. It’s a mirror reflecting what you’re ready to learn, or what you’ve been avoiding.
So here’s my question for you. What did your December reading reveal about where you are right now?
What did your December books teach you? Drop a comment below with the most surprising book you read this month, or the unexpected pattern you discovered in your TBR. Let’s compare notes.
And if you loved this recap, share it with a fellow bookworm who needs permission to stop chasing happy endings and start sitting with complicated truths.
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