getting out of a reading slump with crime fiction. just me?

Does anyone else use crime fiction as a way to get themselves out of a reading slump? I realised the other day that I always find myself out of a period of very little to no reading by jumping into crime fiction. There's just something about a whodunnit or a mysterious, tense novel that will rejuvenate me and make me crave reading even more.

So recently I got a Kindle, and I LOVE her. It's got me excited about reading again, I finished one book that I started months ago in a matter of two days because I loved the new reading experience I was having. And once again, it was crime fiction. I was reading What We Did Last Night by Vanessa Garbin and I wasn't even that into at first, but by the end? My god. I had tiny burns on my index finger from how fast I was swiping pages to find out what happened. And the fact that the book started sort of slow and suddenly everything—and I mean everything—started happening within the last 30% of the book made me want to devour it even more.

What We Did Last Night follows the lives of Laura, Nathan, Samantha, Orlando, Michael, Naomi, Rory and Alison (yes there are a lot of them) who all live on the same street, majority of whom are married and are all friends. One day, one of them suggests that it would be fun to have a Key Party. For the more innocent among you (including me) a key party is when several people put their keys into a bowl for the rest of the party to randomly choose. Whoever's keys you pick up, you go into another room and have sex. Or just chat if you're not really feeling the whole thing, like widowed Naomi who's just there for a good time.

You don't really get to the part where the women (all married but one) put their keys in the bowl and then you find out who they must go away with until really late into the book which was interesting. That and the fact that there were so many characters and I was reading like a page a day since I was reading this before bed and I can fall asleep within seconds, I was not that interested.

But get to the end chapters and christ does it heat up. We've got people's (teenage) children witnessing affairs, we've got suicide, we've got suspected murder, we've got domestic abuse, we've got countless hospital visits, car accidents... You name it! And all because one of the girlies couldn't get sex off the brain. I'm telling you it's a wild time.

If you're looking for something to get you out of a slump, I'd definitely suggest this. And while I'm here talking about crime fiction, I just finished reading The Girls Who Disappeared by Claire Douglas. If I'm being honest, I preferred this book much more. What We Did Last Night was more shock factor focused for me, but The Girls Who Disappeared was a really detailed story of four girls who get into a car accident back in the 90s, one survives, and the rest completely disappear out of thin air. What happened?

The tale will have you guessing for the entire book as Douglas takes you down several suspicious roads with infuriating characters (I should say character, Wesley I'm looking at you), have you rooting for a well-meaning journalist and remind you to never book a stay in a cabin in the middle of the woods. All of this against the aesthetics of a small British countryside town in the middle of winter. I could practically see the cobbled streets and pedestrians walking their dogs with thick coats and scarves over their mouths right in front of me as I was reading. I really liked it! Another irresistible page-turner for me.

Because of these two gripping books, I'm back to being obsessed with books. I've picked up Why Didn't You Tell Me by Carmen Rita Wong, a memoir I started a while ago and never finished and I'm so eager to know, well you know, what she didn't tell her, and I'm already halfway through Atomic Habits by James Clear on my Kindle. Having a good time!

I've even switched up my Instagram to be more book-centric (call me a bookstagrammer, I'd love that) which I'm hoping will keep me on track with reading and maybe even read a decent number of books this year. I started off the year really badly but it's never too late to start ticking titles off my TBR.

Follow me on Instagram @streamsfromjupiter and let me know what you're reading and your thoughts on crime fiction getting you out of reading slumps.

See you next week <3