2019 Blogging Recap!

Happy New Year's Eve! It's officially the last day of 2019, which means it's time to recap all of the awesome things we did this year, from new features, to bookish events, to friends we made, to milestones we've hit and more! So without further ado, let's get into our highlights from 2019!

JANUARY 2019

• We started interviewing 2019 debut authors! Every month, we featured some interviews and giveaways from SO many amazing #Class2k19Books members. We read so many great new stories AND made so many amazing new friends!

• We got to team up with our awesome friend Sadie @ S.B. Book Blog to do a tag-team Q&A...so check out all of her answers to our questions, as well as OUR answers to hers, in this post!

• We added a new Blogging 101 post to our series talking about different types of post ideas that you can include on your blog other than reviews. You can check it out by clicking here! We also added a post on the Do's and Don'ts of blogging.

• Amber got real and did an entire post on realistic sex scenes in YA, and their importance to readers. If that sounds like something you want to check out, click here!

• For the first time EVER (yes, we know, we're horribly behind!), Amber decided that she wanted to dive into some audiobooks this year, and after asking for some recommendations, she came up with this list of audiobooks that she wants to read this year.

FEBRUARY 2019

• We celebrated Valentine's Day by highlighting some of our favorite swoon-worthy reads, which you can read in this post!

MARCH 2019

• Two of us (Amber & Jessica) celebrated our birthdays this month, which is always super fun! We both turned 21 this year!

APRIL 2019

• We got nearly 1,000 people over the age of 18 who wanted to tell us why they still read YA even though they're past the "marketable" age-range for the genre. We had so many amazing responses that we wanted to take the time to share them all with you -- but since there are so many, it turns out that we had to make it a series! For 10 whole weeks, we shared 10 reasons (100 in total!) why "older" YA readers stick with the genre, and why it's important to them. You can check out all of our current installments here.

MAY 2019

• It's so wild to believe that we hit the 6-year milestone on The Book Bratz this month, and we celebrated accordingly, with a giveaway and also by looking back on some of our amazing milestones! You can check out our celebratory post and giveaway by clicking here.

• May is always the biggest month in the bookish world, and we lent a hand to the community by sharing our 2019 BookExpo and BookCon guide, which contained tips, tricks, and packing advice for both newcomers and veterans alike. We hope it helped and we would of course love to hear about any tips you may have for next year's guide!

JUNE 2019

• We had so much fun ending off May and starting June with BookExpo and BookCon this year -- you can check our recap post and pictures by clicking here!

JULY 2019

• Check out the first post ever for the Epic Fictional Bucket List, the tag that we started this month!

• We celebrated the Fourth of July with our favorite red, white, and blue reads! Check that out here!

AUGUST 2019

• We celebrated Emily's 21st birthday!

• We participated in the Productivity Book Tag!

SEPTEMBER 2019

• We started our senior year of college! (*gasp*)

• We talked about how blogging has changed us as readers! Amber put together a really thoughtful post on this, which you can read here!

OCTOBER 2019

• We celebrated Halloween with our favorite spooky reads! What are some of your faves? You can check out ours here!

NOVEMBER 2019

• We took some time to step back this month and focus on our reading and getting posts done while juggling school, so nothing super important happened on the blog this month, but it was really productive for us behind-the-scenes!

DECEMBER 2019

• We ended another great year with so many readers, followers, writers, and friends. We love doing these posts at the end of the year and being able to see how much we've grown together!

• We reviewed so many great books this year! You can check them all out in the archive here!

What was your favorite thing that we did on the blog this year? What are your recommendations for future posts/reviews? Comment down below and let us know! :-)

It's been such an amazing year with so many new friends, milestones, and achievements here on the blog, and we're so grateful that we got to spend another year with all of you wonderful followers and readers. Here's to a prosperous 2020. a fantastic new decade, and a great year full of amazing achievements for all!