DECEMBER 2025: Best and Worst Books of the Month

Hi everyone. Today, I’ll be talking about the best and worst books I read in December. I know this post is a bit late, but it is here now.

1. WORST BOOK OF THE MONTH:  The Russian Doll by Kristen Loesch

This book is a historical fiction romance with a twinge of mystery that takes place from the Russian Revolution to the end of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. The story focuses on “an epic love story” that affects the lives of three generations of Russian women, Rosie, Katya, and Tonya, whose narratives are all interconnected by Russian fairy tales.  However, I didn’t like the main couple of the book―Tonya and Valentin―and the mystery, why Raisa’s father and sister were murdered and the whole reason why Raisa went back to Russia in the first place, is never clarified. Overall, the book was rather a disappointment.

2. BEST BOOK OF THE MONTH: Legion versus Phalanx by Myke Cole

Legion versus phalanx. Which one is superior? Which one has defeated the other several times in this boxing match for infantry supremacy in the ancient world?

The Roman legion. 

And, in this book, author Myke Cole sets out to explain why this is so by analyzing six different battles of Antiquity in which Hellenistic phalanxes faced the Roman legion and lost. These battles are the battles of Heraclea, Asculum, Beneventum, Cynoscephalae, Magnesia, and Pydna. After Pydna, the author says, the mighty phalanx, which, when done correctly is impenetrable, was beaten. The legion was triumphant and the legacy of Alexander the Great―all the phalanxes the Romans fought were post-Alexander the Great―shattered forever.

This book is for the general reader. If you pick this up expecting a scholarly account of the deathmatch between the Hellenistic phalanx and the Roman legion, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. However, the author does love the topic and you can tell. His enthusiasm alone is enough to immerse you in the telling of the boxing match between these two forms of infantry warfare in Antiquity.

3. HISTORICAL FICTION AND HORROR: Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-García

I know I said I wasn’t going to pick another one of this author’s books after reading Gods of Jade and Shadow and not liking it at all (read my review here), but the cover of Mexican Gothic made me wonder about the stratification of social classes in Mexico, colonialism, and eugenics during the 1950s (especially so close after the end of WWII) and I was curious to see how the author portrayed that in her book. The answer: not well enough to keep me interested enough to finish the book. I also didn’t like the main character, and that’s unfortunate because Noemí is an unlikely heroine. This is conveyed by the fact that she is socialite debutante, born in a wealthy family, and that she wants to go to college. For a woman, this is a big deal in Mexico of the 1950s. However, I couldn’t connect with her at all and her desire to complete a degree, though mentioned here and there, was less and less important the further along into the book we got. So, it felt a lot like Noemí had no purpose and just spent a lot of time walking through the house doing nothing. I get though that the house is also relevant to the plot, and that it is important for us to get to know it but the writing left a lot to be desired. In my opinion, the book could’ve been a lot better. Unfortunately, the execution was poorly done.

That is everything for today. Thank you for stopping by. Next time, I’ll be talking about my January Wrap Up. Bye!