The Curated Bookshelf: February 2023’s Theme

Welcome to this month’s Curated Bookshelf! I’m a romantic at heart and Valentine’s Day has always been my favorite holiday, so I’m quite happy February is finally here again. Of course that meant I thought long and hard about this month’s theme. I considered featuring my favorite love stories, but, what with celebrating 13 years of marriage later this year, I thought it might be fun to find and feature books that have established couples.

Part of the joy of reading a book, for me, at least, is finding that love story in the pages. Sometimes it’s a romance so it’s all over the place. Sometimes it’s so subtle I almost miss it. Once in a while it’s an older couple learning to fall in love with each other again. I love stories where couples come back together years later and I adore the ones peppered with humor and food.

But one thing that’s harder to find, especially in stories where it’s all about a new couple meeting and falling in love, is that couple that’s already fallen in love, that’s already leaped over hurdles. My husband and I have been together for well over a decade, so we’ve been through quite a lot. The older I get, the more married I get, the more I’d like to see relationships like my own. I want to see books with couples who have been together, who have problems to deal with and may need to learn to be a couple again. And sometimes I just want to see couples go through things together as a couple, or not. Regardless, I have a new interest in reading those books that have a couple that started before the beginning of the story.

This month, I’ll be highlighting 12 books that have established couples, whether married or not. Sometimes they’re fun, sometimes they’re shocking, sometimes they just make you wonder why.

Throughout this month, I’ll be giving each book its own Highlight post. I’ll discuss why I chose that particular book as well as put a spotlight on it, other reviews, and multiple purchase links. As I mentioned when I first introduced The Curated Bookshelf, I won’t earn a cent if you choose to use one of the links to purchase a book (I am not affiliated with any purchase sites), but the author/publisher will. Choose wisely?

I’m excited to share the 12 books I’ve chosen, and they’ll remain on the shelf until February 28th. On March 1st, there will be a new set of books and a new theme.

Feel free to check out all the books I’ll be highlighting on The Curated Bookshelf from the menu or via this link.

Thank you, and I hope you enjoy February’s books!