Welcome back to what will be my final romance round-up for the Australian Women Writer’s challenge. As a fellow reviewer who has participated in the AWW challenge for many years, and now as the Romance Editor for 2021, writing this final wrap post was bittersweet. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading each and every one of the romance reviews submitted this year, and my TBR has tripled in size because of it. I loved being part of the 2021 Australian Women Writer’s Challenge team, and am so grateful to have been part of this challenge. I want to thank each and every single person who took the time to write a review and link it to the challenge’s databases, as together we’ve made a difference in the reviewing of novels written by Australian Women Writers.

While it might be goodbye to the current monthly wrap-ups, rest assured the Australian Women Writers Challenge will live on. From the 1st January 2021, the website will close in part, and cease to focus on contemporary Australian writers, and instead focus on Aussie Women Writers from the 19th and 20th Century who were overshadowed by their male counterparts, and aren’t the focus of current reading trends as it were today. That said, the challenge as we know and love it currently lives on via the Facebook groups: Love Reading Books by Aussie Women and Australian Women Writers News and Events.  If you haven’t already, I highly suggest you like/join these pages so you can continue to be notified of more contemporary reviews. For more information on the challenges changes, feel free to click here to be taken to the update About Page for the challenge.

November 2021

In November 2021, there were twenty-six reviews of twenty-one books written by eighteen of our amazing Australian Women Writer’s. There were a really good mix of sub-genres represented this month, with contemporary romance reigning supreme once more with twelve titles reviewed, followed by category romance, romantic suspense, historical romance, and festive romance with reviews of two individual titles each and erotica with one title reviewed. Nine of the books reviewed were self-published, with the rest traditionally published and interestingly all but three of the books were published in 2021, with two published in 2020 and one in 2019.

The top two* reviewed books in November were:

*note: Every other book received one review each.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The top three reviewers in November were:

December 2021

Keeping in mind that December is still ongoing as I write this, the following stats are correct as of the 27th December 2021. So far for December 2021, there has been a total of twenty-seven reviews submitted by nineteen reviewers across twenty individual book titles. I expect this number will likely be higher closer to the end of the month, as reviewers like myself, scramble to fit in our last reviews for the year.  As it currently stands, contemporary romance was the most popular sub-genre of the month, with thirteen individual titles reviewed, followed by festive romances with four books reviewed, and historical romance and romantic suspense with two book reviews per sub-genre. Interestingly there were no category romances reviewed this month. Of the twenty-seven titles, eight of the books were self-published with the remainder traditionally published. There were a wide range of contemporary publication years represented throughout the books chosen for review this month, with the majority of the titles being 2021 releases, two from 2020, one each from 2018, 2017, 2014 and 2013 respectfully.

The most reviewed books in December were:

the dictionary of lost words

The top three reviewers for December were:

2021: That’s a Wrap!

Once again I just want to thank each and every one of you who frequent this blog and read and review books by our talented Aussie Women Writers. This year alone in the romance category we have achieved some amazing numbers/statistics that just wouldn’t be possible without your help!

In 2021, within the Romance, Erotica and Romance Suspense sub-category of the Australian Women Writers Challenge there were 416 reviews submitted across 236 individual book titles written by 144 of our amazing Australian Women Writers!

The top ten most reviewed books of 2021 in the Romance, Erotica and Romantic Suspense sub-category were:

 

the dictionary of lost words

We had five way tie for our ten most reviewed book; the following five books all received 5 reviews each:

Book cover

Lastly, our top four reviewers in 2021 for the Romance, Erotica and Romantic Suspense category were:

  • Helen Sibbritt, who in the past twelve months has submitted 119 reviews!
  • Mrs B’s Book Reviews who submitted 42 reviews!
  • Brenda Telford who submitted 39 reviews!
  • and KTbookbingo who submitted 20 reviews!

And just like that, 2021 is done and dusted. I wish all of your a happy new year, that is hopefully wondefully bookish and totally booked out!

About Me: Hey, I’m Jess from The Never Ending Bookshelf. I’m an avid reader, book collector (sometimes book hoarder) and a hopeless romantic. I live and breathe everything to do with the written word, working by day as a bookseller and by night as a book blogger. You can find me at The Never Ending Bookshelf, Instagram, Twitter, Goodreads and on Facebook.