Happy New Year! As we shed off the holidays and enter 2025, let’s start out with a gentle ease into the fresh reading season. This month, BookSparks CEO, Crystal Patriarche, is giving us one new release and one favorite read from 2024 to dive into in January. And because we’re all still recuperating from the holiday season, she’s also providing a lineup of must-watch TV in case you still need a little downtime.

The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus by Emma Knight

In this coming-of-age, reflective and heartwarming novel Penelope is on a search to uncover truths her family hid from her. She travels to the University of Edinburgh where she meets Lord Lennox, a famous writer and old friend of her father’s, who may be able to help her in her search. As she learns more about Lod Lennox and his fascinating family, she discovers more about herself as a friend, partner and mother in ways she never expected.

Buy the book now: Bookshop.org | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

The Wedding PeopleThe Wedding People by Alison Espach

Life has a funny way of throwing us loop after loop. On a trip to Cornwall Inn, Phoebe is determined to have her one self-indulgent stay sailing and shucking oysters. During her stay, she was swept up into the wedding plans of a bride also staying at the inn. The two end up confiding in each other and become unlikely friends during one of the biggest events of their lives.

Buy the book now: Bookshop.org | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

New TV & Movies

The Pitt 

The Pitt, staring Noah Wyle, is a heart-racing, gritty, and realistic look at the state of hospitals and the healthcare worker shortage in America. Wyle plays Dr. Michael Robinavitch, who is on a 15-hour shift at the Pittsburg Trauma Medical Center. The series is broken up into by episode into one hour of his shift, where he and his staff of nurses and other medical professionals face challenges trying to save the lives of patients. Amidst the hospital chaos, they are also trying to find personal balance as the few people standing between life and death for so many. The show portrays the raw and heartbreaking work medical professionals face in an ever-shifting world where the stakes couldn’t be higher. This new drama series releases January 9 on HBO.

Paradise

Another amazing drama series is heading to our screens on January 28. Streaming on Hulu, Paradise stars Sterling K. Brown as Xavier Collins, a secret service agent on a mission to protect the president, played by James Marsden. But when the president is found dead on his bedroom floor and Xavier is the last one to have seen him, he must prove his innocence while protecting his family and the secrets he was sworn to shield at the start of his mission.

The Couple Next Door

The Couple Next Door is available to stream on STARZ January 17, and stars Sam Heughan, Eleanor Tomlinson, Alfred Enoch, and Jessica De Gouw. Evie, played by Tomlinson, and Pete, played by Enoch, are a couple living in an idyllic suburban neighborhood. Their routines have become a bit stale, and Evie wants more excitement from their relationship. Then, a new couple moves into their neighborhood, Danny, played by Heughan, and Becka, played by De Gouw. They form a friendship with the new couple, but the more Evie gets to know them, the more obsessed she becomes about the couple and their relationship, causing tensions to flare between the four of them.

LAID 

If you are looking for some dark comedy to kick off the new year, look no further than LAID, the Peacock rom-com series releasing this January. Ruby has been unlucky in love, but it is about to get much worse than she could have thought. Getting kicked out of a guy’s house after a hookup is one thing, but learning not one, but six of your exes have died is a whole new situation for Ruby. With the help of her best friend AJ, the two girls set off to warn all her exes that their lives could be in danger, as someone seems to have it out for Ruby’s former loves. But what’s a girl to do when she starts to fall for a new guy who could be the one? Will he end up like the rest? And what will become of her in dredging up all these old feelings for her exes?

Black Doves 

With all the craziness of the end of the year, Black Doves may have slipped under your radar when it was released in December of 2024, so now is the perfect time to get caught up. A Netflix series starring Keira Knightly in a holiday spy thriller, yes please! After her secret lover is assassinated, Helen believes she was the likely target and is on a mission to find who did this and get revenge. But she is far too valuable to the Black Doves, the spy network she works for, as the wife of a politician, to risk on such a dangerous mission. So, to protect her, she is joined by an old friend and assassin, Sam, to find the culprit and make amends for her loss.

The Recruit Season 2

Noah Centineo stars in this action-packed series with a touch of comedy that keeps audiences coming back for more. As a lawyer, Owen does not really get his hands dirty, but when duties call for him to get more involved in his new case, he jumps headfirst into a mission for the CIA. He is sent to Seoul for espionage where he must, begrudgingly, work with another spy, Jang Kyun, a man willing to do anything to protect the ones he loves, even if that means betraying his new partner. Together, they work to find the threat they have followed all the way to South Korea, but is a more dangerous threat coming from inside the agency? Season two releases on Netflix January 30.

Night Agent Season 2

Netflix is killing it this January with CIA spy thrillers. Season two of Night Agent comes out this month starring Peter Sutherland, a member of Night Agent, a secret CIA force established to protect American weapons information. When details about a secret nuclear project is leaked, Peter knows it was from someone inside the agency, and it is up to him to find who leaked the info and who has it now, as it could lead to the total annihilation of New York and potentially the world. But since going AWOL, he is not sure who he can trust and he is running out of time. Night Agent season two will be on Netflix this January 30.