This guest post is from Verity, who lives in the UK, and reads a book set in every US state plus DC every year. I was super curious, so I asked her about it. Yes, I know, I’m nosy.

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Hello, my name is Verity and I like writing cheques my reading brain doesn’t like cashing. Let me explain.

I like to read romance and cozy crime. I have a terrible habit of finding a series I like and then binging the lot. I have an even worse habit of re-listening to my favourite murder mysteries and Terry Pratchett books while I walk to and from the office instead of listening to something new. I have an entire skinny Ikea Billy bookcase double stacked with books waiting to be read (and an overflow pile in front of it) as well as a kindle account groaning with purchases and proofs (thanks NetGalley).

And every year I decide it’ll be a good idea to do a reading challenge.

It’ll help me get the backlog down, I tell myself.

It’ll give me direction and purpose in my reading.

Right? Right? Wrong. Oh, so wrong.

It started with Book Riot’s Read Harder challenge one year, but really I just want to read books that have resolutions (preferably happy ones) and not literary fiction or sad books. Hence the romance. And mystery.

So every year, for the last five years, I’ve challenged myself to read a book set in each state of the US plus Washington, DC. I think I started because I saw someone else doing it and did a rough count in my head of how many series I read already were in different states, got to about a dozen and thought “Oh that’ll be easy”.

Reader: it was not.

50 is a lot of states. (Ed. note: Yes, it is.)

I print out a map to stick in my journal and colour in, and I chose a colour to be the theme.

I have lofty goals like not using an author more than once, or counting rereads as long as I haven’t used them in the challenge before. Every year I think I’ll be better this year, that I only need to do four or five a month, that I’ll happen across most of the states naturally in the course of my reading and it won’t end up in a mad rush at the end of the year.

But every year those goals fall by the wayside and at the start of December I realise I have about a dozen states still to do. And it’s always the same few that cause me trouble.

• They often have Ms and Is in their names.
• Often they’re states which feature in a lot of Very Old School romances set in the Old West that I really don’t want to read (but I will if it’s a choice between completing the list and not, even though I’ll hate every moment of it).

There are a tonne of books set in New York, Chicago, and LA. There aren’t so many set in Louisville, Milwaukee and Albuquerque. Really the only rule I’ve ever stuck to is that it has to be 51 different books. Doesn’t matter if a book’s about a road trip from Minneapolis to Boise, I can only use it once.

And that’s why this December my reading included:

• a middle grade adventure novel set in North Dakota (Codename Zero by Chris Rylander) ( A | BN | K | AB )
• a novella length nonfiction pamphlet about Ernest Hemingway and Sun Valley (Hemingway and Sun Valley: The Making of an Icon) ( A )
• and a memoir about evangelical Christianity in middle America in the immediate aftermath of the 2016 election. (God Land by Lyz Lenz) ( A | BN | K | AB )

Oh and about a dozen states this year come courtesy of one cozy crime novella series about a woman travelling around the country in an RV she bought after winning the lottery (The Rambling RV series by Patti Benning starting with Murder in Michigan – each book a different state! An ideal opportunity to binge!

And she has other series that are set in Kentucky (The Real Estate Rescue series, starting with Flippin’ Out) ( A ) and Michigan (Darling Deli series, starting with Pastrami Murder)! ( A | BN )

And cozy crime tends to do me better than romance no matter how hard I try – all those series about business owners finding bodies as they go about their business in small towns do lend themselves to what (as a Brit) I think of as “the states in the middle”.

There seems to be a sad dearth of romances set in small towns that aren’t in in-land California or upstate New York. Or the Pacific North West. Although each year there seems to be one state where a bunch of authors have decided to set their romances. One year it was South Carolina. Another it was Maine.

There’s also a big problem of romances set in generic towns – or a nonspecific spot in “New England”.

If this is my chance to get my message to romance authors – and it well might be. I know you’re out there, so here is my plea:

Please be specific – tell me which state you’re setting your book in. Just pick one. I’m a Brit, I won’t know if you’re missing some crucial detail for authenticity about daily life in Ohio. Maybe mention a buckeye, or the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That’ll do. And if your state of choice can be named in the blurb – or at least somewhere in the kindle sample – I will love you for it. “Charlie has just moved back to the small town she grew up in to take over her family’s farm. But it means she’ll have to face her past with the town’s new mayor/sheriff/librarian/deli owner Bowen. He’s the reason she left Iowa/Wisconsin/ Indiana/Arkansas in the first place.”

And if it’s a state that not many other people are setting books within, I’m a loyal customer. I’ve got money and I’m willing to spend it (especially in the last quarter of the year) and so I’ll come back every year for the rest of the series.

• Ashley Herring Blake’s Bright Falls series covered me for Oregon for three years.
• Sarah Morgan’s O’Neil Brothers series did the same thing with Vermont.
• Kansas is Beverly Jenkins’s any year she blesses us with a new Blessings book. And she’s saved my bacon on some of the Cowboy-y states more than once – this year it was Louisiana (Rebel).

I’m going to have to find a new Ohio option for 2025 because I’ve run out of books in the cozy crime series I have been using (Emilie Henry’s Ministry is Murder, starting with Blessed is the Busybody – the detective is the minister’s wife) and the same applies to Kentucky (Unless Patti Benning adds to the Real Estate Rescue series).

If you’re writing about a global pop sensation and her romance with an NFL star, don’t invent a team that plays in San Antonio or Sacramento, choose Louisville or Columbus.

If you’re writing a romance about a winter sports star, maybe base them in Park City not Lake Tahoe?

And even though it gets harder every year, I’ll be trying again 2025 – so if you’re currently scanning Taylor Swift songs for a title for your next romance, think of me and set “How You Get The Girl” in Concord or Wilmington. Help me make 2025 the year I get this reading challenge thing nailed…

Readers Note: Verity finished her 2024 reading challenge at 11.21pm on Sunday 29 December 2024, fully 40 hours earlier than she finished the challenge in 2023. As such she sees it as a triumph and has already printed her map out again for 2025.

What massive reading challenges have you undertaken? Have you read books set in all 50 states?