 who are you? why are you in my house? and she'll be like yo we were just chatting remember me it's been a minute hi everyone welcome back to my channel i hope you're well today we are going to be doing my october wrap up so in october i only read nine books i'm ashamed oh which is the second lowest number of books i've read in a month this year my average is kind of between 11 and 14 in august i read seven when i was in a big slump and then this this month i read nine if you watched my like reading my spookiest books vlog you'll know that i gave myself like a week off from reading really like i barely remember it to be honest but it happened apparently i just didn't really read for a week so that's why the number is so much lower one thing i do want to say and i did say this in my last wrap up where my stats were a bit better than they are this month but i don't although i give my stats in these monthly wrap ups i used to do quarterly wrap ups and i think they were a lot more accurate for some of the different statistics like genre or author race stuff like that i don't think a monthly wrap up particularly a month where i didn't read that much is a very good representation like of my reading habits so i think things like quarterly wrap ups and end of year wrap up is a much better measure for that i don't feel like a lot of my statistics this month are kind of representative of my reading as a whole i read a total of 3,225 pages which is an average per day of 104 that's fine as long as as long as my daily average is over 100 pages i think that's fairly good in terms of genre i read one contemporary one fantasy one graphic novel one historical one horror two mystery one nonfiction and one sci-fi so really widespread of books there the book like categorized as horror i didn't necessarily think was horror home before dark by rodie sega like that probably is a thriller but it was categorized as horror on goodreads so like horror or thriller there i do like that this month i read like completely different genres across the board i didn't read any high fantasy which i typically do i feel like fantasy is more of like a summer thing and then i get more into things like historical and mysteries in the autumn and winter months as i'll talk about more but i'm pretty happy that we've got a really wide spread of genres there i like it to be like that i like to be reading all different kinds of genres well done megan i'm blushing a little here oh my god okay okay so i had three audiobooks and six physical books that's pretty standard for me i do read my majority of books physically i don't tend to read a lot of ebooks i didn't read any this month something that's interesting is that i read six adult books and three young adults so no middle grade i would say i usually will read maybe one middle grade a month but i didn't have any this month and i read loads of adult books which is really surprising to me usually i would say it's kind of 50 50 between young adult and adult but not this month apparently i was feeling adult books this month hey guys i haven't seen you all summer how are you doing page new year new look new page in terms of ratings i didn't give out any ratings below a three star which is pretty good i gave out two three stars one three point five star two four stars two four point five and two five stars so some of those three stars and like the three point fives were books i was hoping we're going to be like fives and we're kind of disappointing reads for me i think my average rating this month was a four point zero five five six so a four basically was my average rating this month which is good i would like on average my average rating to be above a four one stat that i'm not very happy with is that um in terms of the books i read i read from two black authors six white authors and one where the race is unknown if i'm not 100 sure i do not want to assign anyone's race to anyone so i read 67 white authors and i've spoken about in the past i would like to keep that to kind of 50 or lower i'm not happy about that but like i said i only read nine books and i don't feel like monthly wrap ups are a good representation of that hopefully when i come to the end of the year it will be 50 or lower for white authors and the rest will be more diverse authors let's get into the books i read this month so i'm gonna go through them in chronological order but where some of these early ones i don't remember very well i don't remember i don't remember love i don't remember at all i really don't because i know for a long time ago the first book i cannot speak much about because i barely remember it and it is i'm not dying with you tonight by kimberley jones and is it gilly seagull yes i gave this three stars i barely remember this book like it was a very short audiobook i remember that's why i picked it the way that i'm talking to talk about this plot is the way i usually talk about a book i haven't read so that really shows you just how unmemorable this book is but this is about two girls one white and one black i believe our authors kind of each wrote from one perspective something happens at the high school a big fight breaks out i think someone attacks a police officer but that scene was so unclear like it was so unclear what the heck is going on but something kind of contentious happens at the high school and it means that these big protests break out in the city very much like i think based on race the girls are kind of stranded at the high school and have to walk through the street that the protests are on to get home and it's it's very strange like there's not really a plot it's just them walking from one place to the other and them learning about each other and them kind of striking up this unlikely friendship i feel like it could have been way shorter like i feel like it could have been a novella the pace wasn't really there basically nothing nothing was nothing was nothing that's impressive i mean obviously i didn't hate it because i rated it three stars like that's not bad but it didn't leave a lasting impression on me in any way at all i was just very underwhelmed like i was just very underwhelmed and obviously i can barely remember a single thing about it it deals a lot with kind of like racial inequality police violence it was just okay we're not going to talk about it i'm never going to talk about that book again like i can guarantee you now i i can just erase it from my memory the next book i read was catherine house by elizabeth thomas and if you watch my vlog for this you'll know i gave it five stars i loved it i loved it so much it was so good this is so good oh my god it's one of the weirdest books i've ever read so we have ines who goes to catherine house which is this very prestigious college and you know when you go into catherine house you ain't leaving for three years you have to stay there for your entire three-year stay you are not really allowed any contact with the outside world particularly in the first part of this novel ines is struggling with her mental health she's struggling to be motivated to attend college she's struggling to get out but there's some very sinister workings going on that she isn't necessarily paying attention to one of the most interesting parts of this is that ines has kind of shut off for a lot of this so there's these things that you're like and she's like no i'm good thank you i'm just gonna have attention like this ain't my problem this ain't my problem ines whenever something shady happens we are going to pretend we didn't hear that it's very culty the school is very culty the way that this is written prepare yourself it is one of the most like weirdly written books it is so disjointed and claustrophobic and nonsensical it's a very very strange book but i love it this has got awful ratings everyone else seems to hate it and i can understand it but also you are wrong like objectively you are wrong i am right catherine house is a character itself in this book it's also a book that is kind of difficult to describe once you're out of it it makes you feel a bit like it makes you feel a bit crazy when you are reading it and then once you're out of it you're like whoa what was that if you are looking for a weird book dark academia exquisite vibes something very strange now the ordinary i would definitely recommend you pick this up i think everyone needs to read it it was so good but if you hate it don't come to me for a refund because i'm probably a lot of you will hate it i just gotta accept that the next book i read was the invisible life of adi larou by ve schwaab now i won't spend too long on this because i do have a whole reading vlog with my whole review and all my opinions in it so you can go watch that i gave this four stars so we follow adi who makes a deal with this kind of supernatural figure some people call him like a demon or the devil but i don't think that that is necessarily accurate description of him and she begs to be able to live forever and she makes this deal with him and it turns out that the deal is she can live forever she can live as long as she wants to she has the power to decide when to end it but in return no one will ever remember her so as soon as she leaves a room as soon as anyone crosses a doorway they don't remember her so she can be in their house and they can come back into the door and they're like who are you why are you in my house and she'll be like yo we were just chatting remember me it's been a minute so it means that she can ever form any lasting relationships with people and we follow her through these hundreds of years in isolation on her own and then someone remembers her and she kind of can't believe it and it's as much about the story of henry the guy who remembers her as it is about the story of her henry was a brilliant character and the book as a whole is just this haunting slow character story about adi and henry and their lives and what leads them to make the decisions that they do in their lives it's a very different book from v schwaab i mean i've only read vicious and vengeful but i typically think of her books as very plot heavy very fast paced whereas this is the complete opposite of that and so i really like seeing that from her but i cried a lot at the end the end is very powerful and the end is like v schwaab is a genius i am so powerful my mind oh it amazes me sometimes like the way that everything wraps up and comes full circle and comes together at the end is amazing okay so the next book is a complete curveball i read an on audible an audible exclusive called steven fryer's victorian secrets if you don't know who steven fryer's he's the guy who narrates the harry potter audio books that everyone loves i mean we don't need to talk about harry potter but like that's what he's typically known for on the book community i don't have anything that is counted as a book or if it's like a podcast i count it as a book it was on goodreads i listen to it this is essentially a nonfiction book narrated by steven fryer he didn't write it i think it was a guy called john wolf who wrote it taking you through all these different aspects of victorian society and like listen primary school age megan was obsessed with the victorians i loved the victorians and something about autumn and winter just makes me want to read about victorians and books set in victorian time like i'm kind of obsessed we need this this is essential this is a crisis it's the vibe i want i think it's perfect for autumn the kind of dark rainy do you get what i mean this focused on a lot of really interesting topics there was a a chapter i think it's about 12 chapters and one of them was on male gay relationships and one was on female gay relationships and i found it so interesting in the ways that they differed the way that public attitudes towards them differed how it wasn't technically although in law it was illegal to be gay if you were a man that law didn't apply to women because they kind of just thought women you know they're not important we won't make a law for them um so it was really interesting to read about female companions throughout victorian times and there was also a chapter on sex which i thought was really interesting we often think of the victorians as really prudish but they actually weren't they were really open about sex they believed that in order for a woman to get pregnant she had to orgasm as well as the man they also believed that if he had an ugly child that was a result of bad sex if he had like a beautiful child that was a result of good sex which is just so interesting but it was actually the is it the edwardian so after it was actually the edwardian period that was more prudish and because that follows the victorian period they kind of like rewrote history in some ways to kind of fulfill their beliefs and like their way of life so it was so fascinating i gave this five stars i really loved it i really loved learning about victorian times in ways i've never learned about it before if you do have audible i would really recommend this of course it's only an audible exclusive it was really really fascinating so i would really recommend it i know it's a bit different and not everyone likes on fiction but it just kind of brought the period to life for me in a way that i've never known about it before next i read if we were villains by ml rio and this was a major disappointment for me i gave it three stars it may even be like a 2.75 so this is about a group of friends who at school study Shakespeare and one of them is killed and and one of them has gone to prison for that murder for 20 years however we kind of know he didn't do it and he has agreed to tell the kind of lead officer who was on the case who is now retiring the truth of what happened and i read this in a reading vlog and i was just so sad because i wanted to love it you did your best but i guess your best wasn't good enough it is a ripoff of the secret history it is a complete ripoff like if you're gonna rip it off do it well if you're gonna rip it off do it well i didn't feel particularly attached to any of the characters i didn't feel like it had any character development they were all annoying and like the characters in the secret history are annoying like they are insufferable there's some of my hated most hated characters in the world but they're they're so interesting whereas these guys are boring i think there were too many of them i think they blurred into one another it just felt distinctly underwhelming i would just recommend go read the secret history instead of this it's the better version it's the elite version you'll have a better time this was boring okay bye see ya next was a really fun book that i haven't spoken about yet because i didn't vlog it but i read sleeping giants by sylvain new val this is my second i've read from him i've read the test which is a really short book and like obviously i'm just obsessed with sci-fi but it's in the form of files so this is files like the illuminay files which you all know is one of my favorite series of the year i oh my god how am i gonna pick a favorite book of the year i've actually read so many good ones it's very similar to illuminay in the sense that it's told entirely through interviews and diary logs it's predominantly interviews there's this kind of mysterious narrator unnamed guy we never know his name we never know his occupation but he is very much in charge of this operation where we are trying to find these sleeping giants so a hand a massive hand is discovered they are trying to bring together all these different parts they are trying to rebuild this massive giant robot thing it's a really good audio book i listen to the audio book it's a full cast oh my god they all do such a good job particularly the kind of mysterious guy i loved his narration it's a very small team it's all about their relationships with each other about the political implications of this robot being discovered because who's is it who is in control of it whose job is it to find it and it's just so good i would really recommend the audio book for this did i say i gave it 4.5 stars it was really close to being a five the ending oh my god maybe she snapped i need to read the second one straight away i'm gonna get the the last two audio books but i kind of want to own it physically as well because i know it's gonna be a series that i love but i want to book buying ban until after my birthday next year so do i read it audibly or do i wait until i get the physical book these are the questions i ask myself at night kara one of our lead characters is so good such like a snarky like to your face bold character i loved her so i would really really recommend picking this up i think it is so good i have not heard many people speaking about it um and definitely pick up the audio book if you can because the audio book is amazing the full cast you such a good job so the last few books all books i read in my reading spookiest books blog whatever i called it reading spookiest books on my tbr the first of which is before the devil break shoot by libra bray this was a 3.5 and i was so sad about it because i wanted this to be a five star it's not for main park i'm i feel terribly ill all of a sudden i can't see i've gone shaky so we are following the diviners this is the third book in the series they are a group in 1920s new york who have these kind of supernatural abilities and in this book we are introduced to kind of like i call it the monster of the week because that's kind of like terminology from things like buffy where you have a problem of the week like you have a monster of the week and then you have like a series villain so this book definitely has a series villain and then monsters of each book and i think they're struggled to give adequate attention to its monster of the week whilst still um setting you up for the series villain in the last book i also think the other books were better at honing in on a few characters we've got like 10 main and supporting characters in the group and something the first two books did really well was focusing on two of them and really knowing their story i loved how in their dreams we really focused in on henry and ling and they were kind of the stars of the show they weren't missing in this book like why do you spend a whole book getting me attached to these characters then being some of my favorite characters in the series and then barely giving me any of them like i just don't i don't vibe with it this just killed my vibe i need to go home but don't you think you would really benefit from this i'm literally going home i was just sad about it it got a 3.5 because i think the writing is great i think the world building is great i think the story line as a whole is very good i think the braze ability for theatrics and the and just the way you feel reading it is very good but there were a lot of different aspects of the plot that i was very disappointed in hopefully king of crows the last one in the series will be better i'm hoping to finish it in the next couple months just so that the series is done because i have a tendency to start series and never finish them so i'm trying to just get through the series that i have started then i read a graphic novel the graveyard book volume two by neil gayman this was a really fun read i gave it four stars we are following bod as he lives in the graveyard where he has grown up he escaped to the graveyard when his family were murdered and the ghosts there and the supernatural beings there have raised him it's just about him kind of figuring life out as someone who hasn't lived in the rest of society it's really funny the illustrations are really fun it's kind of in this comic book strip style if you want something easy quick fun that is a bit spooky this is a great choice and then the last book that i read was home before dark by riley sega i gave this four stars so in this we have our main character who when she was a child her family fled this house in the middle of the night after only having lived there 20 days and they claimed that it was haunted that it had been attacked by ghosts her father wrote a very famous ghost book about it and it kind of followed her throughout her life she never believed that it was true she couldn't remember a lot of this happening so she's always been very sceptic of it and always just wanted her parents to tell the truth but they never have when her dad dies she finds out that her family owned the house still they never sold the house which she didn't know and so as a her job is kind of like a fixed upper of houses so she decides to go there fix the house up for selling and also try to find out some of the truth about what really happened this was really spooky it's very got supernatural vibes you don't know whether the house is haunted or not a lot of people in this small town have a vendetta out against her dad because they resent him writing this story and it kind of being what the town was then known for so there's a lot of kind of untrustworthy people who resent the family for what happened I really liked this I thought the pacing was brilliant I thought writing and the atmosphere he creates is so good I thought particularly what was brilliant about this was that we flipped back and forth between the present day and the book that her dad wrote and it was just so good at creating questions for you and then answering them a hundred pages later there is this radio that keeps turning on by itself it will be unplugged and then it will suddenly be plugged in again and be playing music like every morning how many people are scared me too I was really really scared I thought it was very unpredictable which was my main positive for this because the last book I read by Riley Sagar I really enjoyed Look Every Door but I predicted a major element of it literally from the first page and so that was a real drawback for me and so in this the main thing I wanted for it was it to keep me on my toes and it definitely did the last scene I was like sitting there hand clutched to my chest like trying to read it so fast just to get through it I really really liked it so I'd recommend picking it up if you can so there we have it that is my October wrap up I hope you enjoyed it let me know how October went for you and if you have any plans in November for what you're reading I'm going to start reading The Bear and the Nightingale soon for our read along also let me down down below if you're partaking in the Thousand Doors readathon with us at the moment and how it's going for you and yeah I will see you very very soon bye