 33. We are not interested in that. It was terrible. Don't eat while you're reading this. And I just feel nothing about that. It was a journey. I really liked this. Hey guys it's Leigh Ann and I'm here today with my October wrap up. Okay so if you watched my TBR video you know that I had um well officially I said I had 37 books on my TBR but I'm pretty sure in actual fact I had 38. But anyway how many did I get through? This many. So most? Not all but most. So let's count them together shall we? 33. I'm pretty sure. I counted twice still not completely confident but I'm pretty sure it's over 30 and I see the 32 or 33. I was stacking them as I read so um that being the case uh the first one that I read is in the bottom of this stack and then the last one that I read is the top of this stack. So we're gonna do it in reverse order so they will also be in the order in which I remember them best. Oh god um yeah this is bananas. So first things oh god this is okay no don't fall don't fall. So shadow and nope okay off to a great start. Sword and Citadel is the bind up of Sword of the Lictor and Citadel of the Autarch, Citadel of the Autarch. These are books three and four in the Book of the New Sun by Jean Wolf. I made my fellow Blaze and Bodice Rippers co-hosts read Shadow and Claw when it was my pick back in whatever month I picked it and me and Bethany liked Shadow and Claw the other two didn't so then she and I went on or decided that we would go on together to read the rest of the Book of the New Sun and um I told Bethany how I'd do the month I was like okay I don't think I can do both Sword and Citadel this month so I can I can do Sword and we can do Citadel like next month or at seven point in the future and she was like sure so I finished Sword of the Lictor uh I have yet to read Citadel of the Autarch that's that's next well not next for me to read immediately but yeah anyway it's bananas uh this series is bananas this project is bananas um if you don't know anything about it we do have the live show where we chatted about the first two installments in this series it's also just like one of those like progenitors of the genre of like science fiction science fantasy dying earth type of thing and this similarly to Dune has like influenced a ton of authors that came after it but it's notoriously difficult to understand even more so than Dune but there's a chapter guide which um I need to look at I didn't I mean I was trying to finish Sword before the end of October so I'm gonna go back and look at the chapter guide for the chapters I mean for the for Sword of the Lictor so I can make sure that I get all of the nutrients out of this but I did scarf it down I can't I don't know I in in terms of recommending the book of the news then I think if you're into like like very detailed OGSF then yes and if you like me just like to pick up books that are progenitors in the genre just kind of as like a history lesson for the genre then I recommend it but it's it's weird and complicated and yeah it's not that's something you can casually pick up basically so you're interested I would say look into it first and then decide if you want to pick it next up I read Vesperteen by Margaret Rodgerson yes this is still shrink-wrapped my copy didn't arrive until like the very end of the month and uh because the book came out on October 5th so I put it on my October TBR thinking well I'll get it um when it comes out but it has only arrived like the last week of October um but Scribd had the audiobook so I had already started listening to it on Scribd and I just finished listening to it on Scribd and didn't bother unwrapping this when it did arrive give this one star so I will be selling this probably on like Hangover eBay or something because uh it was terrible I really liked Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rodgerson which a lot of people don't or didn't and then most people seemed to like Sorcery of Thorns better and I am not one of those people I really really strongly disliked Sorcery of Thorns so I figured she's coming out with a new book well let's see which way this falls if it's tends more towards the enchantment or more towards the Sorcery and this definitely tended more towards Sorcery except even worse so I'm gonna say that Enchantment was just a fluke and that this and Sorcery are apparently more indicative of what a writing style is like and it is not for me so I found this to be horribly juvenile filled with the most painfully unrealistic expository dialogue and info dumping there didn't really seem to be a plot other than just sort of like things happening and the inclusion of like moralizing life lessons and uh I guess mental health rap it was just so unbelievably ham fistedly shoved in and like when it was brought up it was so so on the nose I just I could not with this it was not amusing it was not entertaining it was not it was not anything and the world building was terrible the characters were flat and tropey and boring and I mean honestly like its biggest crime is just being so boring yeah so for a book about a nun who can deal with like the dead you know this is entirely lacking an atmosphere suspense intrigue mystery or really anything at all so I do not recommend one out of five stars next well I'm gonna keep saying next up I read even though this is reverse order just just ignore that so next up I have The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward this is a horror thriller adult fiction book that is a new release as well and is blurbed by like just about every person you can think of Joe Hill Alex North Stephen King on the front and it was not what I expected I mean it is what I expected in so far as it is an adult like horror thriller type thing but I don't I mean and I can't really tell you why it's not what I expected because that's extremely spoilery because it's a lot to do with sort of where things end up going like what ends up being the resolution to the book it was just absolutely not what I expected and in a very good way not what I expected as it was going along I was like this is well written but I'll probably give it a three because like I don't know and then it went where it was going and I finished it and I was like oh well that's a four for sure like I don't know if I can give it five but like yeah definitely four so I can't say yeah I mean well yeah I definitely didn't Stephen King's blurb a true nerve shredder that keeps its mind blowing secrets to the very end that's I guess that's a lot of what I went into it expecting based on what Stephen King had to say about it and I don't think that that's an accurate description of what this the experience of reading this book is like it's not a nerve shredder with mind blowing secrets I mean I didn't expect it to go where it did so I guess that's mind blowing but it's a book that's quite contemplative and very kind of uh unhurried about where it's going so I wouldn't call that a nerve shredder and it's very it kind of lulls you into making you feel like you kind of know where this is going which is again why it surprised me it surprised me where it ended up going because of what how it had been blurbed and my preconceived expectations as well as just how it's like reading the book when you're you feel like you know where it's going and then it that's not exactly where it goes so anyway I'm being really vague because I do recommend it it is a horror book so you know more so than usual was books I would say look up trigger warnings just because horror tends to intentionally have things that would be triggering but yeah I think it was really good and it was just very unexpected which after getting a crash course and what thrillers can be like this month this was towards the end of that month so credit where it was due after like binging a bunch of thrillers I was like well this one did not do anything that I expected so I would recommend this book next up I have The X-Hex by Erin Sterling and I deeply regret choosing this as my book of the month I gave it one star well it didn't despise it was not fun it was not cute it was not it was it was terrible it was literally the worst thing ever so I mean it's a it's a rom-com about a witch who cursed her boyfriend some time ago and just that's that's pretty much the whole thing or at least that's like the whole setup the whole premise and again I went into it I'm not expecting this to be like my favorite book in the world or to be like earthshattering literature but I loved watching shows like The Witched and I Dream of Genie uh or Sabrina the Teenaged Witch things like that so if it was gonna like be that kind of vibes then I would have been into it but honestly the characters were so loathsome it well I mean she in particular was loathsome and he was just like boring and the whole story was kind of boring and I kind of like it was it was terrible it was so terrible like the romance wasn't charming the magic the only possibly redeeming thing about it was like the the location where it's taking place the like small town but then I just got annoyed with that because I felt like it was like tricking me with like being charming and I was like you can't write this bad a book and then just be like look how charming this place is and like I don't care how charming it is the rest of this is terrible you don't get away with that so um yeah do not recommend the x-hacks next up I have I'll do them together I think I read yeah I'm gonna read them back to back The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare and the Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson Winterson yeah which is the Hogarth Shakespeare retelling of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale and uh as usual um I had a live chat on my channel with my friend Heather where we we ended up actually talking about a lot of things that were not The Winter's Tale like Hemingway and Catcher in the Rye you know as one does but uh we both felt that uh most probably we would say that this is the best Hogarth we've read so far which isn't actually that high in praise because we've been fairly disappointed with a lot of the Hogarths and we've sort of through this project diagnosed why we think that is but of the ones that we've read we we think this one was one of the most successful retellings and both successful in terms of being a retelling and also successful in terms of just being a good book which are two different and often mutually exclusive things we've found so anyway um yeah uh Winter's Tale has never been like my favorite Shakespeare play it's it's I mean a lot of the flaws that we found in The Gap of Time were honestly just to do with how flawed we feel the source material is because if you've never read The Winter's Tale it's it's very strange and that strangeness this author saddles with that in in trying to adapt it then again this author chose The Winter's Tale as the one that she wanted to retell so I mean that's on you I guess so yeah generally speaking we would recommend next up I have The Last Final Girl by Stephen Graham Jones this is my first Stephen Graham Jones book and Evie would like it to be my last Stephen Graham Jones book because she doesn't want me to hate any other of his books I think there's a good chance that if I read any of his other books that I mean no matter if I liked or disliked them I can't imagine hating any of them the way that I hated this because uh yeah I hated this book I gave it one star this was their Blades and Bottoms for British Book Club pick so the live show for it where we all dressed up for Halloween is on Amanda's channel if you want to see us all decked out in our final girl finery so that was fun and actually we we more more so even than usual had a variety of opinion on offer we had one star two star three stars and four stars among the four of us so yeah this is written kind of like a screenplay but not actually like a screenplay like it's not actually like a script format because it's it's kind of a running like it's it's written like a novel you know the format but it's like a screenplay because it keeps giving you like speech cues and then like what the camera is supposedly doing as though this was a film and then all the rest of it is just constant and I am not exaggerating constant references to actual slashers and if you don't get all those references you literally will not know what's happening because that's all that it is it's just references and camera angles so it's a no from me next up I have the last seance tales of the supernatural by agatha christie I've had this book for some time because I picked it up a few years ago to do a giveaway and I was like I want a copy for myself too so I got a copy for myself and then never read it and I really liked this which like yay because the first time other than the nonfiction I read in college the first fiction of agatha christie that I ever read was the murder on the orient express and I hated it so I was like oh no I love all these agatha christie adaptations but like I don't want to hate her writing do I hate her writing do I only like the adaptations but then I really really loved and then there were none and now and then oh yeah I did read the secret of chimneys earlier this year yeah earlier this year and that was fine I mean I don't think it's one of her like most famous um and it was I didn't hate it was fine I really really liked this I mean as with any short story collection like I just can't imagine ever giving a short story collection five stars because like they're bound to not all be amazing but overall I mean I did give this four stars because like for the most part I enjoy just about every story in here for being an older book I mean I sort of go in expecting like oh this will be like scary for when it was written but we're all way more advanced than that now I actually found a lot of the stories to be quite chilling and a little unsettling so I absolutely recommend this yeah pleasantly I don't want to say pleasantly surprised because I expected or hoped she'll like it I guess I'm relieved pleasantly relieved to have like frankly kind of loved this I can see myself rereading this in future halloween's just like because it was like a nice one to dip into because they're all short stories so it's very digestible next up I have The Alieness by Caleb Carr and um I hated this I've been wanting to read this for so long because I really really wanted to watch the show that's on TNT I think possibly probably I do still want to watch the show and I suspect that I will like the show the book the book absolutely not and actually like I was thinking about when I was going to wrap up how I would be able to talk about this because I was thinking that I'd be talking about them in order that I read them so we're obviously not doing that but um I bring that up because I'll just skip to it um I almost heard them back to back not quite there was one in between but um I read The Devil in the White City by Eric Larson which is nonfiction about um the was this H Holmes HH Holmes yeah HH Holmes um and this I mean people had always praised when they talked about uh this book praised it for how digestible and how sort of novel like the narration of it is despite it being nonfiction and it is I really really like this I give this four stars and I'll properly talk about that when I get to it back in you go the stack but this book which is fiction felt more like it was a nonfiction book trying to just kind of tell you about the history of this era in as dry and as uninteresting a way as possible and this is a novel and I was just I just couldn't help constantly comparing it in my mind to The Devil in the White City where I was like because this again this is supposed to be a novel this is supposed to be a work of fiction so you have you know you can mess with history and mess with facts and tell it however suspenseful you want it and I cannot even I cannot possibly tell you how many times this book completely stops the story to just start telling you the history of like this literal this place this time period the close like literally like a nonfiction book you would expect would which in which case you would forgive it because nonfiction is literally there to educate you about this place and time this novel thinks it's its duty to educate you about this place and time so like you feel like you're on a walking tour and the tour guide keeps stopping to tell you about the history of stuff that just doesn't work when this when the it's through the perspective of your main character who is you know on the hunt for a serial killer now they're going to stop and think to themselves about the history of of like there's like the history of a restaurant at one point and I'm like are you fucking kidding me right now and if you just get the feeling that like Caleb Carr did like a motherfucking ton of research and then was like well I'm just gonna put it all in there because that's not going to waste even though you absolutely do not need it in there I mean to really definitely weave a portrait that is authentic of a certain place in time in history that is not done through nonstop info dumping encyclopedic info dumping of just like history and facts about the time and place I was just and then honestly like the story itself just it was so the pacing was just atrocious and the the characters themselves are constantly dumping info at each other in a way that was utterly unbelievable and then like for being hyper concerned with the history of this time and place it was just weirdly anachronistic about certain things that just made it feel inauthentic and just the honestly like then when it finally came to the climb climactic moment it wasn't that climactic it just oh my god this book was such a fucking slog I hated it so much I gave it two stars I think because like so much effort you know went into like I guess researching the time and place and then that's I guess that's cool but uh as a story no and the characters were just so wooden they did not feel like people so it's really hard to just feel invested in this at all which is why I do think that I will like the show because if the show is unlikely to keep stopping to narrate at you about the history of a place and also the actors will breathe life into these characters these characters who are utterly lifeless in the book and I'm not talking about the corpses uh next up I have which was in between me reading The Devil in the White City and The Alienest was One by One by Ruth Ware which I believe is intentionally supposed to be sort of taking its cues from and then there were none by Agatha Christie because Ruth Ware also took her cues from different book different classic book for another thriller that I read also in October anyway uh One by One is a close isolated closed circle mystery that takes place in a chalet where they are uh so it's not an island like and then there were none like I think it's like a christmas or new year's holiday and they're snowed in slash as well well they're snowed in then they start dying and someone is killing them I really enjoyed this I really did I think it was fairly easy to guess who was going to be the who was behind everything that said I didn't take away from my enjoyment of it there were some things about the ending that I thought were like a little off so like I didn't like this one as much as I liked the other Ruth Ware book that I read this month but it definitely kept my interest and I thought it was pretty well done and again even though like I was fairly certain I knew who had done it I think it was written in a way that was still very suspenseful and compelling even if you kind of know who's doing it so I would I would for sure recommend like it's not my favorite thriller that I read in October but it was it was solid so next up I have the devil in the white city by Eric Larson and as I already said I really really really liked this it's worth the hype and it is very well done in terms of making history a nonfiction book very sort of compelling and novel like to read reading a lot of life into it and a lot of ambiance and suspense and while still you know just kind of telling you the facts about the history of the historical time period and he's doing a lot to also sort of really juxtapose everything that we know and everything about the sort of like intentions and mindset behind the building of the world's fair and the mindset of people participating in it and attending it and like all of that going on with also the murdering the serial killing and how there's a lot of times where sort of the the mindset behind each weirdly I don't know like it's not like a complete direct parallel but there are some weird parallels between the two and just the fact of them happening simultaneously so anyway it's just very well done and I you know there's a lot of interesting things about the like details because like we just sort of generally know about the world's fair but like there's a lot of things that you sort of after the fact kind of like the Eiffel Tower you know we just all we know about it and like yeah that's Paris but like where that existed you know when people would talk about something like that or have doubts about something like that so similarly with the world's fair where certain ideas that are sort of almost commonplace for us now came about during that time or would have been people would have been skeptical about them and yeah and then obviously I mean the murdering is um it's interesting to read about you know it's it's horrific but it is fascinating so I definitely I continue the recommending of this which oh yeah people aren't wrong this is good next up I have Horrid by Katrina Lena which is a YA horror book and it was pretty good I think the best thing about it is that it didn't like the whole thing was fairly cookie cutter I guess like nothing very much surprised me along the way but where it ends that did surprise me a little bit and not so much surprised me in terms of like the story is surprising it surprises me the choice that Katrina Lena made given this is YA horror when I got to the end I was like oh she did that so I kind of gained a few points from me for that because I thought ultimately like what was going on and what the answer to the sort of what is going on wasn't very good and didn't make a ton of sense and it wasn't that compelling I didn't really care about the main character that much I did really like the the setting the little town that they moved to because yeah I didn't say what this is about at all this young woman with her mother moved to this small town where her mother actually grew up because their her father the mom's husband is dead so you know money is tight so she's basically moving back to her ancestral family home and there is spooky haunty mysterious sinister things that happen and yeah so like I said the the what's going on wasn't that interesting and the who's sort of the answer to that isn't that interesting it's again more like sort of where she chooses to end this that I was like oh wow wasn't expecting that or like I wasn't expecting that from you for this book so it got some points from me for that but I think I gave this three stars because it was like it wasn't bad but it was like yeah next up I have the night service by Erin Morgenstern which was one of two patron buddy reads in October because we're just like doing a whole lot this month or we did a whole lot this month so many of course the month in which I have over 30 books on my tbr I have two patron buddy reads anyway people have been time on the night's areas for forever so I've been wanting to read the night service for forever and being a lover of purple pros and lush atmosphere et cetera et cetera I thought this would be a favorite I thought maybe it wouldn't stack up against something like the name of the wind or strange the dreamer I didn't really expect it to that's a lot of pressure for any book but it did not it did not live up I thought the writing was the best part of it but for being the best part of it it wasn't actually that good like people make such a big deal about the night circus being just so lushly atmospheric where you just want to be at the night circus and it's just amazing and just about the only thing about it that's compelling at all is how cool the night circus is because story who is she we're not interested in that characters I guess we'll have some people going along through the night circus because we may as well but I mean yeah it's really just the night circus that you're here for and it's pretty cool but not the writing about it isn't it just isn't that amazing it honestly isn't like the concept of the circus is kind of cool so hanging out you know mentally in the night circus for a minute is kind of cool but not not that cool it's not that great and the like both in concept it's not that great it's not like everything about the night circus is just like mind bogglingly amazing and then the prose itself in like the beauty and poetry of the description isn't that great either like it's it's good like it's fairly atmospheric but when that's all it has to offer is being atmospheric and then the atmosphericness of it just isn't that mind boggling I don't get the big deal about this it's pretty lackluster in my opinion next up I have small spaces by Catherine Arden I was super disappointed with this Catherine Arden wrote The Bear and the Nightingale at the Winter Night Trilogy and then this charming or this charming looking little middle grade book with a scarecrow on it and like it would you know it's very it seems like it's going to be very sort of a la the goose bumps but by Catherine Arden and her writing is so lush and evocative in the Winter Night Trilogy so I expected it to be you know on a middle grade level but to bring that atmosphericness to a creepy middle grade story and I just it was so boring and kind of stupid and the logic of the mysterious spooky thing that's going on was flimsy at best so like it's not a situation where I feel like it's too childish because it's middle grade so that'd be an unfair thing to think I think it was just really dull like I can't picture myself lying here miss when I was the age where this was written for either I just this is the big old letdown so I know a lot of people like it but nope next up I have Home Before Dark by Riley Sanger and I hated this think I might have given it two stars maybe I gave it one star I don't know but I thought this was stupid as fuck and the ending of it really pissed me off and the whole time while I was reading it I was like this is not suspenseful this is not interesting this is not mysterious I am not afraid or curious this is stupid and and then I was like maybe it'll save itself with the end but the end was even stupider so I absolutely do not recommend this and I don't think I will be reading anymore from Riley Sanger because if this is supposedly a good example of his writing no next up I have the Castle of Lear which is the third book in the Chronicles of Pridane by Lloyd Alexander it was on my list of series to finish this year and I realized when I was preparing my end of year tbrs October November December that I had three books to read and the Chronicles of Pridane and that I could accomplish this goal anyway all that to say this is the third book in that series and I I love these books they're just really really charming an old school fantasy that are meant you know for a younger audience so it's very much like a simple little hero's adventure quest that is heavily inspired by Welsh folklore and it is just end-to-end charming each installment has been like a fun little story with a fun adventure with lots of magic and whimsy and very memorable creaky characters and a plucky heroine and a well-intentioned hero and I just I'm just really liking it I read a lot of Lloyd Alexander when I was a kid but never the Chronicles of Pridane so I really like Lloyd Alexander's writing style always have so and I'm finding this to be a wonderful experience and I do recommend if any of that sounds good to you next up I have the other Ruth Ware book I read the turn of the key and I really liked this and I've come to discover that apparently I like all things inspired by the turn of the screw but not the turn of the screw because after watching The Haunting of Bly Manor which I loved then I went out and read Turn of the Screw and I was like uh I get why people talk about this but you know loved Haunting of Bly Manor though and this as the title even makes it pretty evident is inspired by Turn of the Screw and this was so good I really really liked this and this was my first Ruth Ware book so when I finished this I was like oh man if all of Ruth Ware books like are like this sign me up for all of them and then one by one which was where Ruth Ware was pretty good it wasn't as good as this but like it by no means made me go I guess it was a one off I was like oh this is pretty good too so the Turn of the Screw is about a nanny or an au pair and some strangeness that occurs into the house with the children that she is working with for etc so this is a modern kind of version of that again very much taking its cues from the type of story that the Turn of the Screw is and it is sort of told in a somewhat epistolary format and it's just oh my goodness it's so atmospheric like she absolutely nails the like the suspense in the moment of like really putting you in the character's place of how uneasy that character is feeling because like nothing that happens in this is all I mean oh there's some pretty dark things that happen but I mean in general it's not like horrendous gore or like something like really atrocious happening it's really just the author doing such an amazing job of really setting the scene and the the feeling of the moment where you feel the suspense of the moment even though it's nothing that intense going on if that makes sense because like able to transport you to like how you feel if you're like by yourself at home and you hear weird noise and you don't know what it is and you're like I know this is crazy like it's fine but you're by yourself and you're like second yourself out about it so like she's able to put you in the headspace of a character that's going through something like that really successfully so even though you're not there in a creepy house by yourself like you are totally there with the character and feeling like oh god oh god oh god so well done very good and also very good in terms of just sort of like being a retelling of the Turn of the Screw like I think it does it well I think it improves on it because I like this better but anyway definitely recommend Turn of the Key. Next up I have The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides. I read The Maidens in September. The Silent Patient I think is his debut book and most people have always said that this is like really really good and then when The Maidens came out people were saying that it wasn't nearly as good as The Silent Patient so when I read that people were like we should still try The Silent Patient and I mean I liked The Maidens a lot better than a lot of people it wasn't like amazing but um so The Silent Patient is better than The Maidens but I wouldn't say it's miles in a way better because I feel like it cheats in very similar ways to The Maidens like having read The Maidens I was like I feel like there's I've only now read two books from you but I feel like I've spotted your patterns sir. I think it's clever for what it is and unusual for what it is although I'm by no means an expert on thrillers I've pretty much like almost every thriller I've read in my life I read just this month in October that's not true but it's pretty true I feel like it's pretty good I feel like it's like The Maidens and then it's very page-turning it's quite compelling like you it's propulsive you want to know what's gonna happen you want to know what is happening you want to know the answer is it does a pretty good job of sort of painting fairly vivid images of these characters but ultimately like it feels hollow like when you do come to realize what's been going on or what the answer is to what is happening or has been happening or whatever similarly to them it's not as bad as The Maidens was about this but we're like the answer is surprising and the answer is surprising because really ultimately like it's kind of hollow like you don't it doesn't reframe things in a way that makes you go wow it like when you think back what happened you're like well there's a reason that I didn't think that and that's that's kind of dumb other books you know where you read with the answer is to something or you learn that you've been intentionally misled you know by the author and you're like oh actually that's what's been going on and then you go back to reading you're like oh how clever because like now that you know what and you go back to read it technically it could be read that way and you know those are the good books but this book is the kind where like if you were to go back and read it you're like well of course like you were very deliberately misleading the reader like this this is kind of you're kind of cheating I think it's pretty good for what it is but I don't think it's that good next up I have the book my patrons made me suffer through house of leaves by marxie danieluski I read this whole freaking thing and it was a journey I've logged it for my patrons so they know what my journey was like I did also chat about it with Bethany on our podcast chapter three podcast Bethany likes it a whole heck of a lot more than me Bethany also likes puzzle boxes a whole heck of a lot more than me you've never heard of house of leaves I hadn't either it is a strange I want to say a strange little book but this is like no one standard it's a little book it is a strange book and it is it's it's uh I mean basically the point of it is to like have you chasing your tail trying to track down all of the hidden meanings and all the clues and all of the it's just like a bunch of a bunch of gimmicks and like it takes no small amount of effort to put this kind of thing together so hats off to mark Z danieluski like a for effort absolutely but I just don't think this is very enjoyable as a reading experience this is not my cup of tea I don't enjoy being made to like suffer through putting pieces together when you could just tell me a story do you have a story to tell great tell me the story and there can be extra little things that like you could want to hunt down in a story that like has an added level of enjoyment an added extra bonus for the person who wishes to do something like that when the entire book is that that to read the book is to do that is to follow up on all the clues because like that is the story is you running from clue to clue to clue is just it is just so absolutely not my thing so I guess I'm glad that I was forced to do this so I could like see what this is all about yeah but I would not choose this for myself and if you are like me then I would advise you not to choose it for yourself either but if you want to know what me and Bethany thought about it more fully I'll leave the podcast link down below next up I have The Monster Mologist by Rick Yancey I've had this on my shelf for quite a long time and everyone told me or not everyone but I heard a lot of people say that it's just like so horrific and gory for YA and just like maybe not even for YA just like straight up is mega gory mega horrific so I went in you know people were like you know don't eat while you're reading this don't eat right before reading this like it's it's gnarly and like maybe I was just over prepared for it I don't think like I guess for YA like I guess if I had if I was like 12 I might be like oh geez but I mean I don't know that's when people make a really big deal about it I don't like there's a lot of gory things that happen I guess but like I don't know I just don't think it was that off-putting like I don't I don't think it was that bad you know you know but I don't know maybe I just have a stronger stomach I don't know it's hard to say about that kind of thing because like if it grosses you out well then I mean who am I to say that what no it doesn't gross you out like you're lying so I mean it clearly does gross people out so oh like pass on the warning people get mega grossed out by this I went in like armored for that which I needn't have because I didn't find it to be that gory or that bad I was not put off my dinner in the slightest this is basically a very much in vibe to like a Sherlock Holmes-y investigation in the Victorian era but there's you know or somewhere like it's like between Sherlock Holmes and Penny Dreadful but like where you have a young boy as the main character and he's working for he's like the mentor or he's being mentored by the monstromologist who's got the very like Sherlock Holmes-y vibe unless Sherlock Holmes in terms of like being like a genius detective because I mean there is detectiving or whatever going on but more just in terms of being a sort of eccentric eccentric genius in that sense so like he's not a very good caretaker for the young boy who basically has to take care of both of them because like he doesn't think about you know feeding them and he could have really dedicated to his work says a lot of things that feel like non sequiturs and you just kind of like well he's a genius so like I'll let him be kind of how Sherlock Holmes is you're like what is he talking about don't ask don't worry about it have you eaten today like that kind of vibe I found it to be pretty good like I would be there's it's actually the first in a series so like I would be interested to read the other books in the series I didn't I don't know I expected it to be like much more shocking so then I guess I was just unfairly let down by the fact that it wasn't that shocking to me I don't know how it would have felt about it if no one had pre-prepped me like that but overall I thought it was pretty good so if it sounds appealing to you a Victorian monster mystery then I recommend next up I have a game of thrones by George R. R. Martin because myself and Jimmy from the fantasy network and Alex from Alex Nieves are hosting a song of ice and fire read along and the first live show was on my channel and it was three hours and we were drinking so it was quite a shindig I cannot guarantee in fact I would like to guarantee the opposite that we will never again drink for three hours for another song of ice and fire read along live show but I don't know what a month from now me is going to think about that we'll see when we get there any hoesies this is a reread for all of us and obviously we talked about it for three hours obviously you can watch the replay if you're interested um yeah I mean we love these books and we're having a great time sort of revisiting reacquainting ourselves with the books because the show is quite or was like the freshest thing in our mind so like coming back to to where it started to the beginning to the source both the beginning of the story as well as like the fact that it's like the books and not the show and yeah I'm really glad we're doing this so I loved coming back to game of thrones and I can't wait to read can't wait to read a clash of kings next up I have my cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier I read he read this with Mara from books like woe and Alan from the library of valence andria and we all really liked this I think for sure me and Mara felt this was our favorite du Maurier that we read so far I don't know where Alan ranks it but we all enjoyed it and if you don't know what my cousin Rachel is it's the story of how much I didn't really know much about going into it but basically this young man ends up having his cousin Rachel come to live with him I think that's all I knew going into it and I knew it was a du Maurier book so I knew that there would be something mysterious or sinister about it so that's fine that's all you need to know either and I think yeah Daphne du Maurier is an amazing writer it is extremely atmospheric this is the first du Maurier that I read that I didn't already know what the story was so that might be why I enjoyed it the most so it might be unfair but I definitely had it do think I enjoyed this the most so I definitely recommend I mean I recommend du Maurier because Rebecca's fantastic Jamaica and is really good and my cousin Rachel is fabulous so if you have not checked out Daphne du Maurier's writing I absolutely recommend any of those are great to start with but since my favorite so far has been my cousin Rachel then why not give my cousin Rachel a go next up I have we have always lived in the castle by Shirley Jackson this was the other patron buddy read and I liked this a whole heck of a lot more than The Haunting of Hill House which I low-key hated I can't say that I loved this and it was kind of one where I think I enjoyed the journey but by the time I got to the end I part of the reason why that I enjoyed the journey was because I expected the destination to to exist for there to be a destination and there really isn't one so I kind of finished it and it kind of felt like okay what was the point of that which was a thing that I thought about a lot of books that I read in October so it was just I enjoyed the journey a lot more with this one than I did on some of the others where I felt like what's the point I feel like it didn't really have anything that was trying I guess I'm I was a moderator maybe expecting too much of like a twist or like a little zinger at the end or something to like I don't know a reveal and they're really like they're okay there is a reveal but it's a reveal that again maybe it's just that I'm a modern reader and so many more books and shows and movies do these kinds of things that when I got to the reveal I was like well yeah that's what happened like it didn't feel that surprising like it's surprising in terms of like yeah technically the book hasn't told you this yet technically this is new information but like you pretty much at least I did and I think a lot of people by the time that you get you get to the book actually telling you this you're like no I've I worked that one out for myself yeah you're thank you for confirming so I mean I think it's pretty good I think it's well written I think it's very atmospheric and I think the the portrait of humanity that it paints is interesting it's good it's definitely good and again I think it's way better than The Huntington Hill House so as compared to that I highly recommend next up I have The Shining by Stephen King which I did not really like this was another one where I felt like what was the point of that and it's a long-ass fucking book which like is a problem with Stephen King in general where a lot of his books are just too long I say having read three Stephen King books is it three no because I read two dark tower books five Stephen King books and yeah like I mean at the outset I was fairly quickly into it and invested and I was like okay I think I'm gonna like this and then when it got to be doing the thing that it does which if you don't know what it does I don't want to say what it does but like the horror-y thing that it happens I just and when I'm that and again when that started happening I was like oh that's you know that's kind of unsettling and then it's just it is it devolves into so much of that and then kind of loses like having any kind of story or message or actual tether to like psychological horror it just becomes straight up wild bonkers horror and I just feel nothing about that like for me to be horrified it still has to have some kind of tether to a real experience if that makes sense to the characters real experience and if the whole thing is just like bananas which it by like it becomes completely bananas I just it just becomes like horror for the sake of horror and shocks for the sake of shock value at which point I am no longer horrified or shocked I'm just like uh-huh please tell me again how horrifying this is oh more blood oh no oh a creepy thing oh heaven forbid like it's just like I feel nothing about it because like the thing that makes me feel something about something like that is my attachment to the real lived experience of a character and they're yeah you have to take me along for that ride and it just didn't I finished it and I was just like okay but for why I don't get it so I guess if the point of it is just to like do a bunch of creepy bloody scary nonsense it certainly does that so I'll probably now go watch the movie and see how I feel about that next up I have ghostly echoes by William Ritter which is the third book in the jackaby series and I I really really liked the first jackaby book the second one was like eh and the third one I think is better than the second one but like not by a lot like I think the first one is like great and the second one was like okay that's fine and this one was like okay fine it's too much focused on this overarching story and I think it worked so much better when it felt more episodic which it feels very episodic in the first book and now it's too worried about sort of like this ongoing mystery and this ongoing plot threads and the characters like ongoing situation and drama so you just kind of like get added reveals for that but it's still not resolved and now that's like the whole focus of it so like you end it with like just more I mean some new answers just more questions about this overarching thing and that's like the whole thing of it now and um so there's one more book in the series no maybe I'll read it just to wrap up that mystery but I wish it had been sort of more standalone adventures with these characters because I think that is where its strength lies so I'm a little disappointed in how it's kind of what it's turning into I still think it's pretty good but well it's good as the first one next up I have Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman Loki hated this I did see the movie of it a few years ago and I didn't like the movie very much but I don't I mean I'd only ever seen it once and it was a little while ago so I didn't like I don't I'm not super familiar with the movie but that said as I was reading this book I was like I don't I guess I really don't remember the movie because like I don't really remember any of this happening and uh and then after that after I read the book I watched I didn't watch the movie but I watched a trailer for the movie and I was like oh yeah like just from the trailer yeah the the movie doesn't have like most of this so the movie is like wildly different from it like has has some of the bones of the book in it but like it's really really different and I can't really say that I like either very much but they are very very different and I will say the movie felt like it had a plot with a point to it even if I didn't super enjoy the journey this was definitely a situation where I was like what was the point of that at all times the book feels like it's you know some a lot of books will have a sort of like montagey catch-up on like a character situation or their life or the place they live or if it's more in the middle then it's like a montagey catch-up so we can have a time jump or something like that but this entire book at all times feels like a montagey catch-up and I just kept waiting for the story to start because we're just montaging our way through the entire thing and then it's over I was just like when was the story supposed to happen because all of that felt like you were just like broad strokes catching me up telling me never showing me and what you were telling me was just kind of like it wasn't a story it just wasn't a story so yeah I did not like this I guess if you're just into the vibes then you might enjoy it I guess that is what people enjoy about it but yeah I don't get it next up I have The Ancestor by Danielle Trisone and this it was absolutely not what I expected but I can't say I mean I have a very very very mixed feelings about what this is and I can't really explain those mixed feelings without like giving away the whole thing of what this is basically because like it's so this woman inherits this huge estate in Italy which she didn't even know she was like an heiress of like someone you know mysteriously like comes and finds her and it's like you're actually like the last living heir this is yours now and she was like what in the what how who so she goes there and you know there's some sinister secret about you know what she's inherited beyond just the mere property and that's like the pitch for it so yeah like the thing that is the sinister secret thing that she's inherited is the thing that like is revealed in the book which is why I can't tell you without spoilers because that's like the whole thing but I mean it does it's not just like you know the last page reveals it to you like it gets revealed and then quite a lot happens after the revelation like with the thing of what the secret is like that becomes like really integral to the plot like that's what now the plot is about so I really can't tell you what that thing is or or why I have extremely mixed feelings about it even if I tell you like what type of mixed feelings I have about it would be extremely spoilery all I can say is it is absolutely unexpected about what this is like going into it I would not have guessed that that's where that would go or that that's what the thing would be so for that points but the thing that it is I think is I just I mean yeah there's just like no way I can even like hint at how I feel about it without spoiling it so um yeah I guess I kind of sort of I don't think it's a bad book if you're interested in it I would say do read it but yeah I'm just like it's like I keep almost saying the thing that I feel about it but if I tell you the thing that I feel about it it would immediately pretty much spoil it so anyway um I hope that was in any way helpful to you next up I have a lesson inventions by victorially and I hated it this is a book that's been mega hyped because it's a new dark academia YA book and I just felt like this was a bunch of window dressing the thing that makes dark academia so appealing is the sort of plumbing the deets of human psyche and having to really grapple with like complicated people being messy and this is just so service level characters doing things just for the sake of like the plot or for the sake of having something kind of dark happen or it doesn't like these don't they don't act like people and the thing about dark academia is like it's that that's what makes it dark is the constant recognition of how extremely human what the characters do is that's what's unsettling about dark academia and so for them for to go through this whole thing where it's all just feels like window dressing facade pastiche with just absolutely no substance it just was so empty and hollow and it just felt like somebody wanting to like put the dark academia label on something so they would cram it with as much dark academia imagery as possible but you're better off just looking at a Pinterest mood board than reading this because you might actually find some substance in one of the links on the mood board do not recommend next up I have the broken girls or just broken girls know the by Lauren Oliver I thought this was pretty good it wasn't amazing it is a YA thriller and the answer to the mystery is one that was unexpected but similarly to like the silent patient or some of the others that I read in October it's unexpected because like I don't know it's written in a way where like of course you didn't expect that if that makes sense you know like it's I feel like I get so much better more enjoyment out of books that like give you a fair shot at giving you the information you know so that like in theory you could have pieced this together so that when you do find it out you're like oh my god how did I not like oh that's it and it's surprising still because you didn't guess it but when you look back you're like man but it was like it was like right there how did I not see so these books that like they know that if they actually gave you any information you would guess it so they're just like they just don't so that's kind of how I felt about this where I like yeah I didn't didn't guess it because you made sure that I wouldn't and then the main the characters in it were better than lesson in vengeance that's for sure in terms of sort of acting like people and having an interesting complicated messy dark dynamic it was it was a little surface level a little unbelievable but for what it was I thought it was pretty okay it kept me turning the page wanting to know what the thing is so it was I mean between the two of them I would definitely say this is a better book than lesson in vengeance it just I wouldn't say it's like a great book I suppose it was pretty good next up I have the broken girls by Simone St James and I was pretty disappointed in this I feel like I've heard I'd heard Simone St James so hyped and actually I'd heard turn of the key kind of poo pooed so I was very surprised when I actually didn't really love this and then I absolutely loved turn of the key this was another one where I just felt like when I finished it I was like what was the point of that and there was a few reasons for that and one of the big ones was that this kind of is trying to tell you like mysteries across multiple timelines sort of and and draw parallels between them and I just didn't think that the author did a good enough job actually drawing those parallels like they didn't feel significant or meaningful they felt forced and they felt clunky and they felt not even that comparable at times so I just like she kept laboring this this mirroring of timelines thing and it felt labored it felt like I was just like watching somebody really try to jam these things in there together and be like see it like parallels and shit and I was like yeah kind of I guess like I see what you're doing like I very much see what you're doing and that's kind of annoying to me that like it's not a story that just kind of organically happens and as you're going through the story you're like wow and that kind of parallels even as opposed to this being like and the author is now paralleling these things and I'm watching her do it so yeah I don't think it was handled with enough subtlety I don't even know if it's subtlety but yeah I just I don't think it worked that well or I don't think it worked as well as the author thought it did so yeah I ended up feeling like it was forced and I just kind of felt exhausted by it because I was like I felt like I was being beaten over the head but with this I didn't feel it to be all that suspenseful or intriguing or mysterious I was yeah like I feel like I'm making it sound like it was atrocious and it wasn't terrible like overall it was like decent but I just was like like I feel like this paralleling of timelines and themes was more important to the author than actually telling a suspenseful interesting mystery and I was just like these themes aren't interesting enough to warrant that anyway yeah so like it's fine oh it's not bad but it's not that great next up I have skullduggery pleasant book three the faceless ones do panic they're coming I love skullduggery pleasant so much it's just so fun so charming so quirky so so what it is I love it so much if you don't know anything about skullduggery pleasant it is a middle grade series where this young girl's uncle's dead uncle's friend is a living breathing skeleton who is a detective but it's sort of this like unknown mysterious other world of like lives alongside our own so she ends up sort of like working with alongside skullduggery who I guess is kind of like taking on caretaking duties he's not very good at that he's not exactly a dad but it's sort of their adventures in the nefarious like magic underbelly of Ireland and skullduggery himself is so like deadpan and the main character of alkary kane is very feisty and it's just it's just a good time so I'm looking forward to reading more of these books because there's a whole bunch I think there's like 12 in series so just you know read one or two every halloween until I'm done only two left next up I have the strange case of the alchemist's daughter by Theodora goss and this was just not as good as I hoped it would be this is a girl gang that is composed of like the daughters of a bunch of like male uh heroes like who do you have uh oh yeah they there's Sherlock Holmes like actually showing up the main character is um the daughter of dr jackal and females surrounding mr franken or dr frankenstein yeah and it's just it was too cutesy honestly was my problem with it I think I expected it to be a little darker and it felt very much like girl gang and how we're all the name dropping of frankenstein and Sherlock Holmes and dr jackal and mr hide and just felt very it felt like you know bbc america like a family rated show where like ladies in corsets being feminist and detectivey and the gimmick is that they have these names that are recognizable like frankenstein and jackal and hide but it's very like you know what I mean I was just like okay it's not actually a very good mystery story it's not dark and cool and suspenseful it's not doing super clever things with these like homages to the source material that they're obviously like pulling names from it just felt very like it was all about the kind of vibe and the gimmick of this without actually having that good a story to back it up so I was pretty disappointed with this like I don't think it's bad and if what I just described sounds great to you then you'll probably love it it's just not really like what I was looking for and the first shall be last I read The Devouring Gray by Christine Lynn Herman and what a terrible way to start the month because I hated this it is a YA horror suspense supernatural type thing that's been very much compared to stranger things except stranger things is good this book very much felt like the author had an idea for like the aesthetic of a concept and actually like no actual idea for the story or for how the like magic supernatural side of things actually would function in order to make this happen so it was very much putting the cart before the horse where like she had in her mind kind of how this would look and kind of how the vibe of it would be and then came up with reasons as she went to kind of like have a reason to have it be the way she already decided she wanted it to be so it just felt very stupid and it didn't make any sense the characters behavior didn't make any sense the way the magic function didn't make any sense and it was too stupid to be scary or suspenseful because like this whole thing is facing this darkness and then figuring out the rules of this darkness and then the rules don't make any kind of sense because the author clearly hasn't thought this through so it was more frustrating than anything else the only thing that it was the same as as frustrating was possibly boring it was boring and frustrating so uh this is the beginning of a series i don't know if it's a duology or more than that but i'm not interested in reading any more hardness because this was a do-do and those are all of the books that i read in october let me know in the comments down below if you've read any of these books if you plan to read these books if you will never read these books whatever you want to let me know i post videos on saturdays other random times as well but after saturdays so like and subscribe join my patreon if you feel so inclined and i will see you when i see you