My October Reading Round-up
This October I focused most of my time on #HauntedReads, which includes everything from gothic haunted house stories to murder mysteries and more. I don’t write full reviews for all the books I read, but focus my time on the ones I have something to comment on, or really want to share with others.
This month I read 12 books. I’ve listed them below with star ratings, link to the full review (if I wrote one), and a short description.
The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling
⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
If you want a story that starts right in the middle of the action, this is it. We meet our main character, Gyre, as she's already suited up and climbing deeper into a pitch-black cave system, alone, with only occasional voice messages from 'base'. We quickly realize 'base' (and the entire mission) is not what it seems.
Linghun by Ai Jiang
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
What if you wanted a ghost to haunt your house? Ai Jiang takes the traditional haunted house story and twists it on it's head. Our main character, Wenqi, moves into a new house with her mother and father in the mysterious neighbourhood of HOME. Inexplicably, the houses in this specific neighbourhood have a gift of being able to call fourth ghosts of loved ones. However, such a gift doesn't come without a price.
From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
What do you want when you die? It's a hard question for many people in Western cultures to answer. Caitlin Doughty reflects on Western funerary customs with a critical eye especially when it comes to the cost, and the time allotted to grieve and tend to our dead loved ones.
The Handyman Method: A Story of Terror by Nick Cutter and Andrew F. Sullivan
⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
On the surface this is a top-rate haunted house story. Under the surface, it's an unflinching look at the unattainable standards around the performance of masculinity, and how that standard is used to insight our main character into a 'Jack Nicholson from the Shining' level of unhinged.
Two Graves Vol 1, by Genevieve Valentine
⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
The book is promoted as a Persephone/Hades retelling, which it lightly is, but I think that's a bit of a marketing spin takes away from the subtly and uniqueness of this story itself. In this volume, Death steals Emilia (a mortal woman) who is grieving the death of her mother. We sit with them in the car and in motels as they venture across the United States towards the ocean. The world-building is soft, and there are a lot of questions that go unanswered as we follow along - but that only adds to the mystery of our characters.
The Employees: A Workplace Novel of the 22nd Century by
Olga Ravn
⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
This short novella is structured in a series of witness statements from unidentified employees onboard a generation ship after they pick up mysterious objects from another planet. The structure of the book is unique and as the story slowly unravels, so do you.
Murder Your Employer: The McMasters Guide to Homicide by
Rupert Holmes
⭐⭐⭐/5
The premise of this book is amazing. A secret school that teacher people how to commit ‘the fine art’ of murder. Our main character is unknowingly enrolled in the school by a mysterious benefactor and we follow as he explores the absurdist world of the campus and the people within in. This first half of the book it 5/5 perfection.
Unfortunately, the second half of the book follows three characters as they plan and execute (as it were), their plan. The plans are overly complex and I was bored. I would have DNF’d except I needed to know who the mysterious benefactor was.
Make it stand out
⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
Award-winning and emerging Canadian authors were given the opportunity to write about sex, love and intimacy without attaching their name to their specific story. The idea put forward by editor, Russell Smith, was that with anonymity came a freedom to write without feeling the need to self-censor, while giving authors permission to push-boundaries on everything from gender to genre.
Release date: January 2, 2024
The Last Tale of the Flower Bride by
Roshani Chokshi
⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
A darkly gothic haunted house story which alternates between past and present, slowly unraveling the tragic story of two childhood best friends.
The prose are beautiful, and the male audiobook narrator, Steve West, was amazing. However too much time was spent in the past with the girls as young children. I enjoyed the present tense with the adults much more.
This is How You Lose the Time War by
Amal El-Mohtar and
Max Gladstone
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
This is my favourite book of all time. I read it multiple times a year. It’s futuristic-sci-fi, but also a love story, and also poetry. It’s structured as a series of letters between two elite soldiers on either side of a ‘time war’. We see the letters change from taunting, to respectful to deeply powerful and loving.
“Books are letters in bottles, cast into the waves of time, from one person trying to save the world to another.”
For the Fans by
Nyla K.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
Super spicy new adult MM romance with all the feels.
As teenagers, Avi and Kyran become stepbrothers who just can’t figure out how to get along. They both start attending the same university and unexpectedly find out they need money quickly to stay enrolled. They decide to start an OnlyFans together, but eventually realize everything they do is not only, ‘For the Fans’.
This is a re-read for me, because the main characters are so compelling.
Mexican Gothic by
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
A slow burn, gothic, haunted house horror story which questions the cost of immortality.
Our main character, Noemí, receives a mysterious letter from her cousin begging her to save her. The letter raises more questions than it answers and Noemí finds herself at a derelict mansion inhabited by her cousin’s new husband and his reclusive family.
The book was a little too slowly paced for me, but the story was compelling and the last few chapters were rewarding.
