2025 Books - October!

1.  Silver and Lead, Seanan McGuire - Super excited for a new October Daye novel, especially since there wasn't one last year due to McGuire's publisher change.  Honestly, at this point, there's a smidge too much exposition in having to remind the reader who everyone is and what has happened in the past.  We're 19 books in with a deep history and a gazillion characters at this point, and that has to be a tad unwieldy to handle.  Having said that, reading a new October Daye novel was like a hug, and I really enjoyed revisiting a world and characters that I love so much.  And now Toby has a baby!  I now want to go back and reread the first book of the series, just to see how far we've come.  AND, I've started collecting physical copies for my shelf.  

2.  Seas and Shores, Seanan McGuire (novella) - The bonus novellas are always a treat, and this was no exception.  

3.  The Teller of Small Fortunes, Julie Leong - I love a good cozy fantasy, and this story of gentle adventure and found family fit the bill nicely.  As a bonus, our main character actually found healing from her past trauma with her family, which feels like it almost never happens.  I wish it'd held my attention perhaps a little bit better, but that may have been a time and place sort of thing.  

4.  A Mouthful of Dust, Nghi Vo (audio, novella) - The 6th entry in the Singing Hills Cycle, Vo is back to top form with this ghost story.  It was perfect for the season, and I loved every minute.  I think there was more emotional depth than in the other books, and I found it to be so very sad and haunting.  This is exactly the sort of ghost story I love the most.  

5.  Cinder House, Freya Marske (audio) - I love Marske's writing, and was very excited about what she would do next, having finished the series that introduced me to her.  And goodness, this was such a treat.  I LOVE an excellent fairy tale retelling, and I love it when they include unexpected twists.  This is Marske's take on Cinderella, and Cinderella is a ghost!  Another beautifully told ghost story, it both honored the source material and made it fresh and new.  

6.  Mate, Ali Hazelwood - I was introduced to Hazelwood through last year's Bride, which I adored, and so I've been eagerly awaiting the follow-up.  It was so much fun. Was it groundbreaking?  Not at all.  Did I see a massive plot point coming from a mile away?  Absolutely!  Do I care?  Nope!  Sometimes you just need to read for pure fun.  Also, I really adore Ali Hazelwood's characters.  I think the overall plot wasn't as exciting as Bride, but I very much appreciated the interconnectedness of the two books.  

7.  The Poppy War, R.F. Kuang (audio) - I had no intention of ever reading The Poppy War.  As the one person on the planet who really didn't like Babel, I really thought Kuang wasn't for me.  BUT.  I just kept hearing about it over and over, and then the series went on sale - first as a book bundle on Apple, and then in Libro.fm.  So ok, I gave in and decided to try....and I was completely blown away.  (I think I'm going to hold most comments for when I finish the trilogy.)

8.  Crafting for Sinners, Jenny Kiefer - My best reading friend told me about this book earlier this year, and I admit that I preordered it based on the cover and blurb alone.  On the one hand, it turned out to be almost comic horror, albeit way bloodier than I expected.  On the other hand, at its heart it had a lot to say about the world we live in, and really, isn't that what genre fiction is for?  Really glad I read this one, even if it didn't turn out to be a favorite.      

9.  All of Us Murderers, K.J. Charles - A new Charles book!  Charles is why I became a romance reader in the first place, and I'll always have a soft spot for these beautiful historical, queer stories.  This time around, we're in a full-on Gothic story that both honors and gently pokes fun of the genre.  I fell in love with all of the great Gothic classics back in college, and I tend to love anything that references them in a respectful way.  The unexpected bonus was that our main character has ADHD, and wow, that was really done well.  This just might be my favorite Charles book! 

10.  The Final Girl Support Group, Grady Hendrix (audio) - Not much to add beyond what I've said about Hendrix before.  I love his books, both for the amazing way he writes about women and the way he honors his inspiration material.  This probably wasn't my favorite of Hendrix's work, but that's ok!  It was still a fun read for spooky season.  (Side note - interestingly enough, I attended an author event at the end of the month, and the person I sat with has the opposite opinion of Hendrix's writing about girls.  Might be worth some thought.)

11.  A Dowry of Blood, S.T. Gibson - This was my major surprise of the month.  This is a Bookstagram find, and I added it to my TBR mostly out of curiosity.  A book about Dracula's first wife?  Honoring one of my all-time favorite books? (Told you....Gothic classics are my thing.)  It had potential.  And it filled that potential while giving me so much more.  The writing is lush and beautiful, and was just the right length.  There was a throwaway line about the Harkers that had me laughing, but most of it was deeply sorrowful and it took on some pretty important topics.  The ending left me feeling cautiously hopeful.  Well done.  

12.  Hot For Slayer, Ali Hazelwood (novella) - I needed something short to spend an evening on because I was to start a big book the very next day.  Eh.  It was very Ali Hazelwood, and I enjoyed the things that make it clearly one of her books.  But I think I would have enjoyed it a whole lot more if it were a full-length novel.  This just felt like fluff....and it wasn't attractive enough for me to read the other books in this or the previous series of Holiday novellas it was published under.  

13.  The Dragon Republic, R.F Kuang (audio) - Second Poppy War book, and also wow.  (Still holding comments...)

14.  The September House, Carissa Orlando (audio) - This is my fall for amazing horror novels!  Couple moves into their dream home, which is profoundly haunted, and they just decide to live with it!  The audio was amazing, with a matter-of-fact narrator who perfectly matched the vibe of the book.  I loved the way Orlando constantly surprised me with reveals - some of which were pretty shocking given the narrator's attitude and storytelling method.  Another excellent read.  

15.  Thief of Night, Holly Black (audio) - Lol.  I started reading this, and promptly remembered that The Book of Night, its companion, wasn't exactly on my favorites list.  Really glad I got the audio from the library.  Black's books are all excellent in audio format, and I think that lifted my enjoyment of the book quite a bit.  It was definitely better than the first book, and I absolutely loved the ending.  That last scene was brilliant. (I totally passed up an opportunity to get a signed copy, though, which is telling.)

16.  How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying, Django Wexler (audio) - Yeah, yeah, I'm not a fan of comic fantasy.  I'd picked up a copy of this before I realized that, though, so I got the audio from the library so that I could at least try it.  To my surprise, I did end up enjoying it.  The premise was way more fun than others in this genre that I've tried, and it moved along quickly enough that it didn't become tedious.  Still, though, no more of these.  

17.  The Bone Houses, Emily Lloyd-Jones (audio) - I picked this up on sale on Libro.fm, and I'm not sure why as it's not an author I'd read before.  To my intense delight, I loved it!  It's very much the sort of fairy tale that's completely in my wheel-house, and now I'm curious about the author's other works.  

18.  People Watching, Hannah Bonam-Young - What I love about Bonam-Young is that she writes about serious issues in a way that feels gentle and low-stakes.  You are able to take them in and think through real-life issues without feeling like you are being dragged through the wringer.  Also, I saw a review about the spice trope, and was all in.  Lots of serious books this month, needed a bit of fluff!  

19.  Feed, Mira Grant (audio) - At long last I decided to try the horror that Seanan McGuire wrote under this pseudonym.  And.  Um.  It was interesting?  Grant wrote this futuristic book 15 years ago, so the technology is dated in odd ways.  Basically, bloggers took over media after the zombie apocolypse, and people now live in highly contained safe zones.  Ultimately, the plot got bogged down in the details to the point where it was dull and repetitive, and I grabbed a digital copy to skim the last part.  Kind of sad, there were lots of interesting things in here, but it just never came together into a good reading experience.  

20.  Alchemised, SenLinYu - This one is going to be with me for a long, long time.  

I had no intention of reading Alchemised, largely because of its origins as Harry Potter fanfiction - specifically, Draco/Hermione fanfic.  I've never been a part of or interested in the fanfic world, although I do respect it.  Having hung out in the online book sphere for a while now, I was very aware of the original fanfic version of this book, Manacled, and of just how incredibly popular it was.  Kudos to the author for having attracted a traditional publisher for this one.  By all means, it sounded well-deserved.  But my problems with the HP author, who is a vile human being, and my general ambiguous feelings about fanfic in general and this pairing in specific really had firmly placed this in a no-go territory for me.  

But.  

I then started to see book reels, often from people who had read both versions and recognized that the book had benefited from the switch to trad pub, and I was increasingly curious because of the many thoughtful reviews.  (Plus, I learned that this particular fanfic pairing makes the HP author very unhappy.)  The final push was when I discovered the two booksellers at Skylark who read like I do were deep into the book and loving every minute.  So I took the leap.  

Make no mistake, this is not a fun or easy book to read.  It's a deep, 1024 page exploration into the horrors, realities, and cost of war, focusing on two very traumatized characters who will never truly be able to heal.  Preconceptions about each side in the war are shattered as it's shown time and time again that "good" people do really awful things and make horrible decisions, while "bad" people sometimes have a really good point and motivation.  Our two main characters are used, manipulated, and abused time and time and time again.  There is no winning, and everyone loses.

The author and editors did an amazing job of stripping out the original inspiration material.  There are enough reference points left in that you still see it....but Alchemised has been transformed into it's own creation.  The structure of the book is perfect, and the writing surprised me with its quality and beauty.  There is a bit of a heavy info dump in the first 100 pages or so, but it was necessary.  I found that I could not read this book quickly.  It needed time...time for me to absorb and process.  

The day after I finished, I found myself trying to share my reading experience with my husband.  He kept saying, "That sounds like a lot," and it was...and I was only through the first part.

So yes, I found this to be an absolutely incredible book, and it was an amazing, intense reading experience.  

Unfinished: 

The Reformatory, Tananarive Due (audio) - This pains me more than I can say.  It's an absolutely beautiful and important book, and it's deserving of all of the accolades that I've been seeing.  But.  It's very, very real in a way that I just couldn't stomach.  Maybe I know too much about the history this is based on, maybe the world right now is just too scary, I don't know.  I truly wish I could have given this book the attention it deserves.