October Reading Wrap-Up

It’s official - spooky season has come and gone. We’re coming down off our sugar highs, putting hocus pocus out of our minds for another 300+ days, and cleaning up the rotting pumpkins sitting on our front porches.

October is my favorite month of the year for many reasons but the biggest reason is because I love spooky things including thrillers in all forms. I binge watched The Haunting of Bly Manor on Netflix, I watched every thriller movie I have in my dvd collection (yes I said DVD collection, I’m officially old), and I picked up some very anticipated thriller books in honor of the season.

I also finished my brother’s collection of short stories, The Dark Persists. I’m going to plug him here again because if you haven’t picked up a copy (or e-copy) of this book, you’re seriously missing out! It’s a compilation of 15 thrilling, scary and heart-stopping short stories that will make you scared out of your mind. Check it out here and read on for my full review.

I spent the first week of October in Acadia National Park (read more about Acadia here) and unfortunately did not get a lot of reading done - so I started off the month slow. I finished up Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney before diving into strictly spooky stories for the remainder of the month. Bad Bitch Book Club’s sub-group, Ghoul’s Night Out, had a book club chat with Megan Goldin, author of The Night Swim, so I started my thriller reads off with this one, and it did not disappoint. Another Ghoul’s Night Out selection was The Broken Girls, which I couldn’t put down. I ended the month with one of the best books I’ve read in 2020 so far, Know My Name by Chanel Miller - a book that every single human needs to read.

Conversations With Friends

Conversations With Friends follows twenty-one year old Frances as she is drawn into the lives of an older couple, Nick and Melissa, by her best friend and ex lover, Bobbi.

I really loved Normal People by Sally Rooney, so I was hoping to love this one just as much. But I didn’t connect to these characters and found them all incredibly unlikeable. I found the story to be uneventful from start to finish, no character growth and nothing of note to report on.

Goodreads Summary:

Frances is twenty-one years old, cool-headed, and darkly observant. A college student and aspiring writer, she devotes herself to a life of the mind--and to the beautiful and endlessly self-possessed Bobbi, her best friend and comrade-in-arms. Lovers at school, the two young women now perform spoken-word poetry together in Dublin, where a journalist named Melissa spots their potential. Drawn into Melissa's orbit, Frances is reluctantly impressed by the older woman's sophisticated home and tall, handsome husband. Private property, Frances believes, is a cultural evil--and Nick, a bored actor who never quite lived up to his potential, looks like patriarchy made flesh. But however amusing their flirtation seems at first, it gives way to a strange intimacy neither of them expect. As Frances tries to keep her life in check, her relationships increasingly resist her control: with Nick, with her difficult and unhappy father, and finally even with Bobbi. Desperate to reconcile herself to the desires and vulnerabilities of her body, Frances's intellectual certainties begin to yield to something new: a painful and disorienting way of living from moment to moment.

The Night Swim

TW: sexual assault, rape, murder

Crime podcast host Rachel Krall makes her way to Neapolis to cover the trial of the towns golden boy who is accused of rape. But, once she arrives she begins to receive mysterious notes from a local about another rape/murder crime that took place 25 years earlier. Rachel takes on the challenge of not only covering the trial happening in present day, but helping to solve a forgotten mystery from the past.

For obvious reasons, The Night Swim gave me some big Brock Turner vibes. I very much appreciate Megan Goldin taking on such a heavy story - and doing it so well. She brings attention to the VERY big flaws the criminal justice system has when it comes to sexual crimes committed against woman and the victim blaming that victims go through.

I was sucked into this story from the very first page and I loved the multi-media approach taken by including the podcast chapters. It seems like more and more authors are doing this and I am here for it.

Overall, the story is an emotional rollercoaster. I felt like I could sense what the twist at the end would be but it was still satisfying and of course, incredibly sad.

Goodreads Summary:

After the first season of her true crime podcast became an overnight sensation and set an innocent man free, Rachel Krall is now a household name―and the last hope for thousands of people seeking justice. But she’s used to being recognized for her voice, not her face. Which makes it all the more unsettling when she finds a note on her car windshield, addressed to her, begging for help.

The small town of Neapolis is being torn apart by a devastating rape trial. The town’s golden boy, a swimmer destined for Olympic greatness, has been accused of raping a high school student, the beloved granddaughter of the police chief. Under pressure to make Season Three a success, Rachel throws herself into interviewing and investigating―but the mysterious letters keep showing up in unexpected places. Someone is following her, and she won’t stop until Rachel finds out what happened to her sister twenty-five years ago. Officially, Jenny Stills tragically drowned, but the letters insists she was murdered―and when Rachel starts asking questions, nobody seems to want to answer. The past and present start to collide as Rachel uncovers startling connections between the two cases that will change the course of the trial and the lives of everyone involved.

Electrifying and propulsive, The Night Swim asks: What is the price of a reputation? Can a small town ever right the wrongs of its past? And what really happened to Jenny?

The Broken Girls

What a hauntingly perfect ghost story.

I recently read (and loved) The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James not realizing I’ve had another one of her books sitting on my shelf the past two years unread!

Bad Bitch Book Club Ghouls Night Out picked this one for the book club and I’m so glad! This was the perfect, spooky ghost story for October.

The Broken Girls alternates between a group of boarding school girls in the 1950s and a journalist (Fiona Davis) seeking the full truth about her sisters death in 2014. When the past horrors of Idlewild Hall intertwine with Fiona’s present day, readers are taken on a suspenseful, mysterious, thrilling ride.

This was a serious page turner. The author perfectly connects the past and present fluidly, the story is paced well, and the twist does not disappoint. I can’t wait to see what the author comes up with next.

Goodreads Summary:

Vermont, 1950. There's a place for the girls whom no one wants--the troublemakers, the illegitimate, the too smart for their own good. It's called Idlewild Hall. And in the small town where it's located, there are rumors that the boarding school is haunted. Four roommates bond over their whispered fears, their budding friendship blossoming--until one of them mysteriously disappears. . . .

Vermont, 2014. As much as she's tried, journalist Fiona Sheridan cannot stop revisiting the events surrounding her older sister's death. Twenty years ago, her body was found lying in the overgrown fields near the ruins of Idlewild Hall. And though her sister's boyfriend was tried and convicted of murder, Fiona can't shake the suspicion that something was never right about the case.

When Fiona discovers that Idlewild Hall is being restored by an anonymous benefactor, she decides to write a story about it. But a shocking discovery during the renovations will link the loss of her sister to secrets that were meant to stay hidden in the past--and a voice that won't be silenced. . . 

The Haunting of Beatrix Greene

I was excited to have the opportunity to read The Haunting of Beatrix Greene before Halloween hoping it would be the perfect, spooky read for the season.

In some ways, it did just that! Beatrix is a fake spiritualist invited to spend the night at Ashbury Manor by Lord Ashbury to help free the spirit of his mother, Lady Ashbury. The concept is great, however at times I felt that the story was rushed and at times predictable. I felt like the romance between Lord Ashbury and Beatrix came out of nowhere and wasn’t developed enough for me to be rooting for them.

By the end, certain details felt repetitive. It seemed like they battled with the spirits haunting the manor over and over again, which made me a little bored.

Overall, I felt like this could have been developed better. Especially since the book is so short, there was room for more. It did put me in the mood for spooky season!

Thanks to NetGalley and Serial Box for this ARC in exchange for my honest review!

Goodreads Summary:

Beatrix Greene has made a name for herself in Victorian England as a reputable spiritual medium, but she’s a fraud: even she knows ghosts aren’t real. But when she’s offered a lucrative job by James Walker—a scientist notorious for discrediting pretenders like her—Beatrix takes the risk of a lifetime. If her séance at the infamously haunted Ashbury Manor fools him, she will finally have true financial freedom. If she fails, her secret will become her public shame.

But James has his own dark secrets, and he believes only a true medium can put them to rest. When Beatrix’s séance awakens her real gift—and with it, a vengeful spirit—James finds that the answers he seeks are more dangerous than he could have imagined. Together, with a group of supernatural sleuths, Beatrix and James race to settle the ghost’s unrest before it strikes— or else they might not make it out of the haunted manor alive.

New York Times bestselling author Rachel Hawkins, along with Ash Parsons and Vicky Alvear Shecter, weaves darkness, death, and a hint of desire into this suspenseful mystery for fans of Sherlock Holmes and Crimson Peak.

The Dark Persists

The Dark Persists was the perfect series of short stories to read throughout October in anticipation of Halloween 👻

This collection of fifteen horror and psychological thriller short stories has something for fans of all sorts of spooky things.

The twists at the end of each story will not only mess you up psychologically but will keep you thinking about it for weeks. The way that author Kevin J. DuPont, brings you into the story as if you’re there yourself is no easy feat.

Some of my personal favorites from the collection were A Dead Whale or a Stove Boat and Coffin.

If you’re interested in a bone-chilling read to get into the halloween spirit, you have to pick this one up from Amazon!

Book Summary:

No matter what comforts we may secure ourselves with, no matter what night lights we leave on, the darkness is always waiting for us all. In a collection of fifteen short stories, DuPont will take you on a wide scope of adventures. From the last scraps of humanity fighting to live on in 'Beside the Dying Fire', to the horrors of an underwater theme park in 'The Drowned Church', or even time traveling murder in 'Annihilator', there is a thrill, scare or heart-stopping moment for any reader. In this second collection of horror and psychological thriller short stories, DuPont aims to give a variety of narratives in which the darkness is always after you...in 'The Dark Persists'.

Know My Name

TW: sexual assault, rape, victim blaming

Everyone single human needs to read this book.

Normally I wouldn’t rate a memoir because I think it’s weird to rate someone’s personal life story but this book deserves all of the stars for how beautifully written it is and how brutally honest Chanel is.

If you don’t know who Chanel Miller is, she is a sexual assault survivor. You might be more familiar with her as Emily Doe in the Brock Turner case - but she is much more than that.

Chanel walks you through her entire experience from the day the assault happened until years after when the appeals were finally over. And she does an amazing job of putting you right there with her, her every thought, question and movement.

This book is so important. Chanel brings awareness to the absolutely devastating impact being sexually assault has had on her life, not only from the assault itself but from the dehumanizing legal process, from the victim blaming mentality that our society has, and how “20 minute actions” can do a lifetime of harm not only to the victim, but to her family, her friends, witnesses and more.

I cried literally every single page of this book. It’s absolutely incredible from start to finish. Thanks Chanel for being so brave, strong and for sharing your story.

Goodreads Summary:

She was known to the world as Emily Doe when she stunned millions with a letter. Brock Turner had been sentenced to just six months in county jail after he was found sexually assaulting her on Stanford’s campus. Her victim impact statement was posted on BuzzFeed, where it instantly went viral–viewed by eleven million people within four days, it was translated globally and read on the floor of Congress; it inspired changes in California law and the recall of the judge in the case. Thousands wrote to say that she had given them the courage to share their own experiences of assault for the first time.

Now she reclaims her identity to tell her story of trauma, transcendence, and the power of words. It was the perfect case, in many ways–there were eyewitnesses, Turner ran away, physical evidence was immediately secured. But her struggles with isolation and shame during the aftermath and the trial reveal the oppression victims face in even the best-case scenarios. Her story illuminates a culture biased to protect perpetrators, indicts a criminal justice system designed to fail the most vulnerable, and, ultimately, shines with the courage required to move through suffering and live a full and beautiful life.

Know My Name will forever transform the way we think about sexual assault, challenging our beliefs about what is acceptable and speaking truth to the tumultuous reality of healing. It also introduces readers to an extraordinary writer, one whose words have already changed our world. Entwining pain, resilience, and humor, this memoir will stand as a modern classic.