FIVE STARS ARE BACK BABY!! 🌟october wrap up

Hello friends! How are we all doing? Today it's time to talk about all the books I read in October. And October was a pretty good reading month. Looking back at all these books, I feel like I had a good variety in genre, in types of books, in the way I felt about the books. So I'm excited to chat about them with you. I got some good disappointment, surprise, and hits to sink our teeth into. We got lots of either end of the spectrum this month. If you've not watched my reports before, the way I format them is I go through my reading statistics, then I tell you all the books I read this month with their rating, and then I go more into depth on my disappointment, surprises, and hits. Because most of these books, I've spoken about in a vlog, or I'm going to speak about in a vlog at some point. So I don't want to spend too long going over each and every one of them again. So shall we just get into it? Let's just get into the stats. We're getting straight into it this month. So in October I read 13 books, which is pretty much my typical per month, I would say. I'm gonna have to read more in November and December. But I'd say 13, 11, 12, 13, is kind of what I end up hovering around every single month. I read 4,104 pages, which averages out to 132 pages per day, which is great. You girls reading? And an average book length of 315, which is a little bit higher for me, I think. Or the kind of, you know, that's like an average book length really, isn't it? 315 pages. My average rating was a 3.69. For like the past five months, I've been at like a 3.6 or 3.7. Every single month. At the start of this year, I had a few 3.8s, 3.9s. But alas, we've been 3.5, 3.6, 3.7 for like the whole, you know, rest of this year. So that is kind of where my average rating sits. And the average time a book had spent on my TBR was 12 months, which is a little bit longer. We had quite a few books that I read this month that I'd had on my TBR for quite some time. And we'd finally got them off, which is always good, you know. Because otherwise books, there's some books on my TBR, I don't even want to think about how many months they've been on there. Like how long? It's been 84 years. So in terms of genres, I read one classic, one contemporary, two fantasy, three horror, five mystery, and one thriller, which is a pretty good mix. Listen, she's in her classics era. She's reading one classic. And really, I read like another book where I classed its sub-genre as classic. But that was an Agatha Christie, which technically I think is a classic. But I always class them as a mystery when I read them. In terms of the source of the books, one was an audiobook, six were physical, and six were mixtures. Which means I had the physical and the audiobook. In terms of ratings, I had one one-star. I said we had both ends of the spectrum today. One one-star, one two-star, four 3.5s, four four-stars, and three five-stars, guys. Oh my god, we're so back, baby. We are so back. Three five-stars. Are you kidding me? And I feel like today, the future starts. So it's a good day. I'm excited. I am actually only gonna be able to talk to you about two of those today because one of them is for a reading vlog that's coming up this weekend, and I don't want to spoil it. In terms of audience, eleven were adult, one was middle grade, and one was YA. I just read adult now, guys. In terms of format, one was a graphic novel, ten were novels, one was a novella, and one was an anthology. In terms of series stats, seven were standalones, one was part of a series, two were first in a series, and three were last in a series. I'm amazed by you. What were the two series that I started? Am I continuing both of those? No, I'm only continuing one of those series. So although we read two first in series, only one of them is actually added to my series spreadsheet. In terms of where the books were from, one was from Audible, four were gifted, seven I bought myself, and one was gifted from the publisher. And in terms of author status, three were debuts, eight were from authors I'd read from before, and two were authors that were new to me. Okay, I think that's all of our stats. Shall we get into all the books I read this month and their ratings? First, I read Emma by Jane Austen, which I gave five stars. Mr. Magic by Kirsten White, which I gave four stars. All the Rage by Courtney Summers, which I gave four stars. The Secret of Chimneys by Agatha Christie, which I gave 3.5 stars. The Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder, which I gave two stars. The Marlowe Murder Club by Robert Thorogood, which I gave four stars. A Very Lively Murder by Katie Watson, which I gave four stars. Pine by Francine Toon, which I gave 3.5 stars. Slewfoot by Brom, which I gave five stars. The Stranger Upstairs by Lisa M. Matlin, which I gave one star. And then three other books that I can't tell you about. I asked my patrons, when I'm getting ahead of my reading in these last few months of the year, do you want to know what ratings I gave the books that are going to be in vlogs or do you not want to know? So there's three books that will be in this week-end's weekend. I said that weird. Week-end's. This weekend's vlog, which I can't tell you about. But they're there. And one of them is a five star. That's all I'm going to say. Okay, let's get into our disappointments, surprises, and hits. First disappointment and probably my biggest disappointment of the month, even though it isn't the lowest rated I've read this month, is The Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder. See ya, Miller. I'm just going to shut down and I don't want to talk about it. This isn't out yet. This comes out in 2024. I think in January or February. February 2024. And this was one of the books I was most excited for this year. If you watch a lot of my videos, you know I never fucking shut up about this book. I was mentioning all the time about how it was perfect for me because I love Bargain Hunt. I watch every episode of Bargain Hunt ever to exist. Not ever to exist. And this is about antiques and like a murder surrounding antiques and I wanted to love this. I really did. But I just couldn't. I couldn't bring myself to. I found this incredibly boring. There are literally, like I say in the vlog, there's literally five scenes in this book. Nothing happens, you know? In a mystery, in a murder mystery, I want there to be a lot of like variation in what's happening and like a lot of little different scenes. When I think of ones I love, like the Thursday Murder Club, I feel like there's such a good pacing to that. This one, they're in a town for like 100 pages and they arrive to a house and they have dinner in the house and they look around in the evening, then something happens in the morning and then they're somewhere in the afternoon. That's like literally all that happens. I don't understand how it takes up this amount of pages. So they're at this stately home for a lot of this and I feel like it's kind of playing up on, oh my god, we're like isolated. The characters think they're trapped there, but they're not. Like you can come and go at any time. I don't know. It seems a bit insular, but not for good reason. Like I love like a isolated murder mystery where they're stuck in a house for some reason, but like the characters just never left. So it's kind of like isolated, but like anyone can come and go at any time and I feel like it defeated the purpose of it. And honestly, just the more that I read this, the more and more disappointed I got and the more downhearted I felt. I'm like, what's the point? What's the point? Hello, I'm actually at the end of my TED talk. I don't know whether I've spoken. I've actually, I've had enough and I'm about to blow. If a book can have this synopsis and I could love it and I think it's going to be a pretty big release next year and I could dislike it this much. I don't want to think about it. We're never going to speak about it again. I put it on every TBR, every books I'm excited to read, books that I think could be a five-star permanent hit, all of it. I put it on all of it and I'm not willing to face, like this is painful for me. I'm not willing to face up again to how disappointing it was. So yeah, this is probably my biggest disappointment of the month. And then my other disappointment was The One Star and that was The Stranger Upstairs by Lisa M. Matlin. I read this for Gabby's Book Club, which I'll link down below. I was a co-host, very kindly invited me. I felt so honoured. But yeah, I gave this one star. This is about an influencer, but she's not an influencer. That, the whole influencer thing annoyed me. We'll get into it. Who buys a murder house and is going to renovate it and sell it for loads of money and document it on her social media and, but it's haunted, is basically it. And she's a therapist as well. She is not an influencer. Just have her be a therapist. The whole influencer thing in this, oh, it really pissed me off. I'm so sorry. She's writing on a blog or maybe Instagram and she'll like tag publicly like brands and be like, maybe we should work together on this. Want to do a collab? Want to do a sponsorship? I'm like, no one does that. Send it in the emails, girlie. Like it was just, it annoys me when an author does something with kind of like a new, what's perceived as like a new career, right? Be an influencer or be it something like, oh, we have characters on Love Island, like a fake Love Island murder mystery I've read from before. Or like stuff like that. And doesn't do it realistically. It pisses me off. And I'm sure a lot of other people feel this about other jobs. Like I'm sure like if you're a therapist, like her being a therapist in this, she probably does loads of things that therapists would never do. You know what I mean? But it just pisses me off. I'm like, that is not how influencing works, girlie. Like this is not how it works. But it was more than anything, the writing really annoyed me. The main character was so annoying. There's loads of spoilers I could get into. The whole book was so annoying. I listened to the audiobook exclusively for this and there's like this reoccurring motif of this line saying, don't kill me. Don't kill me. And the way, it just would keep popping up, right? Throughout the book. Like even in situations where it didn't necessarily have any bearing. It's like a throwback to, there was like a murder, the original murder that happened in the house, right? And there's a girl who's going, don't kill me. Don't kill me. And every time that appeared out of nowhere on the audiobook, I wanted to throw my phone across the room. Like, don't kill me. Don't kill me. The way she said it, it was so annoying. If I could give you one piece of advice, it would be shut the fuck up. And yeah, the main character annoyed me. There's no interesting characters on this. The relationship is a goddamn mess and not in a good way. It makes no sense. So much of this book to me makes no sense. So I hated it. I gave it one star. I absolutely hated it. It's got a pretty low rating. I don't think a lot of people have been loving it. But my god, that, Gabby put me through it. Four surprises. We've got two soft surprises, I'd say. These are both four stars. But my first one is Mr. Magic by Kirsten White because last month or the month before, and I think it was last month, I read another Kirsten White, which I gave 2.5 stars. So I was a bit nervous going into this, but I way preferred this. So this is, this one's difficult to pitch. It's a horror about this classic children's show that was shut down. There's no records of anywhere. There's nothing on YouTube. The Wikipedia page is sparse. Anyone who tries to talk about it gets shut down. And we're following some characters who were on this show as kids. Now, really, this whole book is an allegory for something. And in my vlog, I didn't say what it was because I don't know if it's, like, you only really realize it in the last 100 pages. But then I've seen other people say what it was. I'm just gonna say what it is now and talk about it a bit. But if you don't want to know, just skip ahead to where I'm no longer holding this back. So this book is really an allegory for religious deconstruction and Kirsten White growing up Mormon. And I just think, I think if you want to read this book, I think knowing that the whole book is an interest, a far more interesting way to view it. I think I actually skipped ahead and read a bit of the author's blurb and then was reading it through that lens for the last 100 pages, even though that is kind of when that starts coming together. But I think that is, it does add another element to this book. And I think, I think, I personally think it would be more interesting to read it going into that because I think it actually does a wonderful job of unpacking it in kind of like a surreal and absurdist way. So I think this is a really interesting book. It's a very, very weird book. Like, go in, like, you're gonna go into this book and you're gonna read it and be like, what the fuck is going on? Like, it is strange. You guys are so weird. Oh my God, you guys are so weird. I know. Everything is weird. It is, you know, detached from any kind of like semblance of normality and like the rules of the whole stuff with Mr. Magic and the show is like completely disconnected from reality, right? Like this is kind of a fantastical horror, but I really enjoyed this. I thought it was very compelling. It was weird. It wasn't a five star for me, but I really was surprised by A, how much I enjoyed it having not enjoyed The Dark Descent and Elizabeth Frankenstein and B, how unique it was. It's a very unique, interesting book. I don't think it's gonna be for everyone, but I would recommend giving it a go. And then my other surprise, again, it's a soft surprise, is The Marlowe Murder Club by Robert Thorogood. This is, we're following 77-year-old Judith Parts, who's a little bit of a, little bit of a wild girly. I don't know. She wears a cape, but she's like, she's certainly got a kind of personality, a certain kind of personality, and she witnesses her neighbour be murdered and she's like, I'm gonna solve this crime. It's like a classic cozy, not classic, like your typical cozy murder mystery. And I just think, I know, this was published so close to Thursday Murder Club, it probably isn't a rip-off of it, unless, you know, publishers got wind and were like, we need to fucking bring out stuff when Thursday Murder Club comes out. It is similar, because it is very similar. It's old person solving murder mysteries and it's got the same kind of humour and tone to it. But I was just surprised. I always have a little bit of a prejudice against books like this, that like seem very similar to Thursday Murder Club. And I just really, really enjoyed this. I thought the characters are great. Again, compared to the Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder, where there was like five scenes, there were so many things happening in this book and the pace was, again, moving along at a great notch. So yeah, this is a soft surprise. Go watch the vlog if you want to hear all of my thoughts. But I'm definitely going to continue on with this series. I really liked the audiobook. I loved the setting. I loved the cast of characters. It's like a lovely small town murder mystery. So I would definitely recommend. And then lastly, we've got to get into my hits of the month. The first is absolutely Emma by Jane Austen. I loved this, guys. I read it for my Patreon book club. So there's a whole discussion live show and reading vlog for it over there, if you want to check that out. But I loved this. I loved Emma so, so, so, so much. So for your reference, I read Pride and Prejudice when I was like 10, but I can't really remember the experience of reading it that much. Growing up, whenever I was ill, I'd always watch the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth. It's like a comfort watch to me. It reminds me of my childhood. I would just sit there on the sofa in like a blanket and watch this Pride and Prejudice. I'm talking like primary school age. And then I read Persuasion a couple years ago and didn't love it, but I loved this. Emma is such a delicious character, right? All you need to know about Emma, really, is that she's a girly who likes meddling in other people's romances. She thinks herself a bit of a matchmaker. But this, I would say, is Jane Austen's, well, my perception is that this is her funniest book. This is like humour. And Emma's an unlikable character. Jane Austen, I can't remember the exact quote, but basically said to her brother, like, I'm gonna write a character that nobody but me likes. Good for her. And honestly, I admire Jane for that. Because when I first meet Emma in this book, you're kind of like, girl, get out. Like, she's meddling in people's romances. You don't want her to be in it. You're like, Emma. But then I kind of like, I kind of got into it and I got into the drama and the camp of it all. And I loved it. It's so funny. This book is so funny. There's so many funny characters in it that I ate it up. Jane Austen, you are a funny lady. You are a funny lady. You know, and I think because I loved watching Pride and Prejudice when I was younger and stuff, this kind of setting feels very nostalgic for me and very, like, a comfort setting. Emma's long. It's a bulky book. And I was just shocked by how much I enjoyed it. It was so funny. I can't describe to you, like, Jane Austen was, I can imagine her writing that and be like, well, got jokes, babes, you know. And when I have fallen down a Jane Austen rabbit hole, I've mentioned this in another video, but I've fallen down a rabbit hole where I'm watching loads of documentaries about her. And she kind of didn't keep her writing a secret. Like, I think her sister and, like, close friends knew. But she also kind of kept it a secret. She didn't publish under her own name when she was alive. And she would, like, not really like them knowing that she was writing. So she kind of wrote in secret at home. Just the idea of her doing that and just the image of her life, I think, adds so much to this as well, you know. And I just love her. I love you, Jane. She's an icon. She's a legend. And she is the moment. Now, come on now. So, you know, I think this is a very accessible classic. I think Jane Austen in general, if you want to get into classics, is one of the most accessible places you can start. Because also I'd recommend getting an audiobook alongside because it helps, you know, having someone read it out to you with the tone of voice that things are said, helps you kind of judge the context behind some things that maybe would be a bit more difficult to understand. So I did have the audiobook for this as well, but I loved it. I cannot wait to read more Jane Austen. Next year is going to be my classics era, like I've said. And I am very, yeah, I'm very excited because this was wonderful. And my final hit, like I said, I had another five star this month that I just can't tell you about yet. Maybe I'll include it in November's hits. Depends how many hits we have in November. If we're struggling for hits, I'll put it in November's hits. But my other hit is Slew Fit by Brahm. I read this recently where I read the highest rated horror on my TBR and this was that. And I loved this. Oh my gosh. We're following Abathur who lives in this old Puritan village. She was shipped over from London as like a child bride. Well, like a bride for like all these men who have just come over to the US. She is very much seen as like an outcast or she's judged as being, you know, too mouthy, too noisy. She lets her hair show sometimes. Oh my God, the horror. And one event leads to another and she is alone and struggling and she kind of befriends the devil, Slew Fit. I loved this. The writing is impeccable. The setting is impeccable. The plot is impeccable. I could not put it down. Guys, you need to read this. It is so good. It is so compelling. And I think, as I said, a lot of the witchy stuff I read is more modern and I enjoyed reading something really from like the witchy era. Like, oh my God, they're gonna hang her for being a witch or they're gonna burn her for being a witch or they're gonna drown her. You know, like I don't read a lot of stuff from that era. I read like modern witches who are just like, you know, no consequences. But I enjoyed this kind of dark and really brutal era that this is set in. And I just thought the characters were built up so well and the mythology around the kind of spirits and demons and whatever that we have in this was so compelling. You know, and it is a big example of women's stories matter. They just matter, you know. Women's stories matter. Yeah. They just matter. They do. Like, this is a woman's story and it matters. She's gonna do what she's gonna do. I support her in everything. Abathur, I am in your corner. So yeah, I just absolutely loved it, guys. I absolutely loved it. I cannot recommend picking up Sleuther enough. It's perfect for this time of year. Read it today. Like, literally read it right now. You need to read it right now. So that was my October wrap-up. I hope that was interesting. Please let me know what you thought of any of the books I read this month and let me know how your October went. I want to hear how did your October go? Did you read a lot of horror, mystery, thrillers? Are you not really like a seasonal reader? Did you have any good five stars this month? Please let me know any of your disappointments, surprises, and hits. And I will see you very soon in another video. Bye!