BOOKENDS: What I Read in October 2024

- Meg

I read a LOT in October. aka a lot of KU novellas for spooky season! I very much enjoyed the fae countryside fantasy vibes of The Good and the Green and I hope to read the follow ups of this soon!! I continued Bennett’s historical romance series with Curled Up with an Earl and enjoyed it! Spookily Yours was a candy sweet Halloween romance (the hero is a cat). I revisited The House of Mirth for the first time in twelve years, and it brought me back to my last semester of undergrad and brought up a deep reflection on the passage of time. Robert’s follow up in The Kraken’s Secret was enjoyable (and I still wish these had more)!! The Kindle Unlimited series had either hits or misses, and Joe Hill and Josh Malerman were my favorites.

WHAT I READ

💖 purchased/owned | 🌠 library/borrowed | 🔮 review copy | 💞 reread | 👻 dnf

🌠 The Good and the Green, by Amy Yorke
💖 Curled Up With an Earl, by Amy Rose Bennett
🌠 Spookily Yours, Jennifer Chipman
💖💞 The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton
🌠 The Pram, by Joe Hill
🌠 Ankle Snatcher, by Grady Hendrix
🌠 It Waits in the Woods, by Josh Malerman
🌠 In Bloom, by Paul Tremblay
🌠 Big Bad, by Chandler Baker
💖 The Kraken’s Sacrifice, by Katee Robert
🌠 Best of Luck, by Jason Mott

BOOKENDS: What I Read in September 2024

- Meg

September was a very meh reading month. Work was busy, I had car troubles that took up a lot of attention, and things weren’t great all around!! I did enjoy The Duke and the Dressmaker as a little historical romance palate cleanser. Everything else I thought should have been more fleshed out and longer!!! However, The Dragon’s Bride was very fun, and even though I wanted more, it stood on its own. The novellas from Kindle Unlimited often feel like starters, something that could eventually be built into a longer work, but is ultimately left as it is. The others were not even really worth revisiting for me, and I was disappointed in the execution of Squirrel Meets World and The Gothic. Peg and Rose Solve a Murder looks like it should have been more fun and have some of that spry old person/Golden Girls vibes, but it felt very bitter.

WHAT I READ

💖 purchased/owned | 🌠 library/borrowed | 🔮 review copy | 💞 reread | 👻 dnf

💖 The Dragon’s Bride, by Katee Robert
🌠 The Duke and the Dressmaker, by Eva Devon
💖 Squirrel Meets World, by Shannon Hale and Dean Hale
💖 Peg and Rose Solve a Murder, by Laurien Berenson
💖 The Gothic, by Nick Groom
🌠 The Backbone of the World, by Stephen Graham Jones
🌠 Bloody Summer, by Carmen Maria Machado
🌠 A Righteous Man, by Tochi Onyebuchi
🌠 Stag, by Karen Russell

BOOKENDS: What I Read in August 2024

- Meg

August was an okay reading month! Looking back on what I read, I definitely kept to some authors I know and some rereads, but sometimes that’s what you need! I have never finished the full Old Man’s War saga, so I wanted to reread the first book as a refresher before I continue with the rest. I’m terrible at finishing series. Hester Fox is a favorite gothic fiction writer of mine, and while The Last Heir to Blackwood Library wasn’t my favorite, it definitely had spooky Downton Abbey vibes. Midnight Pearls was a reread and a revisit of a teenage favorite, and I thought it held up well enough! Wildlife, The Tiger Came to the Mountains, and Awakening Anne were all ebook reads (and shorter reads) that I enjoyed. I’ve been reading a lot of those shorter novella series Kindle Unlimited has, especially when I feel like I’m in a reading slump. Awakening Anne felt like a gaslamp fantasy, but I felt kind of lost in the middle of it. I really liked The Murder of Mr. Wickham, and I thought Gray captured the essence of regency fiction. I’m looking forward to the next in the series! My biggest disappointment was The Paragon Hotel, because I have enjoyed Faye’s writing in the past but this fell very flat and weird for me.

WHAT I READ

💖 purchased/owned | 🌠 library/borrowed | 🔮 review copy | 💞 reread | 👻 dnf

💖 The Last Heir to Blackwood Library, by Hester Fox
💖💞 Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi
💖💞 Midnight Pearls, by Debbie Viguié
🌠 Wildlife, by Jeff VanderMeer
🌠 The Tiger Came to the Mountains, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
💖 Awakening Anne, by Kalynn Applewhite
💖 The Murder of Mr. Wickham, by Claudia Gray
💖 The Paragon Hotel, by Lyndsay Faye

BOOKENDS: What I Read in June 2024

- Meg

I feel like June was a decent reading month. It started off slow because I did not enjoy The Warm Hands of Ghosts as much as I thought it would which was disappointing because I adored her Winternight Trilogy, and it put me in a reading slump that lasted until about the last week and a half of June where I read/finished up the rest of these. I listened to Pride and Prejudice narrated by Rosamund Pike on a trip to visit my mom, and I loved revisiting that familiar story this way. I devoured Yellowface in a single sitting while waiting for an oil change, and I kicked myself a bit for putting it off for so long. I enjoy Kuang’s writing so much. The historical romance was solid, and I’ll definitely be checking out more of her writing in the future. I want to read all of the Best American SFF, and I reread 2015’s edition and thought the entries were solid still after almost a decade! The Amazon Original Stories are great for me at getting out of reading slumps too because they’re short and I can usually read one or two in a sitting, so that helps get me out of a slump and get my reads for the year number up, especially when I feel like I’ve been slacking a bit.

WHAT I READ

💖 purchased/owned | 🌠 library/borrowed | 🔮 review copy | 💞 reread | 👻 dnf

🌠 The Warm Hands of Ghosts, by Katherine Arden
💖 Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
💖 The Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2015, ed. Joe Hill
🌠 The Long Game, by Ann Leckie (Kindle Unlimited)
🌠 Just Out of Jupiter’s Reach, by Nnedi Okorafor (Kindle Unlimited)
💖 Yellowface, by R.F. Kuang
🌠 Slow Time Between the Stars, by John Scazi (Kindle Unlimited)
💖 Dreaming of a Duke Like You, by Sara Bennett

BOOKENDS: What I Read in May 2024

- Meg

May was a much more enjoyable reading month overall, no duds, just solid reads. It was in organizing my Goodreads that I figured out that I’d read another book this month (Ana Maria and the Fox) because somehow Goodreads kept my update/review about the book but didn’t mark the date on which I finished it. Now that Emily Henry’s books are being released in hardcover first rather than paperback originals, I’m fortunate enough to access the arcs and read those while I wait for the paperback releases to match the rest of my books. Summer Sons is excellent Appalachian dark academia horror, and I definitely want to read more of Mandelo’s work. Juniper & Thorn and Godkiller lived up to my expectations, which was a nice surprise after reading some other popular stuff in the previous months that was just… not great.

WHAT I READ

💖 purchased/owned | 🌠 library/borrowed | 🔮 review copy | 💞 reread | 👻 dnf

🌠 Ana María and the Fox, by Liana De la Rosa
💖 Summer Sons, by Lee Mandelo
💖 Superman vs. Meshi, vol. 1, by Satoshi Miyagawa, illus. Kai Kitago
💖 Juniper & Thorn, by Ava Reid
🔮 Funny Story, by Emily Henry
💖💞 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Other Tales of Terror, by Robert Louis Stevenson
💖 Godkiller, by Hannah Kaner