Skip to main content

A Month of Reading: October


Best reads of the past month:

Dark Moon Defender by Sharon Shinn
This is the 3rd in Shinn's Twelve Houses series. The 2nd, Thirteenth House, came out this past March, so when I found out DMD would be out in October I squealed in delight. It's so rare to get more than one book per year out of a new series in hardback and I love this series. The six companions are each so different and intriguing that it's a pleasure to watch them interact. They really are old friends by now. The first two books followed Senneth and Kirra respectively, the two females in the group. This one focuses on Justin the gutter boy turned King's Rider. Warning: the dude on the cover looks nothing like Justin. The 4th book is going to focus on Cammon and is, without a doubt, going to rock my world.

Grave Surprise by Charlaine Harris
This is the 2nd in Harris' Harper Connelly mystery series. I surprised myself with how much I was looking forward to it. Harris' Sookie Stackhouse series is her most popular and they are delightful. But I am much more like Harper than I am Sookie and so it is perhaps not so surprising that I looked forward to the continuation of her story so much. And the lack of supernatural (aside from Harper's uncanny ability to find dead people) elements is almost refreshing after Sookie's wild world. One major (for Harper) revelation in this book has me on the edge of my seat for the next one.

My Heartbeat by Garret Freymann-Weyr
This was a recommendation from a friend whose literary taste is so similar to mine, it's kind of a crime that we've never actually met. The description on her blog had me intrigued, so I picked it up and took it on a transatlantic flight to Morocco. Despite the fact that it didn't last me a third of the way there, it was so worth it. What a sweet story and how much I wanted to sit in cafes with Ellen, James, and Link and just be intellectual and chummy with them. And like Ellen, I think James is super cute!

Troy by Adele Geras
I finally picked this one up after hearing mixed reviews. I was going on a trip and trips always make me want to read stories set in exotic locales. I read it while holed up in a hotel in Agadir, sick from drinking some bad water. It got me through. I thought Geras did a great job weaving the lives of mortals with those of the gods manipulating them. The story follows three young women and one young man who live in Troy and who don't remember a time when their city was not beseiged by the Greeks. As with the original, tragedy and joy walk hand in hand, the outcome is bittersweet at best, and at times you want to shake the protagonists. But the writing is lovely and as soon as I can afford it, I'll pick up the sequel, Ithaka.

Justice Hall by Laurie R. King
Another great Russell-Holmes pairing. This is the one I've enjoyed the most since #2--A Monstrous Regiment of Women. It had been awhile since I'd picked one up and now I'm completely back in the mood.

Best rereads of the past month:

Son of the Shadows by Juliet Marillier
This was brought on by last month's reading of The Well of Shades. It's just so hard to follow a Marillier up with something else. Some lesser book that actually isn't a lesser book but will seem so on the heels of a particularly good Marillier. It's not fair. It's not fair to you and it's not fair to the book-that-is-not-lesser. There's really only one solution to the problem. Read an older, much beloved Marillier. Soak it up, revel in it if you must, get it out of your system, and move on!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

You Might Also Like

Interview with Diana Peterfreund + Rampant Giveaway!

Ever since I fell in love with Diana Peterfreund 's Secret Society Girl series last year, I've been hoping I'd get the chance to interview her here. Tomorrow marks the release of her new novel, Rampant , and let me tell you that you have not read a book like this before. You can read my review here , but all you really need to know is that it's a story about killer unicorns and the young women who hunt them. You want to read it now, don't you? Oh, yeah, and it's YA and the first in a series! To celebrate the release, Diana graciously answered a few of my most burning questions. As she is always a delight, I know you'll enjoy them as much as I did. First things first: When did the idea for Rampant first hit you and what (if anything) did you know right off the bat? In early 2005, just after selling Secret Society Girl , I had this dream of being chased by a very dangerous unicorn. I woke up and went to go look it up to see if I could figure out the meanin...
120 comments
Read more

Review | Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

It really is a pretty cover. And dragons. I love them so.  It's been far too long since I've read a book in which dragons played any kind of primary character role. They do here, and they are probably my favorite aspect of this book. But more on that later. It's probably worth noting that I, like the rest of the world, was aware of Fourth Wing and the collective losing of BookTok's mind over it. I mean, it was kind of thrilling to hear that you couldn't find a copy anywhere—in the sense that I love it when books are being consumed and loved. And when that happens in such a way that it takes publishing by surprise (for lack of a better way to phrase it) so much so that they have to scramble to print more. So I did the sensible thing and bought the ebook. And then I proceeded to do the not-so-sensible-but-extremely-Angie thing and not read it. There was a cross-country move tucked in there somewhere between the buying and the reading, but more on that at a later date...
8 comments
Read more

Angie's 2025 Must Be Mine

  As ever, begin as you mean to go on. And so here are my most anticipated titles of 2025: And we're still waiting for covers on these, but I'm just as excited for each of them: The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Volume 9 by Beth Brower Wish You Were Here by Jess K. Hardy Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher Pitcher Perfect by Tessa Bailey Father Material by Alexis Hall Alchemised by SenLinYu Breakout Year by K.D. Casey What titles are on your list?
2 comments
Read more