October Reviews

Spooky month is over, but I read a bunch of thematic books for it, so let's get into it!

A Good Girl's Guide To Murder by Holly Jackson

This whole trilogy was given to me by a friend while I was visiting, and I figured it'd be perfect for spooky season!

Five years ago, Andie, a girl in Pip's town went missing. Her boyfriend, Sal, confessed and killed himself days later, and the case was closed. But now in her senior year, Pip doesn't think Sal did it, and she's going to use her senior capstone project to do it. With the help of Sal's younger brother Ravi, Pip is determined to find out the truth of what happened, and to finally clear Sal's name.

This was such a fun read. The mystery builds at the perfect pace, laying just enough clues and red hearings to make the ultimate discovery satisfactory and easy enough to piece together yourself without ruining the story.

Pip is a great character to follow, young but mature, steady and dedicated. She gets paranoid at times, and it serves the build the suspense of the whole story, stressing the stakes and danger of it all.

I appreciated that even though this was YA, it hardly ever got into high school or other teen drama, focusing primarily on the murder mystery and Pip's investigative work.

It was creepy and twisty and had all sorts of surprises, and I really had a lot of fun with it.

Good Girl, Bad Blood by Holly Jackson

The trilogy continues!

Pip's mystery solving days are behind her-- without her Andie Bell case notes released as a podcast, she's ready to focus on her classes, boyfriend, and future. But when one of her best friend's brothers goes missing, he asks for Pip's help using her podcast. With no choice and everyone listening, Pip vows to find Jamie before it's too late.

This sequel had the same dangerous twists and frantic energy as the first one, but with even darker aspects to it. The mystery is great, I had a blast trying to put all the pieces together, and the increased scrutiny made this story and mystery feel even bigger than the last.

There was a nice mix of new and returning characters, spicing up some existing lore and expanding on the town. I think I saw some threads starting for the next book, but we'll have to find out!

I'm have a great if somewhat chilling time.

As Good As Dead by Holly Jackson

I'm so mad, I could have sworn I wrote a review for this book right after I finished it, but I was at a wedding and finished late at night after the wedding so I bet I didn't. RIP. We'll do one now, but fair warning it'll be quick, especially since it's the third book in the series and I don't want to give away any spoilers.

Pip is still reeling from the outcome of her last case. Convinced she only needs one more to find herself beneath the horror of it all, she starts picking apart the threads of a serial killer case, where the convicted man's mother is convinced he's innocent. And the deeper Pip gets into it, the more she thinks she's right-- especially when it seems like she may be in the true killer's sights. She'll have to use everything she's learned to make it out alive, and risk becoming a monster herself.

This one was a decent bit heavier than the previous two, dipping into some darker topics and presenting more, at least to me, terrifying moments. Pip's paranoia is at an all time high, and ours goes right with her. There are also a lot of call backs to the first book, which was really fun, and added another level of sinister-ness to it all.

I will say I was super hooked for the first half of the book, but it completely switches gears for the back half, and while it was still compelling and interesting, I didn't love the full change up.

That being said, the whole trilogy was really something else, and if you're into murder mysteries, I would absolutely give this one a shot.

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater (the graphic novel)

I'll just start by saying that The Raveb Cycle is one of my favorite book series, so when I saw it was getting a graphic novel adaptation, I was very excited. 

And while it's not as good as the original (something about Stiefvater's writing just makes my brain absolutely delighted), the graphic novel form brings some new life to certain scenes and characters. It's fun to see these characters in this new fun way, to actually see the magical world crafted. 

I think it's a good translation, and the art and designs are gorgeous, but it did ultimately make me want to revisit the original series, so standby, might do that soon.

Weird Women: Classic Supernatural Fiction by Groundbreaking Female Writers: 1852-1923, collected by Leslie S. Klinger and Lisa Morton

This was a library find ways back at that library sale I went to last year, and I've been saving it for spooky season.

This book is a collection of short stories from female writers (some well known, some forgotten, and some in between) who were writing sometime between 1852 and 1923. It is a weird collection, with stories about everything from haunted objects to ghosts to dreams to mad scientists. 

I will admit I sometimes struggle with certain older writing styles, so some of the stories were a bit harder to get through than others, but I generally had a decent time with them all. It was fun to read stories from writers I both had and had not heard of-- we love to expand our reading knowledge.

Overall this was aptly timed for spooky season.

A Grave Talent by Laurie R. King

I was going to try to hit the library again for one more spooky read, but the branch closest to me is under construction until January and the next closest closes early on the days I'm available to get to it, so I rooted around in my tbr and found another murder mystery to finish up October with.

Detective Kate Martinelli, just promoted to homicide in San Francisco, has been paired with a senior officer for a rough case-- a series a child murders in a small community. It seems to be cut and dry, with a former convicted child murderer artist living in the community, but the more Kate gets to know Vaun and starts digging into the case, the more she thinks Vaun is innocent; not just for the current murders, but the one in her past too. As things start to unravel, danger creeps ever closer, and Kate may lose everything to follow the lead to its end.

I'll get to the mystery aspect of the book in a minute, but first I have to address that it was published in the 90s, which genuinely surprised me, because the main character, Kate, is a lesbian. It's only hinted at for a bit, kept vauge and in the shadows in a way that made me very confused, because why hide a queer character when it's much more normalized, and often used as a marketing tactic? Until I realized the publication and setting date was the 1990s. The prolific use of landlines and limited computer access also made sense then too. 

There were a few points in this book that felt like unnecessary mentions of women's body parts that did feel very 90s detective, but other than that I actually have a good time with this book. The murders are awful, but the investigation is interesting, taking enough twists to keep the reader hooked and nervous.

I liked Kate and her partner (cop partner, though her life partner is also nice) Hawkins, they riffed off each other well, balancing different points of the story and investigation. Vaun was a very interesting character, and her history and involvement are the prime focus of the book, so I was glad they were interesting. 

It fell into a little bit of an art rabbit hole sometimes, which was fine but not all that interesting to me, so I just jumped past some of those parts to get back to the murder solving.

Overall this was a decent murder mystery and not a bad way to round out the month.

Chaos Theory by Nic Stone

Surprise! Snuck one more book in for October. 

I saw Nic Stone when she went on tour for this book forever ago, and only vaguely remember what she talked about, but I was out of creepy or murdery books, so I figured I'd lean into the really scary stuff-- living with and managing mental illness in a society that stigmatizes and demonizes it.

Shelbi is just trying to get by. She's thirteen months removed from her most recent episode and established as a loner at a new school. Andy wishes he could take a lot of things back, drinking his nights away to forget and to drown out the sounds of his parents fighting. When Shelbi drives past Andy's drunken car accident, the chaos of the universe sparks in their direction, giving them both a chance to really discovering who they could be if they just let themselves be it.

I thought the representations of different coping mechanisms (both healthy and unhealthy) is maybe the biggest part of this book. It's a YA romantic drama, so there's a slow romance and all that, but honestly it's mostly about the two main characters confronting their histories and presents, and learning via one another than there is more to life than hiding from your problems. 

The characters were fine-- Andy felt a little defined by his addiction at times, but his home life was rough enough that, like, I get it. The romance was sweet, even if I got very very slightly annoyed at how certain things were handled, and overall this was a quick read that handled some heavy topics well.

And that's it! Next month I'm writing a novel, so we'll see how many books I get through.

Until next time!

Literary recommendation: A Deadly Education trilogy by Naomi Novik has been on my mind a lot lately

Media recommendation: I've been working my way through Dimension 20's Cloudward, Ho! and that's been such a delight