━━━━━━ 031. PARANOIA
WHAT I READ IN SEPTEMBER!
(honorable mention for the one
book i read in august lol)
1. HEROES OF OLYMPUS: BLOOD OF OLYMPUS BY RICK RIORDAN (JULY 31 — AUGUST 1) 5/5 ⭐️
i finally finished this series !!! i said i would i just had to take a long ass break apparently lol but god this book was so good and as much as i loved devouring all the books back to back at the beginning of the year, i wish i would've spaced them out because now this one stands out so clearly in my mind but all the others blur together but its fine.
i really loved this book i thought it was a great conclusion to the main series but it left it open ended since obviously some of the characters pop up in other series. i think everyone really came into their own in this book like all the development that had been building really paid off and yeah i don't really know what else to say ?? i feel like sometimes in books like this the threat doesn't really feel like a threat but honestly for a good part of this book i was convinced someone was going to die and the ending made me cry but then so happy idk i just loved this book and the series im glad i finally read it
maybe i'll read the magnus chase and toa series eventually but for now i feel very accomplished in having finished two whole series of riordan books <3
2. SAWKILL GIRLS BY CLAIRE LEGRAND (AUGUST 12 — SEPT 22) 5/5 ⭐️
really this book took me forever to read bc i read like two chapters and then hit a reading slump bc i was working so much but once i got into it, i couldn't stop.
i will say it's a little slow in the beginning and does drag on a bit when it comes to actually explaining things that are already pretty fucking obvious but i still thought it was really good like the whole thing with the monster was really well thought out imo and i loved how fleshed out the three main characters were. also im a sucker for anything sapphic obviously and i feel like the descriptions of two of the characters' feelings for each other was really well written and felt so realistic and some of their moments together i just 🥰 it was really good!! not to mention there's also asexual rep in this book which is SO nice to see bc i barely ever see it at all and i love that the relationship involving this character ended happy and it wasn't like "hey i don't want you because you can't/won't/don't want to have sex" idk it was so refreshing
but yeah this book was really really really good !!
3. DON'T TELL A SOUL BY KIRSTEN MILLER (SEPT 23–24) 5/5 ⭐️
this is probably one of my favorite books i've read this year like it gave me everything i ever wanted when i picked it up (although it's not an actual ghost story like i would've thought but it ended up being So Much better). i was hooked the entire time, i never wanted to put it down and it was like so creepy in a way and kept you on the edge the entire time. i liked that i never really knew which characters to trust, it was always changing as i kept reading, and i loved that the twists felt realistic and made sense with what i'd been reading but also still felt shocking when they were revealed (especially the thing with lark)
bram as a character was so good and complex to me and her backstory was heartbreaking and compelling and just made it so much better when you see the payoff of everything she'd done and why she'd done what she did idk i loved this book so so so much it's so good!! if you read it make sure you look into the tws because there are quite a few but it's so incredibly good
4. THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES BY MINDY MCGINNIS (SEPT 24–27) 4/5 ⭐️
( tw for mentions of animal abuse and sexual assault )
i knew going into this one that it was also going to be heavy subject material as well but i wasn't expecting it to hit me right at the start of the book. there's a lot of mentions of animal abuse and sexual assault (which again i knew because i'd looked into the tws for it) and sometimes it was off-putting to a point where i had to take a few seconds to reread it. i thought it was a really good book with a really important message and the ending absolutely destroyed me— idk i would never read it again but i would definitely recommend reading it at least once if you can handle the subjects being discussed if that makes sense?? the only reason it's not 5/5 for me is that some parts felt like they dragged on too long and while i entirely understand why the parts of it were in there i really didn't like the slut-shaming of branley.
that's all the books i've read recently and now i'm gonna list my current tbr (it's kind of a lot and kind of a mess bc i'm not sure what i can get from the library rn so!!)
my october tbr
— carrie (this is a book i'm carrying around w me rn)
— pride & prejudice (to carry around when i finish carrie)
— the grace year
— gone girl
— kill creek
— final girls
— the final girl support group
— plain bad heroines
— undead girl gang
— in my dreams i hold a knife
