October 2025

I don’t always feel like writing a full review for everything. I was inspired by Modern Mrs. Darcy’s Quick Lit posts and decided to do something similar as a way to briefly discuss the books I read in a month but don’t write full reviews for.

My October reading picked up compared to September, but was still a bit of a slow reading month. Part of that is due to a movie challenge I was working on (#100FilmsIn92Days, a challenge to watch 100 horror movies you’ve never seen between August 1 and October 31, which I will write about in a separate post!).

But I read seven books, staying on track to meet or exceed my Goodreads 2025 goal (100 books), and it was a pretty good reading month:

Memorials, Richard Chizmar (owned) – 3⭐

I liked the road-trip premise of this one, and it had some good creepy moments. I also liked the group of main characters as we followed their story, but I didn’t love this overall. There felt like stretches that were either repetitive or nothing much happened, and then the end felt too quick by comparison.

Becoming the Boogeyman, Richard Chizmar (library) – 4⭐

This was a great sequel to Chasing the Boogeyman, and I enjoyed this more than I did Memorials by the same author. I really like the way he plays with fact and fiction in this to create a metafictional story about his own life, and I am already looking forward to the next in the series!

An Evil Premise, T. Marie Vandelly (e-ARC) – 4⭐

I love books about books and writing, and this one grabbed me from the start, with its tension and twists. I so enjoyed trying to figure out what was going on, and have been recommending it to my fellow horror lovers!

Old Soul, Susan Barker (owned) – 4⭐ (4 stars; owned)

This was a bit of a slow burn for me, but I really liked it. What an interesting story!

The Last Ferry Out, Andrea Bartz (library) – 3⭐

This was just ok for me. I felt like there were too many characters, the story kind of dragged, and there were one too many attempts to throw in a twist.

The Vegetarian, Han Kang (owned) – 3⭐?

I honestly don’t know what to make of this! It was definitely thought-provoking and made for some interesting book club discussion, but it was also challenging and hard for me to follow. I felt so removed from the characters and was trying to understand their motivations and their actions but couldn’t get a grasp on anything. This was probably over my head but I’ve been reading other reviews to see what readers make of it, and that has been interesting.

The Library Book: An Overdue History of the Ottawa Public Library, 1906-2001, Phil Jenkins (library) – 4⭐

Local history is not usually an area of interest for me, but with a big new library set to open in the near future, I thought it would be fun to read about the history of Ottawa’s public library system. This was a very interesting read, and it made me even more excited for the new library!