Since I started writing my Monthly Wrap-ups in October, 2 years ago, it feels right to change the format in the same month. If you have seen my previous ones, I include the books I read, any books I might have to haul, books that I discovered recently (aka Caught on my radar), and finally my TBR. Until a couple of months ago, everything was fine, although I started to notice that my posts have the tendency to get quite big, therefore I thought it was finally time to split the post into two.

So by the end of each month, I’ll publish my wrap-up where I also include a haul if I bought any new books, and shortly after, I’ll publish my TBR, where I also talk about the books I’ve discovered the month before and hopefully can get my hand on in the future.

Now that this is out of the way, time to talk about books! *claps excitedly like a little girl*

Wrap-Up

---

I need to start off my wrap-up addressing something about Scribd. I talked about it last month, and I’m going to bring it up again here, and I feel that I need to talk about what I recently discovered. If you don’t know, Scribd is a monthly paid app that let you read and listen to an unlimited amount of books each month. You can listen to/read it with a wi-fi connection or download it to your device and have the books with you all the time. The app works really nice, they have a good selection of books, including new releases, and it cost $8,99 a month. For an unlimited amount of books, this seems like a bargain. Although a few people have already complained that they are being billed each month and don’t have unlimited access, so they get to a point where the app denies access to other books. And from what people were saying on Twitter, someone could listen without problem up to 2 books and another person could listen to 4 or 5 before they got blocked. So no one quite knows what is happening.

The Scribd also has a free month trial – that’s what I used to read and listen to most of the books this month. During that period, I had no problem what so ever to access any book. So even though I talk about this app, I don’t recommend it. I wanted to try it as it was free and that’s all. Please don’t think that I’m saying that you should try it too. You go at your own risk, just remember that some people are having problems with accessing books and having to wait a whole month to regain access to them again, while still paying each month for unlimited access. This also might be a problem they are dealing with and can be solved in the future.

---

So now that this thing is out of the way, it’s time to talk about the books I read this month. On the first few days of October, I finally finished Welcome to Rosie Hopkins’ Sweet Shop of Dreams by Jenny Colgan – this is a big ass title, goodness me. It took me a while to read it. The story develops very slowly and since it’s a romance novel, the most exciting thing to happen is the first kiss. I still had fun, although I was expecting more. Despite that, I still want to read the next book that is set during Christmas. But if it’s going to be another big boy, I better start in January to finish it just in time for Christmas.

Since I started my free month trial on Scribd, I had to take advantage of it. At that moment, a lot of people were talking about how amazing the audiobook for Sadie by Courtney Summers was. I actually mention Sadie on my Most Anticipated Releases of 2018 although it wasn’t my top book for the month of September. Even though the story seemed nice, the synopsis didn’t grab me, so I went in this book not expecting much. Turns out the story is as powerful as it is dark. The book is divided into two perspectives, Sadie’s and the author of the podcast. The element of the podcast works perfectly in audiobook format, although when it came to Sadie’s point of view, I felt lost sometimes, I didn’t know who she was talking about or who she was talking with. The story needed more attention from me that I couldn’t give while listening to the audiobook. The book also has some trigger warnings you better look up before reading it.

By chance, Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds appeared as a suggested book on Scribd, and I had to read it. I want to get more into poetry, and this book has won so many awards and was so well spoken that I couldn’t avoid checking it out. It has a pretty good message, and it shows the power of words. It’s thanks to poetry like this that I want to keep reading more. Thankfully, those old and tiering poems we all had to study for school are nothing like the poetry made today.

Another audiobook I listen on Scribd was Turtles All The Way Down by John Green. I’m starting to realise that audiobooks aren’t the right format for me to read. They are very handy, but also need the same amount of attention a book does, and I get more concentrated in the story when I have to read instead of listening as my mind wonders off quite easily. The only John Green book that I’ve ever read was a short story in Let It Snow. His story was my least favourite, and when I saw the movie The Fault is In Our Stars – I know it’s just the movie and it’s not the book – I didn’t like it at all. So this time I decided to give him another chance, and since people say that his most recent book is different from the others he wrote, maybe I would like it. Another reason for me to read it was because of a friend of mine loves him, and I thought it would be nice if we could talk about the book.

I already had a little chit-chat with her, and I’m very confused. The book is good. The mental health portrait is so well done and realistic that at some point it made me feel anxious. Although it also felt short. It made me feel that the story had no point, even though it had one. It didn’t make me change my opinion on the author, and for most of the story, it managed to grab my attention. I have a lot of conflicted feelings about it, and I don’t even know them all. For sure is a book that I recommend, but I need more time to think and have a proper opinion on it.

And then came The Spookathon *attempts to sound like a ghost*

I don’t exactly celebrate Halloween, but I enjoy all the excitement, the puns, and the spooky names on Twitter. Once again, I wasn’t going to pass along the opportunity to participate in the Spookathon. I even did a TBR post specific for it. Straight of the bat, I somewhat failed this year. I didn’t complete all the challenges, I didn’t read all the books, but the three books I wanted to read during that week, I just didn’t finish one. By 11 pm, I already knew I wasn’t going to finish Hallowe’en Party by Agatha Christie. I left about 80 pages that I read in the next couple of days. It was surprisingly a nice and cosy story. I didn’t guess the murderer, I was miles away, but overall the story was very interesting.

I’m actually not even mad about myself, given the circumstances and how busy that week turned out to be, I read quite a lot. From the 5 challenges I completed:

• Read a book with purple on the cover: Coraline by Neil Gayman
• Read a book not set in this time period: Charlotte Says by Alex Bell (1910)
• Read a book with pictures: Coraline by Neil Gayman

Between the three books, my favourite was Charlotte Says by Alex Bell, the prequel to Frozen Charlotte – that I’m actually going to haul in this post, I’ll get to there soon. I love the story, the creepiness, the horror, it’s SO GOOD! Even though I didn’t get scared with the story, I couldn’t dare reading it at night and face the possibility of a sleepless night. For sure, I need to do a proper review post for this book, but if you haven’t realised what I think of it, I LOVE IT!!!

On the other hand, Coraline by Neil Gayman was a disappointment. I’ve seen the movie about 2 or 3 times and I don’t plan on re-watching it many more. I adore the scary vibe on the film, and the other mother really spooks me out when she turns into that spider-thing – I hate spiders by the way – and I usually need a blanket to protect myself from her. I still can’t believe that it’s a kids movie. I’m an adult, and that shit scares the hell out of me! Moving on, despite my “fear” towards the movie, I really enjoy it, and went on the book wanting to be scared, crept out, and get into that spooky dark vibe the movie gives. And it was so disappointing. For starters, the story moves along too quickly at the beginning and then drags a lot when Coraline realised the other world is dangerous. She spends more time playing the game with the other mother than she spends the first time she discovers the other world. Bottom line, I prefer the movie, and since I’ve just read the book I think I want to watch the film again?

Haul

October is my birth month, and I wanted to treat myself with some books. Last year, I bought 4 Saga comic books, and this year I thought to do the same thing. Although instead of getting more comics, I would buy books that I read and didn’t have physical copies of. Obviously, I had to add a couple of books that I haven’t read yet, and it’s so exciting to have them in my hands.

Let me start with the books I already read. Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon was the first ebook that I ever read, and the story is so cute and for so long, I wanted to buy a copy to have on my shelf. The cover is so beautiful that I could spend the entire day looking at it. The way the story is told makes it a quick read, and Madeline is so funny that I instantly fell in love with her.

Another book that I wanted so much to have is A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness. The story is beautifully dark and having an illustrated version of it makes it 10 times more beautiful. I actually did a review if you want to know more about my thought on it. The short version: one of my favourite books of all time.

For Spookathon this year, I read Charlotte Says the prequel to Frozen Charlotte that I read last year also for Spookathon. I love this series, it was one of the best things I discovered. It’s so creepy that it is amazing. Now, that I read both, I do prefer Charlotte Says over Frozen Charlotte. Although, I still need to reread Frozen Charlotte because there were a few questions that for me were left unanswered, and I don’t know if I just missed them or not. Either way, I highly recommend both books.

As I already said, I want to get more into poetry, and Milk and Honey by Rupy Kaur is one of the reasons for that. At the time, this book was being talked about everywhere, and I decided to give in to the hype. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed the book. Just because it’s poetry, it’s not boring at all. The story is so powerful, and I flew through it. Maybe I’ll read it again sometime soon.

From all the books that I bought, I read them last year except Relight My Fire by Joanna Bolouri that came out this year. It was one of my most anticipated books of 2018 since I read The List last Christmas and the author announced the sequel was finally coming out. I had so much fun, laugh out loud, and awwwwed with Molly. It’s an adult novel, romance, chic-lit, woman’s fiction, whatever you want to call it, but it’s fun AF.

Moving along to the books I haven’t read. I finally bought Pachinko by Min Jin Lee! I can’t believe I have a copy of this book. Since I discovered it, it was all I could think about. I want to read more Asian Lit, and this book seems great to learn more about Korean and Japanese history. It follows along a family during three generations starting in Korean and later migrating to Japan because of… a war? See? After I read this book I’ll know exactly why.

Another book I was very excited about was Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer. It is a complete mystery to me. This is the first book on a series and is about exploring a mysterious Area X as it is called. There have been previous expeditions to that site, and all of them were inconclusive and crazy. This time they decided to send the first female expedition hoping they can found out something new. Even though the synopsis tells so much, at the same time it tells nothing at all. It’s driving me mad! I need to know what is Area X!

And these were the only books that I plan on buying. Until I saw a 50% off stand in the supermarket. It instantaneously grabbed my attention. I must have looked like the Road Runner when he saw food. Most of the books in there I didn’t know anything about and others were children’s books, but then I spotted The Truth and Other Lies by Sasha Arango. It was a single copy, and I had already heard good things about it on Goodreads, and I couldn’t leave it behind. After all, it was 50% off… it’s not like I’ll buy it much cheaper than that.

The final book I have to haul I didn’t buy for myself, it was a birthday gift. My friends decided to give me a cookbook with the promise I would make them a dinner. The moment I open up my gift and saw Gordon Ramsay on the cover, I call them crazy. He has a bad mood but his recipes are really good. Gordon Ramsay’s Ultimate Home Cooking has advice alongside recipes to make cooking at home less stressful and more enjoyable. For sure it’s a book that needs to be read instead of used to get recipes. After a quick overlook, I really need to make the Eggs Benedict. YUM!

Here I was thinking about splitting my monthly wrap-ups to make it shorter, and October turns out to be a huge month. I bought a lot of books this month and so soon it won’t happen again. And also, I read a lot of books thanks to Scribd, and because most of them were less than 300 words. I feel that I’m into the mood for reading shorter books, I just don’t have many of those laying around for next month.