five things Friday: October TBR edition

I haven't actually checked to verify it, but I'm pretty sure that I already have more 4.5 and 5-star books in 2022 than I did in 2021. Either way, it sure feels like my reading year has been more successful, and that's rather satisfying. Plus I have high hopes for a few I still have on my list for this year after seeing such great reviews - and I'm packing some of them in to October since several of them seem seasonally appropriate for the month...

I'm not a "spooky season" kind of person in general and don't think I've ever purposefully picked books for - but it just feels right for October to be the month for some of the selections on my stack. I've got sort of witchy vibes in The Change; there's a ghost element to Unlikely Animals (super excited about this one - the author is excellent, based on Rabbit Cake); there's a family curse from a Vietnamese witch in The Fortunes of Jaded Women that causes them to never find real love and always have daughters; and there's a fantasy element to the middle grade pick Amari and the Night Brothers (which I have heard very good reviews of). Finally, when cold and wet weather starts to arrive, what's cozier than something with Jane Austen-esque feels? Really looking forward to A Lady's Guide to Fortune-Hunting, some regency era romance that sounds like it has the right amount of (not too much) steam for me.

One of my September TBR books would actually be perfect for October - with its Halloween setting - if only I didn't really dislike it...

Here's a full recap of my September picks, which I also did a bit unusually in that I picked a theme of "Agatha Christie inspired" for the first half of them. Only semi successful, as you'll see (probably doesn't help that Agatha Christie books aren't my favorite to read anyway).

• The Agathas: this YA book was my best selection of the Christie-inspired picks because it fell squarely into a genre I like - YA mystery that's investigated by the teen protagonists - and just added on the element of the main character being obsessed with Agatha Christie (and thus inspired to channel her and her detective characters when her former best friend dies). A solid YA mystery if you're a fan of Karen McManus or Holly Jackson - it's got all those type of elements of high schooler death (but the overall tone is not too dark), cold case brought back up because of it, rich teens behaving badly, main character with some kind of media/book obsession that drives their desire/ability to investigate (a la the true crime podcast angle in A Good Girl's Guide to Murder), and friendships forged across stereotypical peer group lines in pursuit of the investigation. ★★★.5
• Daisy Darker: this locked-room mystery inspired by And Then There Were None, in which Daisy's family is assembling for their eccentric grandmother's birthday, and while they are stuck at the house with no one being able to leave or come for the night because of the tidal patterns, they begin to die one by one... Decent concept for a family drama thriller, if only it hadn't been so tedious to read. The narrative voice (Daisy's) was just annoying to me, so it was going to be hard to redeem it, but then on top of it the characters kept doing/saying things that were inconsistent with how they had been described earlier, and the eccentric grandmother was just so weird that it felt like slapstick on top of a story that was trying (?) to be more thrillery. Maybe it needed a better edit? Rather disappointing BOTM pick - I finished it, but I was kinda mad that I did because the big twist/reveal at the end did not make up for the slog to get there. ★★
• Dead and Gondola: this is a cozy mystery that pays homage to Agatha Christie by setting the story in a (such amazing sounding - I want to go to there!) mountainside chalet bookstore run by a family with the last name of Christie who loves their random connection to the famous author in this way, because they love her work. And then it turns out that when a stranger comes to their tiny Colorado mountain town and winds up dead in the gondola that takes visitors back down the mountain to the main part of town, after he had burst in to their store's Agatha Christie bookclub. At first they might be suspects, but then of course they find themselves as sleuths... Cozy mysteries are not really my thing - part of the hallmark of them is that they are investigated by amateur sleuths, and I really prefer a detective procedural that has a bit more of a broody protagonist - but if they are your thing, I would definitely recommend this one. The setting added a double meaning to the "cozy" because the bookstore just sounded so delightful, and because there's a snowstorm going on in part of the story, so reading it when you're all cozied up inside in the winter would just feel lovely. I liked the three generations of women in the story and the small-town feel. Also of course for fans of Agatha Christie who like to nerd out on talking about her work. [I was sent an e-copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.] ★★★
• Olive, Again: after loving a follow-up in the Lucy Barton series recently I decided I needed to finally pick up this follow-up to Olive Kitteridge. In the same way as Olive Kitteridge, this sequel tells Olive's story through loosely connected vignettes about her, and about people in her small Maine town. Olive has that same sometimes hard to take rough-edged, no-nonsense approach to the world and the people she interacts with - but at the same time you can see the good in her, like when she's the one person in town to go visit a woman with cancer, or when she seems to somehow have the right thing to say to grieving people ("as the kids would say, it sucks") or know how to sit with them. There's hard things in this book, in what all of the characters are going through with strained relationships or loss or financial hardship - Elizabeth Strout is a master at capturing such human feelings that just make you ache for the humanity of it all - but then there's hope and love too. Also a lot about aging in this book as Olive nears the end of her life, and in it she finds some renewal, some regret, and some realities of physical decline that Strout doesn't shy away from. Oh and as a bonus: I never realized how much Easter egg treasures you get with Elizabeth Strout - maybe that's newer for her - but I had loved seeing in Lucy by the Sea the cameos from characters in her other worlds (the Burgesses, Olive), and this one delighted me in the same way. ★★★★
• Ariadne: if you're a fan of mythology retellings, especially ones that bring to light the overlooked stories (i.e. the women's stories) and have a feminist slant, I'd recommend this one! I didn't love it as much as Circe, but still a solid retelling in my book... It tells the story of Ariadne (what her life turned out to be after helping Theseus slay the Minotaur, the thing she's known for, but a story that tends to give Theseus the glory), but it also tells the story of her younger sister Phaedra, and their relationship. One of them marries a mortal hero, one of them marries a god, and both suffer, as women have done through the ages, the consequences of men's and gods' follies and failings. At the same time, you see their domestic life and also the strength they bring to difficult situations, and the choices/help they make that change the course of history for their cities and families. As with a lot of mythology, it's a bit hard to track the characters at first (does help if you've had some exposure to Greek mythology before), but once you get into it, it's basically a historical soap opera. In this one, the beginning part felt a bit rushed and Ariadne a bit of an annoying infatuated teen, so I wasn't sure how I'd like it, but I think that suits her character at the time - she really has to grow into herself and her power - and makes sense that the author is trying to tell the story of Ariadne as a person, beyond the one part of her life (the Minotaur) that mythology typically reports. When I have Circe as the first book of this type I read, a huge 5-stars from me, it's hard for others to live up, but I did think this one was well done and really sucked me in, and it did a great job of reframing history/mythology to see it from the perspective of the overlooked, the women. ★★★★.25

Did you read anything good last month? Or have any seasonal books on the docket for October?