Monthly Review! October

How was your October? Mine was pretty great! I hope you all had a good month and got lots of reading done. What did you do for Halloween? Did you dress up? I’d love to hear what you did! And now onto the books!

One of my most recent reads is As Kismet Would Have It by Sandhya Menon. This is a novella sequel to When Dimple met Rishi. I read When Dimple Met Rishi last month and I really liked it so I was super excited to dive into this short story about them. This book picks up right where the first book leaves off but it explores the theme of marriage more in-depth than before. If you have read the first book then you know that Dimple is not a fan of marriage and Rishi is a hopeless romantic who wants the classic white picket fence life for himself.

In this novella, Rishi tells Dimple that he wants her to decide if marrying him is what she really wants. He doesn’t want to force her to do something that she doesn’t want to or that she’ll regret later on in life. (Just FYI I’m going to be spoiling the ending of this book so don’t read this last section if you don’t want to know!) I loved the ending of this book! I loved the fact that Dimple ended up proposing to Rishi. As someone who did that with my fiance, I was like yes, please show more girls proposing to guys! I loved it. I would highly recommend this book if you’ve read the first one. It was a great ending.

This is the graphic novel adaptation of the modern classic, Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson. If you have never read Speak here is a brief synopsis from Goodreads: “From the first moment of her freshman year at Merryweather High, Melinda knows this is a big fat lie, part of the nonsense of high school. She is friendless–an outcast–because she busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops, so now nobody will talk to her, let alone listen to her. Through her work on an art project, she is finally able to face what really happened that night: She was raped by an upperclassman, a guy who still attends Merryweather and is still a threat to her.”

I’ve read Speak so I knew what I was getting into reading this book. The illustrations are beautiful and powerful and they go with the story amazingly. The story lends itself really well to a graphic novel adaptation. The subject matter is sometimes hard to read but I really feel like this book is an important one for people to read. Now as a graphic novel I feel like it’s even more accessible than before. I would highly recommend this book to anyone. If you are a fan of Speak then this book will definitely be right up your alley.

The next book that I really enjoyed is called Sleepless volume 2 by Sarah Vaughn. This volume takes place one year after the events in volume one. Cyrenic is still sleeping with no sign of waking up. Lady Poppy is adjusting to her life without Cyrenic by her side and trying to move on with her life. Suddenly, Cyrenic is released from his Sleepless Vow. The castle medics cannot figure out why he was released and are baffled by his sudden awakening. As he tries to readjust to normal life, Lady Poppy is still trying to figure who ordered an assassination attempt on her life. Will Sir Cyrenic and Lady Poppy be able to be together? Will Poppy figure out who tried to have her killed? You’ll have to find out when you read this volume!

One of my favorite books that I read in October was Guts by Raina Telgemeier. This is the third installment after Smile and Sisters. This book is about a time period in Raina’s life when she develops a fear of throwing up after getting a stomach bug. She becomes very anxious and constantly afraid that she’s going to get sick. Once it becomes clear that this tummy issue isn’t going to go away, Raina ends up going to therapy to help her get to the root of the problem. I really liked how this book portrayed therapy, especially for a kid. It was very normalized and it wasn’t made into a big deal. It was just like, hey you have an issue? Let’s talk to someone about it then. I really appreciated that aspect. I think of all the books I liked this one the best. It felt very relatable, especially for a kid that may be dealing with some of the same issues that are brought up in the book. I feel like Raina Telgemeier really did a fantastic job with this third book and I can’t wait to see what she comes out with next.

Another graphic novel that I really enjoyed was Tamamo the Fox Maiden and Other Asian Stories by Kel McDonald, Ayano Hattori, Blue Delliquanti, Caitlyn Kurilich, Carla Speed McNeil, Cat Farris, Gene Luen Yang, Jason Caffoe , Jonathon Dalton, José Pimienta, Kate Ashwin, Meredith McClaren, Nicole Chartrand, Nilah Magruder, Nina Matsumoto, Randy Milholland, Ron Chan, Shannon Campbell, Stu Livingston, and Terry Blas. This book is a collection of 21 stories of Asian folktales from a variety of authors and illustrators. There are a bunch of really great stories in this book but my personal favorite is called The Tiger, The Brahmin, and The Jackal from India. This was a really nice way to learn about lesser-known myths and legends from Asia and the surrounding areas. I would highly recommend this book if you are into myths and legends or just want to learn more about them.

Next up we have In Plain Sight by C.J. Box. This is the sixth book in C.J. Box’s Joe Pickett series. This series is all about Wyoming Game Warden, Joe Pickett, and his family. This book deals with J.W. Keeley, who thinks that Joe is solely responsible for the death of his brother and is out for revenge. Meanwhile, the head of the Scarlett family, Opal Scarlett, has gone missing and her sons are fighting over the rights to her million-dollar ranch.

This was a really great installment of this series. I wouldn’t pick this book up to start with though if you haven’t read any of the other ones. This book references a lot of events that take place in the previous books so it will be very confusing if you haven’t read the first five books in the series. That being said, I really enjoyed this volume! Just like most of C.J. Box’s books, it’s a very nice slow build-up to a frantic ending where a ton of stuff happens in the last 50 or so pages. This book was no exception. If you are a fan of westerns or a good revenge story then this book will be right up your alley!

That is it for this month! I would love to hear from you all in the comments! How was your Halloween? Did you get a lot of candy (or give out a lot of candy if you’re older like me)? I hope you all had a great month!

Twitter  Instagram