Hi! So last week I participated in the Spookathon readathon
which is like a week-long readathon with five challenges.
The general idea is to read spooky books
which I kind of did and kind of didn't but let me tell you about the books
I read and you can decide for yourself whether they were spooky enough.
So the first book I read during the readathon was the Blackbird Season by Kate Moretti.
I read this because it is: 1. a thriller, which was the first challenge and
also, it has purple on the cover, which is the second challenge and also, it was available as an audiobook from the library
So I could read it straight away and I could listen to it during my commute which given I had very little time for this
readathon was a crucial factor.
So the Blackbird Season is told through multiple perspectives and I will say it's a little bit confusing because it's told in third person
but there was a different narrator for each
person and I would always get confused when they would refer to themselves in the third person. I'd go 'hang on,
why are you talking about yourself?' It is something that I got used to but uh...
It was a little bit odd.
So one of these perspectives is this guy called Nate and he is a teacher who's very involved with his teenage students
He cares a lot for them
But one of these students, something bad has happened to them and you'r kind of left throughout the story
Questioning whether he really did this bad stuff and you also follow it from another teacher
that's a good friend of his. And his wife who is struggling to raise their autistic son and
those two women are also
questioning whether he really did these things that he's been accused of. And one of the themes this story tries to explore is the
idea that his life has kind of been torn apart by these accusations, which I struggled with a little bit because
His life was already a bit of a mess because he wasn't very supportive of his wife and they didn't communicate
And to be honest almost every thriller I read I get really frustrated that there's these relationships and
Why don't people communicate??? I think whenever I read these books I start being worried that this is what everybody's relationships
are like - that they don't communicate and it makes me really sad for the world :(
honestly
If you're going to get married to someone just communicate with them and then you won't get into these ridiculous situations
Anyway back to talking about the book
I would say that wasn't really very thrillery because I never really felt like any of the characters were particularly in
danger. Also the one character that probably could be considered to be in danger
you don't really get much from their perspective and there's it's kind of setup
so you don't feel a lot of empathy for her even though you probably should feel a lot of empathy for her
Which is another thing which makes me conflicted about this story is that it deals with rape and rape accusations
and I'm not sure I feel like it was dealt with in the best way
But on the other side of things I did find the story interesting
It was easy to pay attention to and even when the characters did stupid things, it was like logical stupid
And also I don't really know but I suspect that the part of the story that was about
this couple struggling with their son's autism and how to accept him being different was
probably quite realistic, but obviously that's not something I have experienced with so I can't really comment
So overall some good bits and some questionable bits.
So then the second book I read was Obsidio by Amie Kaufman
and Jay Kristoff. So this is the third book and the Illuminate Files and it's all told in multimedia
different kind of like email logs and videos
transcriptions. So obviously since this was the third book in the series
I had a pretty clear idea of what it was going to be like and it totally met my expectations
Well, or maybe I would say I expected things to be much crazier at the end like scientifically... like more science fictiony
I guess is what I'm trying to say
It was epic at the end, but I just thought it might be epic in a kind of a Gemina way
which was the second book.
But anyway, if you haven't heard about this trilogy, which would be very strange because it's very popular on booktube
This tells the story of this illegal mining planet that gets attacked, they end up on the run.
Each story essentially follows a different couple. There's always like a low-grade romance
I guess what I will say as this book does follow like a new couple
But you don't really get that much of them because we're also still following some of the original characters as well
so I do feel that maybe one option would have been to have cut out a lot of the stuff with the
Older characters from the previous books and focus more on the newer characters
What that would have done is let this be a much shorter book because this is six hundred and fifteen pages
just very long and I did feel like it was a bit slow in some bits like it took quite a long but time to
get going and then the kind of the
final battle was quite long and drawn-out and I don't
feel like that needed to be that long and I kind of feel like
maybe if we focused on the new characters
Then the old ones reappearing would have been like more of a shocking surprise and then you could've found out
How they got there rather than following along with them
Maybe I don't know. I'm not an author
Not yet. But anyway, I also..
you can tell from the black sections if you have read the series, we also get a lot of Aidan
Who is the AI in the series and he's definitely my favorite character
a lot of people really love Aidan and
Really he deserves to be liked
I also really like the way this story explores the humanity of people on both sides of the battle
Rather than making one side kind of like this faceless enemy
so I did give this four stars because I did find it very entertaining and it just
Got quite exciting and epic in bits and there was some definite good plot points, and I really enjoyed all the characters
There's just a lot of things I really liked
So this book does cover me for a book set in a different time because this is set in
2075 I believe. I could potentially also have it cover a book with pictures
Oohh! I'm trying to show you your pictures, but I'm not good at it
There are actually more picturey-pictures. Actually, let's show you oohhhh spoilers!
hard to show you the really good pictures without showing you spoilers
but it does have some of Hannah, if you
know Hannah, it does have some like comic book type bits
It has some pictures, but we're not gonna count it for the pictures challenge
Um, I have another book here, which um I may as well talk about it now
Even though the pictures challenge is the last one but let's jump ahead
So I also read Emily the Strange: the Lost Days which is actually the first book in a series - who knew?
And this book has a bunch of pictures
Often they're spoilery pictures
But we could show you this one. It has a bunch of pictures in it
Pretty much all the way through it's got random pictures because it's pretty much Emily the Strange
ges... ooh that's had to say - Emily Strange's diary
Dkind of while she has woken up in the strange town and she has amnesia
she doesn't know who she is or why she's there and she's
I don't know, sleeping in this refrigerator box out the back of this cafe
It's definitely a very strange book. She often writes weird lists of things or just like
kind of scripts out the dialogue
And there's not chapters. It always just starts with like 'later'
Which I did feel a bit weird... because I'm always like I'll just read another chapter
But the 'laters' are quite often so they don't feel like chapters. So then I'll be like ;I'll just read another chapter' oh hang on
It doesn't really have chapters.
I would say that I can't really decide... like this is marked in Goodreads as a young adult book
but it felt a little bit middle grade, although there's some bits that probably
aren't quite middle grade
No, I would actually say in some ways very similar to Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
It's very dark, doesn't have quite the same wordplay and beautiful writing
The writing is pretty basic, but I think if you like Emily the Strange
ges... oh
It's so hard to say. If you like Emily The Strange's aesthetic
Then you will probably like this book. If you don't mind the fact that it's a little bit simple. It was pretty fun
Trying to figure out alongside Emily what was actually going on? Okay
So let's jump back to the challenge before that which was to read a book with a spooky word in the title and for this
I listened to the audiobook of We both Die at the End by Adam Silvera. So this story is set in this world
Where on the day that you're going to die you get a phone call early in the morning just after midnight telling you
Hey, you're gonna die today, and there's nothing you can do to change that
You just have to live out your last day and there's a bunch of different systems set up to help people
get through that last day and like have their funeral and have some final
experiences and one of the other things that is there is this app called last friend where people who don't
Really have people to spend the day with
Can meet up with a last friend on the app and have some company for their last day
So we follow two guys one is Matteo. And another one is Rufus and for different reasons
They are alone on their last day
So they end up meeting up and I really enjoyed the friendship and also the friendship that they have with
their friends before they meet up with each other because they're not really alone because they're
Friendless, they also had some friends and I just thought the theme of friendship was so strong for the story
It was definitely some
very sad bits
thinking about what it would be like to have to say goodbye to all your friends on your last day
And of course also through the whole story, you're kind of waiting to find out how they actually died
Because the title gives it away they do both die at the end
So I don't think that this story was amazing. There's never really any
Explanation of how this deathcast phone call works - like how they know that you're gonna die on that day
That's not explained at all. It's more about the experience of these guys going through their last day
And personally I was also a little bit
disappointed in the romance
element. I just think it wasn't
necessary, but I will say like I'm generally just not into romance so that might just be a personal preference
but I just thought that the whole theme of
Friendship was so strong and I would have been quite happy for the whole book to just have been about
friendship, and I don't think that
Romance should trump
Friendship and I feel like it almost kind of implied that it does. I don't know
I think it's just me being anti romance. I just didn't feel like either of the characters
Needed a romance to get through the day. But anyway, yeah, I guess my summary is nothing amazing, but it was quite a little
heartwarming tale
And I I didn't mind it. I quite liked both the characters
So it was it was nice to hang out with them on their last day
So that does cover all the challenges
I do also want to count even though I know the point of this read-a-thon is not to read a certain number of books
I did kind of read five books because
Even though I started it a little bit before the start of the read-a-thon
I did read or listen to most of the Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood during the spookathon as well
So I think it should count even though it doesn't actually fit under any of the challenges
I guess you could count it as a book set in a different time since it
it's it I think kind of in the early 80s although
Then I wouldn't have one for Obsidio... I'd have to shuffle everything and nothing would work
Anyway, the Handmaid's Tale is something that I listened to during the spookathon.
I mainly read this because I know the TV series came out recently and everyone was talking about it. Not so much now, but
People were talking about it and I wanted to be in the know about what the story was
Even though I had a strong suspicion that the writing style would not be for me
which is why I got it on the audiobook because it's easier to listen to things that aren't
Enjoyable to you than it is to read them physically
Because at least you can do something else to keep yourself kind of entertained at the same time. Mostly I was driving or walking but
You know, I got to play some Pokemon while I listened to this which was lucky because I was correct
the writing style was not for me all it's so like descriptive and the main character never really comes out and
says
What is really happening? It's always like so vague and like
focusing on like not the main action and like a lot of her thoughts about what's happening rather than just like
Tell me what's happening
It also jumped around in time a lot which might have been worse in audiobook form because I do find with audiobooks
It's a bit harder to keep track of different time shifts. Actually
this was an element of the Blackbird Season as well because in the Blackbird Season
it was jumping around in time and I just get so lost
Maybe it's me. But both of these books, I would struggle a little bit to be like wait. What time are we in now?
So to explain what the Handmaid's Tale is for those of you who don't know. It's like a dystopian future where
Women have had everything, like all their rights, taken away from them and they're now just assigned to be wives to different men
primarily men who have a particular status
And these... there's different classes of wives and these handmaids are the
Wives that are supposed to be fertile and able to have children
and they're there to service their men sexually, but not for fun! Just for
Procreation and there's all these like very strict rules about not
communicating with other people except for in very specific ways
But there's also this like underground element where people are obviously breaking the rules
Because if you try to lock humans into these stupid ridiculous ideas of no sex and no fun
It's never gonna work
So it's exploring kind of this idea of this hugely sexist society
and I do think the ideas that it's trying to explore a very valid but overall the writing style just
Took it out for me
I couldn't do it, it just so draggy, not much action, when there was action
I just didn't really care about the main character
I don't know if it was the narrator or just the way that she talked made me not really like the main character
Even though I can't really think why not I guess the summary is that I suspected
This wasn't a book for me
And I was right but at least now if I hear someone talking about The Handmaid's Tale
I now know what happened in it
I think if you like very conceptual stories with a lot of
hmm just
i-i-i guess if you like stories that explore ideas rather than having much of a
plot
and you don't mind things that jump around in time then I think you might like this if you want something very
Feminist and
Conceptual that's also a dystopia
Maybe then you'll like it if you like really descriptive stuff. Oh
It's been a long time saying that anyway, I didn't really like it. So that was my spookathon
I think I'm pretty happy with the amount that I read given that I was pretty busy with work and life and
All that stuff last week. If you have read any of the books that I talked about today
Then I'd love to talk with you about them down in the comments or if you did the spookathon
Then I would love to know what you read. If you filmed a wrap-up and let me know
Thank you so much for watching and I will see you next time :D
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