November Wrap-Up
November wasn’t quite as successful as I hoped it would be. I left a lot of my TBR unread and only managed to work my way through 6 books in total. However, one of them was more than 1,200 pages so I’m going to try not to be too hard on myself for that! Here are my thoughts on the books I read in November:
Horrid by Katrina Leno - I extended the Fall/Halloween vibes for this read. I read this book very quickly, probably in about 2 sittings. It was engaging and a quick read. We follow Jane who has moved from California to Maine with her mother following her father’s death. They’re living in her mom’s old family home (really a huge, basically abandoned mansion), a place that everyone in town seems to know about and avoid. Jane starts experiencing strange and inexplicable things while in the house and begins to expect that there is a lot about her mom’s childhood that she never knew.
It was about as creepy as I was anticipating (I looked around my room a little more carefully before I went to bed, but I didn’t feel the need to sleep with the light on). Even though I read it quickly and was pretty immediately gripped I’m not sure how much I actually liked it. None of the twists were particularly shocking and it’s one of those situations that could’ve been figured out a lot easier if people just had conversations with one another which I always find frustrating. I think I’d give it a 3/5 stars
Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas - This book was perfect to read at the beginning of November. The whole story counts down to Dia de Muertos as Yadriel works to prove to his family that he is a real brujo in time for a ceremony that takes place that night. However, things are not as simple as he hopes when starting this task. Yadriel meant to find the body of his recently murdered cousin so the family can find whomever killed him and set his cousin’s ghost free. Instead Yadriel accidentally summons the ghost of the school’s resident bad boy and trouble maker Julian. Julian refuses to be set free until he finds out what happened to him and makes sure his friends are ok. So Yadriel must help him and set him free by Dia de Muertos to prove to his family his true identity, but as Dia de Muertos approaches he finds himself wanting less and less to be parted from Julian forever.
Pretty Little Wife by Darby Kane (Out December 29th) - This was my November pick for Book of the Month. It was an early release title so it’s not technically out until the 29th of this month, but you can pre-order it if it seems interesting! This is a suspenseful thriller so I don’t want to give too many plot details, but it focuses on Lila Ridgefield whose husband has gone missing. Lila’s husband Aaron is a beloved teacher and coach at the local high school. The community is rocked by his disappearance, but it’s not the only one to happen in the area lately. Three young women have also gone missing, but the police are making little progress to find them or a connection between their disappearances. Lila is obviously shaken when her husband goes missing, but only because she was the last person to see his body and now it’s nowhere to be found.
I really liked this book. I couldn’t put it down and then I gave it to my mother to read and she flew through it just as quickly. It’s fascinating to see how everything plays out and I thought the ending had the right combination of “I can see how that fits” and “wait, what?!” which I appreciate. I’d give it probably 4/5 stars.
Memorial by Brian Washington - This was another Book of the Month option that piqued my interest when I read the description. I decided to request it from the library and it came quickly enough that I was also able to read it this month! This book is about the relationship between Benson, a black daycare teacher, and Mike, a Japanese American chef. They’ve been together for four years and Mike’s mom is coming to visit from Japan just when Mike decides to go back there to see his ailing estranged father. That leaves his mother, Mitsuko, to stay with Benson (a man she has never met) indefinitely. Mike and Benson’s relationship is also pretty strained at the time Mike decides to go to Japan which leaves them both in a weird place where they’re looking at their relationship and where they want/need it to go from here. Mike is grappling with being in Japan where he speaks the language and knows the culture, but is still an outsider as he grew up in the US. He is also struggling to re-connect with his father and deal with the fact that he is dying. At the same time Benson is learning to navigate life back in Texas living with his boyfriend’s mother and dealing with family issues of his own.
One of things things I most loved about this book was how real everything felt. The feelings the characters have toward themselves and each other, the family dynamics, and just the powerful way Washington was able to write this story and these people was so moving. This isn’t a fast-paced wild ride of a book, but it will stick with you for a while after reading and find ways to sneak into every day thoughts and views of the world. 3.5/5 stars.
Dawnshard by Brandon Sanderson - This is book 3.5 in Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archive series. It’s to fill the gap between Book 3 (Oathbringer) and the 4th book (Rhythm of War) which I’ll be talking about next. I vaguely knew this novella was being released but completely forgot about it until I went to read Rhythm of War and saw I had missed an installment. This was a little frustrating because suddenly I had 200+ pages between me and the book I’d been looking forward to all year. However, as soon as I started it that frustration went away. Something that comes along with a large epic fantasy series is a lot of characters that may be really interesting but the reader never really gets to find out because there are so many other characters more necessary to the central plot of the book. This novella gives a whole story arc to a character only briefly seen in one of the previous books in the series. It was such a nice way to ease back into this world and I loved the characters we got to follow on their journey. I can’t talk too much about the plot as this is in the middle of a series, but if you read the Stormlight Archive books and have been skipping the novellas go back and read them. They’re definitely worth your time. 4.5/5 stars.
Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson - Ok. This is the big one. Literally. I spent the whole last half of November reading this book and I was so motivated to finish it before the end of the month that on the 30th I had my headphones in all day long listening to the last 6-8 hours of the audiobook (the full length of the audiobook, by the way, was more than 57 hours!). I love this series. I’ve talked about it a lot so I won’t go into too much detail but if you’re looking to dive into an epic fantasy series this is it. It’s got magic, and politics, and war, and friendship, and adventure and it’s just so so good. Plus it somewhat connects to a lot of Sanderson’s other works like the Mistborn Series, Warbreaker, and Elantris so it will take you a long time to run out of things to read! 5/5 stars.
