October begs for spooky and scary reads, and I managed to sneak some in—including an absolute classic!
My Roommate Is a Vampire by Jenna Levine • 🎧 • ★★★☆☆
I think Twilight tainted vampire romances for too long! Thank you to Jenna Levine for giving new life to this genre by mixing it with the light and airy rom-coms I’ve grown to enjoy.
Now, is My Roommate Is a Vampire a perfect read? No. But the setup was very fun. Cassie finds a dream apartment listing in a high-end Chicago neighborhood. The catch? Her roomie is a vampire looking to catch up on what’s happened in the world over the past 100 years.
The final conflict of this book kind of flopped for me. And there’s always the issue of human-vampire relationships—Does that person stay human? Do they get changed? So it’s a solid three stars and a great light Halloween read.
The Stranger Upstairs by Lisa M. Matlin • ★★★☆☆
The description of this book was giving Amityville vibes, so I bit. A wellness influencer moves into a home with a disturbing past in a ritzy Australian town. She soon finds she’s not welcome—and that there’s something up with the house.
In the end, this book ended up being more domestic thriller than horror. There’s nothing wrong with that! But I also saw a lot of the twists and kinks coming. And a few of the plot devices weren’t woven in as seamlessly as I would have liked.
From Bad to Cursed by Lana Harper • ★★★☆☆
This is the sequel to Payback’s a Witch, a witchy romance I read last year (it’s also a Halloween read I recommend!).
It’s, of course, in the same vein. This time Isadora Avramov (a witch with necromantic tendencies) has to team up with Rowan Thorn, a witch whose strengths lie with nature and healing. Opposites attract as always. And yes, a demon is involved (and properly banished).
Quietly Hostile by Samantha Irby • ★★★★☆
I have loved every single one of Samantha Irby’s essay collections. I reliably laugh out loud and cry at various points throughout each of her books, including this one.
One of my favorite essays is about defending your taste with a simple phrase: I like it!
You can use “I like it!” (the exclamation point is necessary) any time some freak questions a regular-ass thing you enjoy, and it’ll swipe their legs out from under them every single time, and you can stand over their quivering body with your subpar tastes and laugh your face off.
—Samatha Irby
I will be using this now until the end of time. A grocery store jimmie square is a trash treat? Well, I like it! You think that taco place is overrated? Well, I like it! The witchy rom-com genre is lame? Well, I like it!
Dracula by Bram Stoker • 🎧 • ★★★☆☆
I’ve dabbled with the idea of reading Dracula since I was about 12 when I bought a copy via a Scholastic book order. But this is the year I finally took the plunge. I think visiting Clontarf (the part of Dublin where Bram Stoker grew up) was what I finally needed to get started.
To work through this book, I downloaded the Audible version narrated by Tim Curry and Alan Cumming, both of whom performed it beautifully.
I enjoyed the opening chapters of Dracula immensely. They were so awesomely atmospheric. But the story dragged for a good while before picking up in the last quarter. I say this as a reader in 2023. I’m sure if I read this in 1897, my mind would have been positively blown and I would have been a Bram stan big time.
As always, you can follow along with my progress and see what I’ve read over on Goodreads! Also, if you’re an audiobook fan, I encourage you to try Libro.fm—you can support your favorite small bookstore while downloading your next listen.
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