(Slightly) Overambitious SPOOKY October TBR 👻 feat. Spoopathon

Hello fellow bookworms 👻 One of my favorite things to do in October is to read spooky, eerie books and participate in themed Readathons. This year I’m going all out and I have a spooky October TBR for you full of creepy, mysterious books 👀 I’m also taking part in the Spoopathon, because it had such a unique concept – escaping a haunted house by reading books – and I generally like month-long reading events! Sadly Sbooktober – which I have been participating in since 2016 – isn’t happening this year, but I hope it returns next October 🥺 My TBR is quite ambitious this time, so I’m not sure I’ll get around to all of these, but I’m so excited for each and every book. I’m in the mood for some spooks this coming October and I cannot wait to reread favorites and discover some great new autumnal books 🎃

Time to get spooky! 🎃

Information

The Spoopathon is a month-long Readathon all about escaping a haunted house by reading books! There are different paths you can take on the prompts board (see below) that will lead you out of the house and there’s also a points system as you’ll have to defeat ghosts/unlock doors 👀 There’s a Twitter Account with a super helpful Information Thread and there are also different teams that each have a special ability helping them in the escape! I loved this idea as it was so creative and the prompts really appealed zo me! You can see what path I have chosen by looking at my #spoopathon TBR! As for the teams I have joined Team Ghostbusters 👻

Teams

• Spoop Shifters ➽ @spoopyhol
• Spectral Shenanigans ➽ @bookbrowsing
• The Order of Spies ➽ @BooksNest
• Ghostbusters ➽ @wanderingwxrlds
• Ghouls Just Wanna Have Fun ➽ @whatindiaread

My #spoopathon TBR 

1. Pumpkinheads (Rowell & Erin Hicks) 👻 75 points
2. Grimoire Noir (Vera Greentea & Yana Bogatch) 👻 125 points
3. Thirteens (Kate Alice Marshall) 👻 125 points
4. Girl of Nightmares (Kendare Blake) ✅ or The Graveyard Book (Neil Gaiman) 👻 75 points
5. Anna Dressed in Blood (Kendare Blake) 👻 75 points

➽ I choose the pink/rose colored path through the Haunted House and have 5 books to read! You can technically reenter the House after you escaped it and take a different path, but I don’t think I’ll be doing that. As my comfort reread I choose Pumpkinheads, as it’s got the most autumnal vibes I have ever soon and though it’s also a graphic novel, I did choose something different for the second prompt. I picked up Grimoire Noir, a graphic novel I saw at my library but don’t know much about except for the fact that it looks spooky 🎃 The New Genre prompt was a bit difficult as I already branched out into some genres over the past years, but I think Middle Grade Horror counts as I have barely read any books that fall into this category! I got myself the copy of Thirteens as it’s Kate Alice Marshall’s Middle Grade debut. (I love her YA books!) The last prompt – Read After Dark – is pretty easy to fulfill given how early it gets dark and how much I love reading in the evening in general. I’m rereading Anna Dressed in Blood, which I first read ages ago, but I want to continue the series 🥰

➽ This brings me to the most interesting prompt, which is Trick or Treat!! The idea for this is that you pick a book that you’re super excited to read (Treat) and a book that you’re not that excited for (Trick). You then let others (either by asking a friend or doing a poll) decide what book you should read without telling them which book is your Trick/Treat! I thought this was so much fun and choose Anna Dressed in Blood (Treat) and The Graveyard Book (Trick)! Twitter choose right and has me reading Anna Dressed in Blood, though I’ll probably also read The Graveyard Book at some point 😄

Rereads 🔄

• A Monster Calls (Patrick Ness) 👻
• Small Spaces (Katherine Arden) 👻
• Mooncakes (Xu & Walker) 👻 🌷

➽ I’m a big fan of rereading especially in fall! 🍂 I have been rereading A Monster Calls every October for years and it’s one of my absolute favorite books! I finally bought my own copy as I used to check it out from my old library. If you’re looking for an illustrated story about grief and monstersm this is a great book! I also want to reread Small Spaces, which I discovered and fell in love with last year! It’s the debut of a MG Horror series, so I might also reread the second book Dead Voices! (I just read the newly released third book in September.) 👻 I’m also hoping to reread Mooncakes which isn’t scary but has got paranormal creatures and a mystery so it still fits right in. I read an Arc of this back in the day and love the art style 🥰

Graphic Novels/Illustrated 🌷

 

• The Little Kitten (Nicola Rillen) 👻
• Warren the 13th and the All-Seeing Eye (Tania Del Rio) 👻
• Something is Killing the Children Vol 1. (James Tynion IV) 👻

➽ You know what’s better than graphic novels? … SPOOKY graphic novels!! I discovered The Little Kitten while browsing my library and it looks SO CUTE 🥺 It’s a short children’s picture book, but as a big cat lover I had to put it on my TBR! I have also been eyeing Something Is Killing the Children as I know it’s spooky and Destiny really likes this graphic novel series! Finally, I snatched up Warren the 13th and the All-Seeing Eye in a fantastic Kindle deal! It’s an illustrated story that I discovered while rewatching Zoe’s Spooky/Cozy Cabin Vlog and I immediately knew that I had to check it out 👀

MORE spooks 👻

• Bridge of Souls (Victoria Schwab) 👻 🎧
• The Monster of Elendhaven (Jennifer Giesbrecht) 👻
• The Taking of Jake Livingston (Ryan Douglass) 👻

➽ I’m vibrating with excitement for these books!! I have been listening to the Cassidy Blake books these past Octobers and it’s always so much fun. This is Schwab’s Middle Grade Horror/Paranormal series about a girl who can see ghosts! Bridge of Souls is the last book in the series and I have been eager to read it! I also keep eyeing The Monster of Elendhaven which sounds perfect for October as well – I don’t know too much about this book except that it’s about Monsters and I’m excited to see where the story takes me 👀 A 2021 release I also have to read is The Taking of Jake Livingston, another spooky, creepy ghost story that will hopefully keep me up all night!

• The Girls Are Never Gone (Sarah Glenn Marsh) 👻
• The Missing Season (Gillian French) 👻
• A Lesson in Vengeance (Victoria Lee) 👻 🎧

➽ And here we have even more dark, eerie books!! 😱 The cover of The Girls Are Never Gone is perfectly creepy and one of the most sinister looking ones I have encountered! I love that this has a podcast element and potentially some ghosts 👻 I’m still holding out hope that my library might get the e-book of this. I also saw The Missing Season while browsing Overdrive, so I decided to give it a go, especially as it sounds creepy and is about a monster called The Mumbler! Finally we have A Lesson in Vengeance which just came out! I love Victoria Lee and I’m ready for her spooky, sapphic Dark Academic book 🖤

Are you participating in #spooptober or any other spooky Readathons? What are your fave spooky books? What books are on your October TBR? 👻