September Recap and October's TBR

Can you believe it's already October? More importantly, can you believe that I actually got this post done on time? I can't believe either of those things, but, as it is, I am glad 2020 is on the downhill swing.  I have some interesting things planned for next year and can't wait to share them!

Here's a quick recap of September: 

For September, I had a hefty (for me) reading list of 8 books. I finished off Dragons of Spring Dawning, which was ehhhh, although it was technically started in August.  Since I finished it in September, I'm counting it.

I also finished Lost Boy: The True Story of Captain Hook by Christina Henry and I'm Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid in rapid succession.  Lost Boy is probably my favorite retelling of Peter Pan. It was dark, it was a little twisted, and Henry made Neverland her own with her own set of rules.  I'm Thinking of Ending Things was probably my top pick of the month.  If I'd have done a five star prediction last month, I certainly wouldn't have picked it, but that's what I ended up giving it.

The next book I read was another retelling of Peter Pan.  Peter Darling by Austin Chant is about Peter, who is actually Wendy, but runs away to Neverland as his parents don't accept him for being transgender.  It's really a love story between story between Peter and Captain Hook. The first half was meh at best, the second half saved it and I really enjoyed the read. It was was the September Queer Books club pick in Caravan.

Throughout all of these shorter books, I was also reading The Dragon Reborn.  Yes, another Robert Jordan book.  This is quickly becoming my favorite series and I finally got a Mat POV.  Yes, I am still fangirling over him.  He is just so... Everything! If only he existed in real life. Him being a fictional character is his only fault. Sigh...

My middle grade pick this month was Midnight for Charlie Bone by Jenny Nimmo.  From an adult perspective, it had flaws, but it was enjoyable none the less. I will be continuing the series, but not for the month of October. 

I did get to my bonus read book of American Gods by Neil Gaiman. I listened to the 10th anniversary full-cast edition on audible.  To say the least, I can see why the book is so divisive.   I am of the opinion of low-key hating it up until the last hour and a half. The end I liked, it was just excruciating to get there. That was the longest 19 hour audiobook of my life and I am pretty sure I zoned out for half of it. I will not, however, be deterred from reading more Neil Gaiman as I knew this going into the book.  

I was a little late starting To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, and I did not finish it before October.  I'm struggling with it and am not impressed with what I have read so far.  This is a huge disappointment as I was so excited for this book.  It may be a DNF, but for now I'll try to power through. 

Now time for my October TBR:

Now its time for a quick rundown of what the plan is for October! Again, I have eight books this month, and two of them are really long.  

First up is Midnight at the Electric by Jodi Lynn Anderson.  This book has been on my TBR for so long that I couldn't even remember what it was about.  According to Goodreads, I added it in 2017.  It's definitely well passed time to check that off the TBR.  

I will naturally be continuing on with the fourth installment of the Wheel of Time Series (WoT). The Shadow Rising is one of the two really long books I have planned.  It is the longest WoT book by word count, although it is slightly shorter than Lord of Chaos in pages.  I am super excited for this book. It's a combination of how the third book ended and the cover has fascinated me since the first day I say it.  But then again, it's my boy Mat on there so I'm really not surprised.  I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I will try to stop with my fangirling. 

 

Next up will be another nostalgia read.  This time it will be Magyk, part of the Septimus Heap series by Angie Sage.  This is another series that I had started years ago, but never finished. In this case, it was because of a massive reading slump. So now it's time to finish this series once and for all--after I reread the first books of course.

 

Some of the other members on Caravan and I are also doing a buddy read for the month of October for the book This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. This is a super short book at just 209 pages.  I'm intrigued by this book, and don't know what to expect.  We'll see in the up coming weeks...

 

The other massive volume I am planning to read is The Count of Monte Cristo Alexandre Dumas.  This is another Caravan read.  I never read this in high school or college and its been a long time since I read a classic anything, so we'll find out if I can make it through over 1,300 pages classic literature.

 

I added All Systems Red because I wanted more sci-fi.  It's a pretty short read. As Murderbot is scornful of all humans and I am predicting to really identify with it.  

 

After hearing people rave about Piranesi, I am adding it to my October TBR as well. The story of Pan's labyrinth has always been a fascinating one, so I am escited to see where this story goes. 

The final book on my October TBR is City of Bones by Cassandra Clare. I have read The Mortal Instruments before along with the first two books of The Infernal Devices, but I DNF'd (did not finish) the series after book four or five because I could not stand Clary and Jace.  I liked everyone else and loved Alec and Magnus, but I could not stand those two and got burned out. I just found out that there is a spinoff series focused on Alec and Magnus, which is what I always wanted. Therefore, I am motivated to give it another go.

And that sums up my October TBR!

Five Star Prediction:

This month I am going to try and predict if one of my picks will end up being a five star read.  I think it will be The Shadow Rising, because it is often one of the highest regarded WoT books and I have already been so tempted to give the the second and third books five stars. We'll see if this one makes the cut!

I'm Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid

 Title: I'm Thinking of Ending Things

Author: Iain Reid

Narrator: Candace Thaxton

Genre: Psychological Thriller, Suspense

I purchased this audiobook and chose to do an honest and unbiased review.  The author and Simon & Schuster Audio neither requested nor are associated with this review.

Goodreads Description:
You will be scared. But you won’t know why…

I’m thinking of ending things. Once this thought arrives, it stays. It sticks. It lingers. It’s always there. Always.

Jake once said, “Sometimes a thought is closer to truth, to reality, than an action. You can say anything, you can do anything, but you can’t fake a thought.”

And here’s what I’m thinking: I don’t want to be here.

In this deeply suspenseful and irresistibly unnerving debut novel, a man and his girlfriend are on their way to a secluded farm. When the two take an unexpected detour, she is left stranded in a deserted high school, wondering if there is any escape at all. What follows is a twisted unraveling that will haunt you long after the last page is turned.

In this smart, suspenseful, and intense literary thriller, debut novelist Iain Reid explores the depths of the human psyche, questioning consciousness, free will, the value of relationships, fear, and the limitations of solitude. Reminiscent of José Saramago’s early work, Michel Faber’s cult classic Under the Skin, and Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk about Kevin, I’m Thinking of Ending Things is an edgy, haunting debut. Tense, gripping, and atmospheric, this novel pulls you in from the very first page…and never lets you go.

 
Here's What I Thought: 

I am obligated to start this review by issuing a content warning for discussion related to suicide and serious mental illness. Also, this review will contain spoilers.  I  don't usually like to spoil books, but this one is an exception.

I listened to this book on audio and was immediately hooked.  I think I listened to most of it in one sitting alone.  It starts off with an unnamed narrator driving with her boyfriend, Jake, to meet the parents on his childhood farm.  Their conversation shifts from intellectual, thought provoking topic to an even more intellectual, thought provoking topic.  The narrator reminisces on how her and Jake met--at a bar on trivia night.  He was a genius. She describes a near perfect relationship, but yet... She is thinking of ending things. Oh, and she also has a stalker calling her leaving the same voicemail.

In between chapters, there were these short little blurbs of two unknown people talking about a suicide.  Nothing else is known about these little excerpts.

Back to the main story.  Boy brings home girl to meet the parents.  Boy suddenly becomes withdrawn.  Parents are beyond odd. Stalker is continuously calling.  Girl explores boy's childhood home and makes some odd discoveries. 

This is the part when things really start to get interesting and why I say there will be spoilers.  As I have mentioned before, I am a psych nurse.  By nature, I pick up on little behavioral cues and start to make deductions.  It's literally what I do for a living.

So the narrator notes that mom has odd behavior.  She changes her clothes unexpectedly, smiles at inappropriate times, talks of hearing voices but blames it on tinnitus. The narrator asks Jake about a really old photo, and he explains that it's some long dead relative with a severe mental illness. Her phone dies. Then while the narrator was exploring the house, she comes across a photo that she swears is of her, although Jake claims it's him. She eventually makes her way down to the basement and comes across some very bizarre paintings.  In Jake's room she sees some old photographs as well of Jake when he was younger and then has a very odd conversation with his dad about how it wasn't his mom's fault--her behavior--and it's so good that Jake found her. She is so good for him. (Already my nurse brain is in overdrive with a couple theories.) 

Back in the car, Jake starts questioning the narrator about what she thought of his parents.  He started talking about his brother and how he was sick, but now he was better.  Then he insisted on getting Dairy Queen in the middle of a snow storm and one of the workers told the narrator that she was scared for her and she should get out. Creepy. After they half finished their Dairy Queen he was absolutely insistent that they dispose of the cups now at school in the middle of nowhere.  I don't know about you, but I don't make a special stop just to get rid of a little bit of trash. Here, some major red flags had jumped up. Jake was suddenly unreasonably defensive and almost erratic. (My nurse brain made note of this.)  

At the school, there is an old pick up truck parked that is assumed to be the janitor. Jake throws the cups in the trash and then he starts making out with the narrator.  Well this is another change of pace.  She was resistant, but went along with it. Suddenly Jake freaks out and claims the janitor was watching them. He goes into the school to confront him.  Again, from what we know of Jake, very out of character. 

The narrator eventually follows as it's getting cold in the car.  While in the school, she feels as if the janitor is following her.  She thinks about her stalker again.  Suddenly the doors are chained shut, and Jake's car is gone. 

By this point, I am thinking it will go one of two ways.  It will either play out to be a dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality) plot twist or schizophrenia.  I hate it when authors try to play the dissociative identity disorder card. Absolutely hate it.  It is technically in the DSM-V (the diagnostic manual for psychological disorders), but most mental health professionals are on the consensus that it does not exist.  I would be very excited to see it be a schizophrenia twist, however, as that is something you rarely see.

As this is playing out with the narrator, the snippets between chapters reveal that the man that committed suicide was troubled and they found him in a closet. He did not associate much with anyone and he could have a temper. Our narrator eventually ends up in a closet and the janitor finds her.  Now, as I was listening to the audiobook, I really enjoyed this transition. "What are you waiting for." This is repeated again and again as the narrators voice is first joined and then replaced by a male voice.  He realizes he has no other option.  He goes back to that night at the bar and the girl that talked to him, but he was too afraid to give her his number. He thinks about how things may have been different.  He thinks of how he left his job at the lab, how his parents have been gone many years, and how he became a janitor.  And then he uses a hanger to commit suicide.

A lot of reviews that I have read that are negative seem to be because they don't understand what happened. This is why I decided to do a review with spoilers, that way I could explain it.  Although Reid never said a diagnosis, I am confident that the narrator had schizophrenia.There is a highly genetic component. People with this disorder typically don't socialize well, have labile moods, and become fixated on things.  My theory is the janitor suffered from schizophrenia and, as a coping mechanism, developed a delusion that it was his brother who was sick and he had this happy life with his girlfriend, but like most delusions, there were holes in it and he couldn't handle it any more. When the narrator, Jake, and the janitor merged, we were seeing him come back to reality.  From my experience, this is a very well done portrayal of this devastating mental illness that has such a poor prognosis.  

Another thing that I did find really unnerving early on is how much the narrator's inner monologue matched my own regarding thoughts toward self, relationships, life, everything.  It's very off-putting to have your own inner thoughts told to you by someone else. 

All this put together lead to a very satisfied five star rating.  I am usually hyper critical when anything comes close to psych, but I thought Reid did an outstanding job and I really don't have any complaints. 

Any Thoughts?

I would love to hear what you think! If you have any additional thoughts or want to talk more about the book, be sure to leave a comment or send me an email!

About The Author:

 

 Iain Reid is the author of two critically acclaimed, award-winning books of nonfiction. His debut novel, I'm Thinking of Ending Things, was an international bestseller, and was translated into more than a dozen languages. Oscar-winner Charlie Kaufman is writing and directing the film adaptation for Netflix. Foe is Reid's second novel.

Links: 

reid_iain

Peter Darling by Austin Chant

Title: Peter Darling

Authors: Austin Chant

Genre: Fantasy, Fairy Tale Retelling, LGBTQ+

I read this book as an epub book on Nook. Austin Chant neither requested nor is associated with this review.

Goodreads Description:

Ten years ago, Peter Pan left Neverland to grow up, leaving behind his adolescent dreams of boyhoodand resigning himself to life as Wendy Darling. Growing up, however, has only made him realize how inescapable his identity as a man is.

But when he returns to Neverland, everything has changed: the Lost Boys have become men, and the war games they once played are now real and deadly. Even more shocking is the attraction Peter never knew he could feel for his old rival, Captain Hook—and the realization that he no longer knows which of them is the real villain. 

 
Here's What I Thought:
I began the month with a decent sized TBR for September.  It is now the 19th and I have yet to post another review.  Don't worry! I'm chipping away at it.  I just haven't gotten writing reviews as I had tested positive for COVID-19.  Fortunately, I had no symptoms, but when you are in isolation for several days, you have little motivation to do anything. Also, forgive the weird picture placement... Blogger did a sucky update and will no longer allow me to revert back to the old version. 

I'm going to start this review off with a confession.  I have never read a book that was specifically classified as LGBTQ+. I mean, I have read books with side characters that are, but I have never read a book that it was one of the primary aspects.  I mentioned earlier this month that I joined a book club site called Caravan and I will fully give the good folks there the credit for expanding my horizons and turning me on to this book.  Peter Pan has always been one of my favorite fairy tales and after reading Lost Boy: The True Story of Captain Hook, I wanted more. This book provided just that. 

The main character is obviously Peter.  In this retelling, Peter and Wendy are actually the same person.  Wendy was transgender and as his family was not accepting, he escaped to Neverland where he could be his true self.  Honestly, that caught me off guard as I missed it in the synopsis.  I read "with" Wendy Darling instead of "as" Wendy Darling.  A few other people missed that as well, so I didn't feel bad. 

Chant's Peter is pretty typical: selfish, a tad anti-social (I'm talking real anti-social traits, not "I don't like people"), and narcissistic. But his character was inconsistent.  He went back and forth between displaying these traits and seeming empathetic and caring of the Lost Boys.  Now, he is ten years older, so it can be argued that he is simply growing up.  I'll accept that.  The inconsistencies in his character wasn't a huge issue for me.  

Neverland was also a carbon copy of every other Neverland.  Again, not a lot of originality.  Chant tried to put a weird spin on it with his description of fairies.  In his Neverland, fairies are insect like creatures complete with antennae, many eyes, fur, and everything.  Um... I have always been under the impression that fairies were beautiful creatures.  Even in Cassandra Clare's Shadowhunter world, fairies are described as grotesquely beautiful. I'm ok with that.  But insects?

So, the set up was fairly unoriginal.  Peter Pan returns to Neverland and resumes his war with Captain Hook and finds the Lost Boys relatively the same, but a little older with a new leader, Ernest, who is the opposite to Peter in pretty much every way.  Peter does have flash backs to his life as Wendy that was slightly interesting, but overall, I was unimpressed with the staging of events.  I'm still trying to figure out what the point of Ernest was.  It's hinted at that he escaped to Neverland because he was gay and he eventually feelings for Peter, but, as the book is only 164 pages and we already know that the love interest is Hook, this is never really explored even from the dreaded love triangle aspect.

We do get some POVs from Hook, and you quickly find out that he gay and finds himself attracted to Peter.  It takes quite a while for Peter to have this realization for himself. Eventually, Hook and Peter find themselves trapped together in a cave and they need each other to survive.  This is when Chant really starts to make Neverland his own.  It was Hook's revelations with Peter that the Neverland lore was finally expanded on.  Without going into a lot of details, Hook reveals to Peter that Neverland is real place, but many aspects of it are what Peter and Hook desired for themselves.  It's basically a paradise to lose yourself in to escape the real world.

Well, we can't just ride off into the sunset with Peter and Hook realizing their feelings, right? That would be boring.  Of course there is a blow up, rejection, and a very heartfelt and loving make-up.  It's a cliche love story, but I loved it.  I am not big into romances, but I think Chant was able to spin a tale with such real chemistry that I was totally enthralled with the romance of Peter Pan and James Hook. 

Overall, I think that the book was fairly unoriginal in initial setup, but Chant eventually does find his groove and is able to make this world his own.  By doing so, he was able to produce a love story that I didn't even know that I wanted, let alone needed. I was set on giving this book a two star rating, but the last half saved it and now I am happily giving this book a solid four stars. My biggest issues were with the slow build to an original story, lack of character development for Ernest that still just seems like someone that is completely out of place--like the kid that gets invited to a birthday party because the whole class gets invited,--and the odd depiction of fairies. Unfortunately, this book is out of print and is not available on Kindle or Nook. I came across an e-pub of it, so if you want to give it a go, you may have to do some digging to find it. 

Any Thoughts?

I would love to hear what you think! If you have any additional thoughts or want to talk more about the book, be sure to leave a comment or send me an email!

About The Authors:

 

Austin Chant is a bitter millennial, a decent chef, and a queer, trans writer of romance and speculative fiction. He co-hosts the Hopeless Romantic, a podcast dedicated to exploring LGBTQIA+ love stories and the art of writing romance. He currently lives in a household of creative freelancers who all spend too much time playing video games.

Links: 

 

http://austinchant.com

 

austinchanted