Miranda’s September Reading Wrap-Up

September has come and gone, and somehow I managed to read 17 books. Unfortunately I don’t have any stats to share, because I, uh… accidentally deleted the spreadsheet I was using to keep track of my 2022 reading. Oops.

Instead of going back through and entering all my information again, I’m just going to leave it empty until 2023. It is what it is! I’m also doing something different with my reading journal. I’m waiting until the month has passed to add it to the journal and fill in my details, instead of setting it up before the month starts. We’ll see how that works out for me.

I’m surprised I managed to get through 17 books, though as you can see a few of them were graphic novels. I’m still really enjoying SPYxFAMILY. I also very much enjoyed Over My Dead Body, as it was clearly a response to J.K. Rowling becoming a terrible person and what an HP fan wishes HP could have been.

My favorite, however, was Ava Reid’s Juniper & Thorn. Considering I found her debut to be just fine, the fact that I loved Juniper & Thorn is a little surprising. I read a lot of negative reviews about it before reading it, and while I can see where they were coming from with their criticisms–such as the love story being a love at first sight or the book having too much sex in it–I ultimately ended up disagreeing. There’s a reason for everything in the story, and it truly lives up to the horror part of Gothic horror.

Another standout was I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy. I never watched iCarly (I was more of a Disney Channel girl, and also, I think I was past the age of enjoying iCarly when it was on the air) but after hearing about this book nonstop on twitter, I decided to give it a go. The first half is gut-wrenching, and frankly, I’m glad her mom is dead too. The second half didn’t flow as neatly, and I did find McCurdy to be a little sparse on details at times, but otherwise, I’m not sorry I read it.

So that’s it for me! What did you read in September, and what were your favorite reads?

Book Review: The Winter Guest by W.C. Ryan

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Genre: Mystery
Publisher: Arcade Crimewise
Publication Date: October 4th, 2022
Pages: 336, hardcover
Source: NetGalley

January 1921. Though the Great War is over, in Ireland a new civil war is raging. The once-grand Kilcolgan House, a crumbling bastion shrouded in sea mist, lies half empty and filled with ghosts, both real and imagined, while it shelters the surviving members of the Prendeville family. Then, when an IRA ambush goes terribly wrong, Maud Prendeville, Lord Kilcolgan’s eldest daughter, is killed, leaving the family reeling. Yet the IRA column behind the attack insists they left her alive, that someone else must be responsible for her terrible fate. Captain Tom Harkin, an IRA intelligence officer and Maud’s former fiancé, is sent to investigate. He becomes an unwelcome guest in this strange, gloomy household.

Working undercover, Harkin must delve into the house’s secrets—and discover where, in this fractured, embattled town, allegiances truly lie. But Harkin too is haunted by the ghosts of the past and by his terrible experiences on the battlefields. Can he find the truth about Maud’s death before the past—and his strange, unnerving surroundings—overwhelm him?

Tom Harkin is haunted, haunted by the recent war, haunted by those who died, and by those he left behind. One of those is Maud Prendeville, once his future wife, and now, a victim of an ambush that Tom is sent to investigate.

WWI has been over for three years, but the “rebels” are fighting for their freedom from a different oppressor, in The Winter Guest, set in the Ireland during the Troubles. Tom is ostensibly an insurance investigator, but he has multiple roles to play. He finds out that he’s not alone in the game, and not knowing whom to trust will cost him his life, possibly at the hands of his countrymen.

The book was very enjoyable, although I did expect a bit more on the ghostly side, having read Ryan’s A House of Ghosts. Winter Guest has the same great description of the environs, the people, and the relationships between them. It’s necessarily a bit grimmer than his other book, but every bit as enjoyable. The characters are well-drawn and, even when you know what’s going to happen next, may still surprise you.

Book Review: The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 2.5 out of 5.

Genre: Science Fiction
Publisher: Tor
Publication Date: October 11th, 2022
Pages: 368 paperback
Source: NetGalley

The Spare Man is a stylish mystery by Hugo, Locus, and Nebula award-winning author Mary Robinette Kowal set on an interplanetary liner between Earth and Mars.

Tessa Crain, one of the richest women in the world, is on her honeymoon on an interplanetary space liner, cruising between Earth and Mars. But she’s traveling incognito, and someone has targeted her new husband as the perfect person to frame for murder.

The Thin Man in space. Murder on a starliner. What’s not to love?

I liked it, but I didn’t love it, unlike Kowal’s Glamourist and Lady Astronaut series. The heroine, Tesla Crane, frankly annoyed me. There was not enough of the lightness of The Thin Man, but there were constant references to drinking, occasionally witty banter, and, of course, the obligatory adorable dog, Gimlet.

I wanted to like Tesla. She survived a horrific accident and suffers from chronic pain, and suffers from PTSD. I admit, I’m not sure how I’d behave were my husband to be implicated in a murder while we were on our honeymoon, but she states that she refrains from using her fame to bully people, and then does precisely that. She puts herself in danger unnecessarily, and seems more to luck into puzzling things out than in actual deduction. The red herrings were more pink, and the story dragged in places.

This book will appeal to many readers, but it just didn’t work for me.