Dear Readers, October was my best month for reading books. I read seven books this month way better than my three from last month. I think I was finally able to break my reading slump. I did read every book but one out of the six on the TBR post for this month. I read 3 Advanced Reader Copies books from Netgalley.  My ratings for this month are 1 five stars, 4 fours stars, and 2 three star. I read all books with a horror element for the spooky month.

Five Star Reviews:

Black River Orchard by Chuck Wendig is a one-of-a-kind horror that involves possessed apples and the people who eat them. The story is a happy medium of both weird and scary. It takes a great storyteller to make a horror about possessed apples work, but man does Chuck Wendig make it work. The story takes every trope about apples and applies it, the bad apple, the forbidden fruit, the golden apple, the bad seed, and the poisoned apples. The horror is greedy, cultish, cannibalistic, gory, and body modification. Wendig taps into descriptions of apple eating that will turn your stomach, and he’s just getting started. I don’t know how this novel has not given me bad dreams but all so I’m okay with it. The beginning of the novel is all set up it is a little slow but I was fascinated by the history of apples and orchards in America, as well as the characters being set up. The story has a mystery aspect that takes us through the middle which is interesting and a little surprising and leads to the finale. The finale is pure chaos and super tense, you feel that no character is safe and that anything can happen. The pace is consistent throughout and I found myself very entertained.  I received an early copy of the book from Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group – Ballantine, Del Rey in exchange for a review. Black River Orchard was published on September 26, 2023.

Four Star Reviews:

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson is not your typical haunted house story. The Hill House is a place of foreboding dread all the characters don’t fear the terror but feel something very off-putting. Eleanor is the one character who feels the most terror, but the way Jackson wrote it, you kind of ask if it is all the house or if this character always going to hit a breaking point. I was super impressed with the witty dialogue, which made me look forward to the moments that did not have horror. Is The Haunting of Hill House scary? Not really it is deeply psychological and there are some moments of terror (things that go bump in the night) but the horror is all in the mind we do not see any horror, but the characters feel it. The creepiest moment is when one character thought another character was holding their hand when it was physically impossible. This is a good novel for a book club because parts of it are open-ended is this only happening to one character? Is one character manifesting this on others? Can we trust the dialogue of other characters when Eleanor is around? Does the novel have an LGTBQ subplot? What did the caretakers Mr. and Mrs. Dudley know to have the rules they set up for the house? and finally, Why is Dr. Montague married to Mrs. Montague? She’s the worst. The Novel starts a little slow but we see how Eleanor’s brain works which is important. The novel gets going when everyone meets up at the house and we learn the history of Hill House. The first bumps in the night don’t happen until almost halfway through the book. Once they start the tension increases with every night until we go to the finale. I liked the ending which is subtle but it sticks with you.

The Hunger: A Marvel Zombies Novel by Marsheila Rockwell is a fun, gory female-led time-traveling superhero adventure. Doctor Strange is a zombie on the cover, so it is not a spoiler to say he doesn’t last long, but he sets the events to fix the zombie outbreak for his young librarian and apprentice Zelda Stanton. I have never read a Doctor Strange comic, I only know of Doctor Strange from the MCU, so I had never heard of Zelda Stanton. I liked her character who would rather be with books than dealing with deadly super-powered zombies, but she rises to the occasion in this fish-out-of-water story. She recruits Nico Minoru from The Runaways, Whom I have read most of the Runaways Marvel comics, Elsa Bloodstone, the monster hunter 2022 MCU Halloween special Werewolf By Night, and Deadpool, The Merc with the Mouth whom I’m familiar with in comics and movies. This is the gang of superheroes left to defeat the super-powered zombie horde. The story is fun and gets off to a fast start. The novel does slow down after the characters debate too long about how to defeat zombies and the plan is very convoluted. The plan eventually starts to make sense but it takes a little too long, I needed Zelda to explain it in simpler terms to probably Deadpool, who screws up the plans anyway. The last two fights of the novel are pretty epic the first one I did not think they were going to the top but they did. The action comes all at the end, for most of the novel they avoid the zombies until they have to, I would have preferred the fights to be more spaced out but boy do they deliver. I was given a free copy by Aconyte Books through Netgalley for a review. The Hunger: A Marvel Zombies Novel was published on October 3, 2023.

Stranger Things: The Other Side by Jody Houser is a good companion book to Stranger Things Season 1, as it shows what happened to Will Byers when he went to the other side. I have not watched the first season of Stranger Things in a couple of years but this graphic novel took me back and made me want to watch the whole season again. The art is good and captures what the other side of our world looks like really well. Eleven is the only character I felt that did not look like the actor portraying the character (Milli Bobby Brown), I felt like that did a great job on everyone else. This novel starts on the other side with Will already trapped. So if you read this graphic novel and haven’t seen the show you could be a little lost, the graphic novel also doesn’t set up Eleven’s character at all. Will Byers has become the heart of the show and the story did a good job of showing how emotionally scarred the character is and will become. The conclusion is the same as the show with Joyce and Hopper breaking through to the other side and saving Will Byers. I enjoyed this short four-issue graphic novel that is just 96 pages long. Stranger Things: The Other Side was published on May 7, 2019, by Dark Horse Books.

Goosebumps: The Beast From the East by R. L. Stine is Goosebumps book 43 in the original series order. The story starts fast-paced and is pretty scary for the first 35 pages until the creatures speak their first words, You are it. Then you know what kind of Goosebumps story you’re in for. The story has its lame moments but for the part, I was entertained and enjoyed the pace of the story. The cat and mouse game is changed to the creature and human in this story which makes it fun and exciting. The kids play a deadly game of tag for their lives with the threat that if they lose they will get eaten. The creatures start off scary but ruin it a little when they start to talk. This story is the kid-friendly version of Richard Bachman’s aka Stephen King’s The Running Man. In which unwitting players play a game of life and death where the rules aren’t fully explained and easily broken. I felt the scene and setting were described well, I could easily envision the forest the kids were trapped in. The brother and sister relationship was excellent as the kids worked well together, and the older sister tried to stay calm for the younger brothers. The twist at the finale was lame but it set up a final twist that was decent and made sense. I seemed to like this story more than my fellow reviewers it is not great storytelling but fun. The Beast From the East was published on May 1, 1996.

Three Star Reviews:

Slime Doesn’t Pay! by R.L. Stine is a middle-grade horror novel that dips into the horror a little more than his Goosebumps series. Slime Doesn’t Pay! is a rip on the popular slogan Crime Doesn’t Pay! This story deals with crime and slime so the title fits. The horror setup in the beginning is very good with a slumber party where a monster joins and then a break-in. The opening scene did give me some goosebumps when I felt the trapped isolation that the slumber party felt. The opening scene was the best and it went on for 60 pages, and it introduces the real monster of the story Arnie the little brother to Amy who throws the slumber party. Stine has written some horrible little siblings, Tara from Goosebumps: The Cuckoo Clock of Doom comes to mind, but Arnie is double the trouble, and in the end, you will want Amy to have her revenge. The story has a Stephen King’s Carrie event that you can tell from the cover but with a twist. The ending is too long and overstays it’s welcome. The ending made me roll my eyes because it didn’t make sense and made the audience have to overlook a lot. This was my first non-Goosebumps book from R. L. Stine while I appreciate was a little scarier the novel could have been 40 pages shorter and wrapped up after one of the best twists from Stine. I read Slime Doesn’t Pay! for free in exchange for a review thanks to Netgalley and Blackstone Publishing. Slime Doesn’t Pay! was published on September 26, 2023.

Goosebumps – Say Cheese and Die Again! by R. L. Stine is a sequel to the original Say Cheese and Die with all four of the characters returning. The worst invention ever lives, is the camera that makes bad things happen. The camera is the best part and it stinks that in the story it takes 30% of the book for Greg to get it again. The first Say Cheese and Die was all about the kids not believing or finding out that the camera is evil, in this story they know it is evil, and is almost a treat to take someone’s picture since they all know something bad will happen as does the reader. I wish the story could have leaned into the revenge aspect of the story since that was the best part of the story. Oh, you accidentally took a photo of me lets take a photo of you. The pace is slow at first until the camera is found. The reason to get the camera again could have been better but it worked. Only 5 photos are taken with the camera and I wanted to see more. The final twist was good since we know and can imagine what the consequences will be. Say Cheese and Die Again! is one of the seven Goosebumps books to get a sequel from the original series