September Wrap-Up

 Hello Interwebs!

Another month gone to the slow and inevitable passage of time and another good reading month for me. I read a lot of good books and only one ended up being kind of mediocre. I ended up reading seven books in the month of September, all either horror or thrillers except for one. I made great use of my new dark TBR jar and it did not disappoint for my first month using it. So without further ado here's all the books I read in the month of September. 

• Girl A by Abigail Dean (2021) 352 pages, read from September 1-3, 2021. This is a mystery/thriller about a girl, dubbed Girl A in the media, who escaped from her parents and their cult-like behaviors, saving her younger siblings as well. This book follows her years later when her mother dies making her executor of her estate and leaving the house where these atrocities happened to the children as a group leaving Girl A to track down each of her siblings to deal with their mother's will and to confront the fallout of their captivity and escape. This book was engaging and I really loved it. I read this book in three days flat and gave it a solid 4.5 star rating on Goodreads. This was my Literati book for the month of September. 
  
  
  
  
• Home Before Dark by Riley Sager (2020). This is Riley Sager's publication from last year and the first book I chose from my TBR jar. This is a story told in two parts, the part of the daughter returning to the "haunted" house that spirits drove her family from when she was a child after she inherits it following her father's death and then in the past when the family lived there when she was six via passages from her father's book he wrote about the experience. This book was dark and creepy and had a great twist at the ending that I really didn't see coming. This is officially my favorite Riley Sager book so far and I'm looking forward to reading the other two books in his list that I haven't tried yet. I read this from September 3 through September 9 and gave it a 4 star rating. 
  
  
  
  
• The Chestnut Man by Soren Sveistrup (2019). This is a cop thriller about a serial killer in Denmark that is killing women and leaving mysterious Chestnut men dolls with the fingerprint from a missing (and presumed murdered) girl. This book was much better than I expected going into it. It was dark and twisty and although cop thrillers aren't usually my cup of tea I really enjoyed this one. Since reading the book I've watched the Danish series that is recently added to Netflix and loved that as well. I read this from the 9th to the 17th and gave it a 4/5 rating on goodreads. 
  
  
  
  
• 56 Days by Catherine Ryan Howard (2021). This is a thriller that takes place during the COVID quarantine lockdowns. It jumps back and forth through time, primarily through the 56 days between when a couple meets and decides to live together when the COVID lockdown is announced and the present when a body is discovered in the apartment they were sharing. This book was surprisingly good. I will never be the biggest fan of the back and forth nonlinear time jumps but I liked the idea of it and the twists at the end kept me guessing up to the very end. I read this from the 17th to the 20th and gave it a nice solid 4 star rating. 
  
  
  
  
• The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959). This is a classic horror/ghost story book about a professor studying Hill House and the group of people he's brought together to discover what is going on in the house. I didn't dislike this book but I was left being a bit confused. I'm not sure what the point really was and found it wasn't scary in the least. For the record I have also not seen the Netflix show as I've heard its rather different so I'll give that a try. I read this from the 21st to the 24th of September and gave it a mediocre 3 star rating. 
  
  
  
• Sour Candy by Kealan Patrick Burke (2015). This is a horror short story/novella that I picked up an ebook copy of on a whim and I loved it. It's about a man whose life gets messed up when he accepts some sour candy from a weird child in a grocery store and that's all I'll say about the plot. This little book was great, it was creepy and dark and I loved it a lot...plus, THAT COVER! I read it from the 24th to the 25th and gave it a 4.5/5 star rating. 
  
  
  
  
• Ten Days in a Mad-House by Nellie Bly (1887). So this was my off the wall pick for September. Late in the month I watched a movie on Amazon Prime called Escaping the Madhouse: The Nellie Bly Story starring Christina Ricci and when I finished the movie I picked up an ebook copy of the book Nellie Bly wrote about her investigation. This was good and surprisingly quick and easy to read. It is clear from the writing that Ms. Bly was very passionate about her work as a journalist and bettering the lives of the women she met in the asylum. 
  
  
  
  

So that's it, all the books I read in the month of September. I consider this to be a very good reading month and I enjoyed pretty much everything I read. I think my favorite book of the month was Sour Candy by Kealan Patrick Burke with Girl A by Abigail Dean being a very close second. My least favorite was The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson but even then the book was fine but it wasn't a bad book. 

Happy Reading!

Richelle