Spring Fling-O-Ween 2022

 Hello Interwebs!

This is the official wrap-up for the Spring Fling-o-Ween readathon that went from April 27-30th. I had a good time participating in this readathon and actually managed to fulfill all of the prompts!

So there were three prompts for this readathon: 

1. Read a book with pink or yellow on the cover
2. Read a backlist thriller or horror book
3. Make a fall-themed drink or pastry to bring Halloween to spring

So I finished all three prompts (and just because one book wasn't finished until about 130am on May 1st doesn't mean it doesn't count) and my books were fine. Nothing crazy amazing or anything but enjoyable. 

So for the first prompt: read a book with pink or yellow on the cover I read Reckless Girls by Rachel Hawkins. The cover is all tropical and pink and yellow and floral and more than fulfills this prompt. 

So this is a thriller that was released in January of this year but I'm not sure I would really classify it as a thriller. So the first 3/4 of the book is pretty much just rich people drama with a side of everyone has secrets. Then in like the last 50 pages people die and it soon becomes a last man standing kind of situation. The book was fine. I would've like a more coherent idea of what the book was going to be. Like is it going to be rich people drama or is going to be a thriller based on rich people drama? More thriller and less drama would've been appreciated by me but it wasn't a terrible book. I gave it 3/5 stars. 

For the second prompt: read a backlist horror or thriller book, I did not go with any of the books that I had through I might read for this and decided instead to read a Junji Ito Manga instead. I picked out Fragments of Horror which isn't terribly long and is a collection of unrelated short stories, I think there's eight stories in it. I really rather enjoyed it. I think of the normal stories in it my favorites were Tomio: Red Turtleneck and Whispering Woman. They were both pretty good and creepy and everything I expected from Junji Ito. I think my absolute favorite was Gentle Goodbye which was not a horror story but was sad and hopeful all at the same time. I really loved it. So I gave it a 4.25 out of 5 stars. 

The third prompt was to make a fall-themed drink or pastry to bring Halloween to spring. So I went an easy way out for this and had a box mix of pumpkin spice muffins in the cupboard and pumpkin spice tea and a seasonal cider which I felt was very fall/winter in flavoring. So my muffins were the Krusteaz Pumpkin Spice Muffin Mix and they were very good. The mix is a little wetter than the others but after a couple extra minutes in the oven they turned out good. 

And for beverages I went for my favorite Pumpkin Spice Rooibos tea from Trader Joe's in my favorite Annabelle mug. It's sweet and spicy and I love it a lot. Plus it's in this beautiful tin. 

And then we had friends over for games and pizza on Friday night (29th) and my fiancé brought me home some Vanilla Bean Pear Cider from Atlas and it also gave me some serious bakery vibes especially with fall/winter vibes. It was delicious and I highly recommend. 

So there's the official wrap-up for Spring Fling-o-Ween. I found it a very successful readathon and I absolutely had a blast participating. Plus I love my pretty blue shirt. 

Happy Reading!

Richelle