reading days: evil towns, monster boys and warrior girls

what I read in september 2024

Oct 03, 2024

Hey! Welcome to my substack! This will (hopefully) be a monthly post I do summing up everything I’ve read for the month! Reading days, whilst seeming like a basic title I came up on the whim, is inspired by the bookstagram account I made and didn’t post on.
If you want to get real time updates, you can follow me on my goodreads and storygraph! Thanks for reading!

Giovanni’s Room

by James Baldwin

On my quest to read more classic literature, I read Giovanni’s Room. In case you are like me (swore off classic literature because you were forced to read them in school but now you don’t have the chains of biased education systems around your neck, you decide ‘hey! maybe they’re not so bad’!), Giovanni’s Room shares whirling affair between an American white man and a French barman as said American is waiting for his wife to return. When the wife returns, the American tries to return to what society would deem normal. His decision, however, only leads to tragedy. The novella is dedicated to Lucien Happersberger, who Baldwin met when twenty-four whilst in Paris. Happersberger was seventeen.

Baldwin’s writing is easily the best thing about this novella. It’s poetic, haunting and real. You can feel the character’s emotions: their guilt and love are thick, and they drip off the pages.

I didn’t realise until I started reading that the novella is told in retrospect. That the narrator is sharing the story with us after it had happened. I was even more surprised to read that within the introduction, the narrator shares the fates Giovanni’s and himself did face. Call it brainrot, call it reading too much young adult literature without variation all you want; but I wasn’t a fan of this choice. I was confused and frankly disappointed. Baldwin spoiled the ending! Before I could revel in the gay yearning! And then I realised how stupid and idiotic I was thinking. Baldwin sharing their fates, Giovanni’s in particular, is what makes it shine. You – the reader! – are privy to these moments of love, sadness, hope, guilt and knowing that these characters, these people do not get the ending they are striving for, makes it even more painful and yearnful.

Maybe I’ll increase my rating after writing this. I don’t know. For now, I gave it four stars.

Eyes Guts Throat Bones

by Moira Fowley

I have been anticipating getting my claws on Eyes Guts Throat Bones ever since I saw it on the publisher news at work. And then a year passed since it’s publication. And now I’m reading it.

Fowley’s writing truly shines when she is playing with structure. ‘Rath’, ‘The summoning’ and ‘Only corpses stay’ have been my favourites so far. Rath follows two girls coming of age and their yearly tradition of going up to the rath each summer solstice to drink, smoke, kiss and have each other’s company. As it follows them through their lives, we also find out the lore of the rath and how it came to be. The summoning is amazing and had me laughing its entirety. If you like The Last of Us, you will love ‘Only corpses stay’; it follows a surviving clan of women in an apocalypse. Other standouts include ‘Flowers’ and ‘Break-up poem recited knee-deep in bog water’.

4 stars.

Unholy Terrors

by Lyndall Clipstone

Last year, I was hanging on the edge of my seat waiting for this novel to be published. It appeared to me as the answer to the perfect book. It had tropes I loved and the setting was grim and fantasy based. And then I fixated on something else and forgot about this until I saw her announcement for Tenderly, I am Devoured (which I am also ecstatic about).

Yet Unholy Terrors is just another 3 star young adult fantasy and it pains me viscerally to say (type?) that. I first grew suspicious when the inciting incident it states on the blurb happened seventy pages in! Seventy! This book is 300-something pages! I didn’t mind this because the writing is actually fun until you realise the same dark and visceral descriptions are being used over and over again. The writing isn’t bad, it’s just simple and falls flat in places. I was salivating for another Ava Reid and Kirsty Logan vibe book, but instead I got overproduced YA prose. I needed the writing to be denser, more lusciously dark. I put this on a big pedestal and it failed to meet my excitement; after reading reviews, a lot of readers are feeling the same.

But let it be known I just couldn’t put it down! I still enjoyed reading Unholy Terrors even though I am critical of it. (Yes, I am side eyeing certain groups/online communities.) It’s not perfect but that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy it. Unholy Terrors is a great read for anyone new to YA, who like their romantasies with a helping of the horror genre.

On one final note, I’m still going to read Tenderly, I am Devoured because I am a sucker for her concepts and dark atmospheres! I also want to see if her writing will improve and I am excited by the possibility. I’m holding out hope.