Hey, there! It's Olivia-Savannah here from Olivia's Catastrophe and today I’m here to
give you my October wrap-up. I’m going to talk about all of the books that I read in the month
of October. If you're interested in content warnings, they will be in the description box
down below for you to check out. And I read these books for Gothtober,
so if you want to see which prompts from the angel board I knocked out with these books – that will
also be in the description box down below. But without further ado, let's get down to the books.
One of the books that I read this month finally was Bird Box by Josh Malerman. This one is well
known because it was adapted into a popular film and it's about this… well it's set in the
present-day world where this phenomenon happens where people start going crazy and doing very
intense and violent and sudden things. And the people realize that it's when you look
at something, so you have to do your best to not look at what is outside and keep your eyes
closed if you are outside to protect you from seeing something that will eventually make you
turn incredibly violent, harm people around you, and then harm yourself. So that is the
apocalyptic horror world that we're in. And we're following a main character called Malorie and
Malorie happens to be pregnant when all of this is going on. I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical
starting this. I was wondering how it was going to maintain suspense for such a long book,
but my did this book manage to deliver. I think the concept that it's dealing with and the world
that it's set in is incredibly horrifying and scary. It's all the more scary because of the fact
that you don't ever get to see these creatures, you don't ever get to know what they look like,
so I’m not sure how much that horror translates to film. But in terms of the book,
it was just incredibly putting me on edge all the time, incredibly suspenseful, and we follow a
reasonably short period of time – but it does a good job of building suspense by going between
three timelines: where you're in the past when the phenomenon first started happening,
where you're in the present day where she's trying to achieve a certain something,
but also where you're somewhere in the middle between those two timelines. And you kind of have
a hint of what's to come because of the present timeline, but also, you don't quite know what's
going to happen. And I think that just ramped up the suspense all the more. And I was just
flying through this one wondering what was happening, wondering if they were going to survive
horror pregnancies – it's just such a niche thing but this book pulled it off very,
very well, which I’m intrigued by because it's written by a male author.
It's one that's really out of my comfort zone in the fact that it's not really focusing on a
certain theme, it's not really about character development – it's really about the plot,
the suspense, and the concept. But it does all of those things so incredibly well that it was worth
dealing with the shorter sentences that I’m really not used to and things like that. So I’d recommend
this one if you want a creepy, spooky read, and I’m looking forward to watching the film now
and seeing if it can possibly compare. The next book I read was The Love Hypothesis
by Ali Hazelwood which I buddy read with Mariana from Mariana Quesada so thank you so much for
buddy reading with me. This book wasn't really on my radar before we started and then BookTube just
fell in love with it and I heard that everybody was loving it. And guess what? I absolutely loved
it too. I gave it five stars, this romance was absolutely everything to me. So we're following
Olive who is this postgraduate student and she's into stem and the sciences. So she's trying to
find out something and she goes to this school and she ends up in this situation where she goes on a
first date with someone, her best friend is really interested in this guy. And then she's like:
“I don't want to date him anymore so you can date him.” But her best friend doesn't want to do that,
so she ends up fake dating somebody else very spontaneously so her friend can think that she's
over that boy that she dated only once. And she happens to end up in this weird cycle of events
fake dating a teacher at the university, a professor I should say. It is absolutely
fantastic. First of all, let's talk about the romance because this is a romance novel. It is
very good at doing the grumpy sunshine dynamic: we've got a very grumpy grump, and then we've also
got a very sunshiny sunshine. That doesn't really tell you anything about those two characters,
but I really liked them together. I really like how even though one of them is sunshine,
it doesn't impact or really change his grumpiness, but they gradually open up
together and grow together. It's fake dating which is one of my favourite tropes to read about,
and I feel like the reasons for the fake dating and how it came to be was justified and realistic.
There was a bit of a meta element because the main character was aware of the concept of fake dating.
I wasn't a big fan of that meta element, but I didn't mind because the rest of the story was so
good. The friendships in this one, she's got two best friends, are imperative to the story. They've
got their own things going on, their own romance dramas that they're dealing with, but they're
also such good and supportive friends and I really like seeing how much the friendship came into play
here. There's so many funny and awkward situations that are very entertaining to read about. I also
think that, even though this one is a romance and it's light-hearted, it does manage to tackle some
important topics – specifically, it looks at being a woman in stem subjects and how there's
just so many men and they're not very considerate of the fact that women are also doing this subject
in different ways and the book briefly touches on them as you go along. She's also got a best friend
who is a person of color and she's very vocal about what it's like to be, not only a woman,
but a person of color woman in stem which I thought was fascinating to learn a bit more
about and see. Even though this is a romance, it does have some mentions of the science in it
which was very, very good. It does steamy scenes so well and so realistically, I really liked how
they went. I really liked them, I thought they were very, very good. There's also some elements
to them which some romances don't do very well, but this one did very well. I can't say more than
that because of the fact that I don't want to give any spoilers. I will read anything
more that this author writes. I read The Woods Are Always Watching by Stephanie Perkins and
I had an up and down journey with reading this one, if you've watched either of my two
Gothtober vlogs. So in this one we follow these two friends and one of them is moving away for
university and the other is going to be staying in her small town and they decide to go on one
last camping and hiking trip together to really squeeze out the last moments of their friendship,
even though neither of them are the camping-hiking kind of people. But when they go into the woods,
things start to go wrong and they might not be the only ones out there. And this was really,
really good. I have to say you've got to push past the beginning – in the beginning there's
quite a lot of expositioning, there's quite a lot of telling instead of showing, and I
was never quite convinced about their friendship for that reason because most of it is told to you
rather than shown to you. But after you get past that beginning, the suspense starts to rise and
then it's like reading one of those horror flick films where teenagers go into the woods
and camping and things go wrong. And I’ve never read that in a book before, but this did it very,
very well. I was impressed by the fact that it still managed to have a few twists and turns
that I wasn't expecting. Not particularly wild ones, but when I thought the story was kind of
finished and done it still managed to bring more to the table to make it exciting and
continue that momentum. I liked how we get to see these characters together and apart and how
their individual developments and storylines echoed each other. I think that worked very well
for ramping up the suspense and moving the story forward. It definitely had that creepy atmosphere,
that creepy vibe that you want in a horror book, and I really, really enjoyed it. It did tickle one
of my personal gripes about horror and that is when one character has things way worse
than the other: so if you're in one person's perspective you would say the horror level is
at 50 percent, but then if you flip to what the other character goes through the horror level is
at 100 percent. And I don't know why I find that unfair, and I guess that's how life goes, but
it's one of my personal horror gripes. Other than that though, really recommend this one, it's fun.
Push past the beginning and you're going to have a great time. I reread Glitterland by Alexis Hall.
This is a romance I’ve read multiple times. Alexis Hall is one of my favourite, if not my favourite
romance author, so this was just a reread favourite. In this one we follow Darian and
Ash and they have a romance. Ash is a bipolar depressive man who is very anxious and at one
club, he just ends up getting with Darian who is this very typical Essex very flamboyant
man. And it's about their romance and kind of making it work when they're both from
such different classes, when they both have had such different experiences and expectations from
what life has given them and brought their way. And I think it's always interesting rereading
things because you see things in a different way and I definitely saw this book differently.
In this reread I did not like our main character so much. I really didn't like Ash, I think he's
kind of horrible. He puts the grump in grumpy sunshine, I’m telling you he really does. So
I don't know what I would think about this book if I read it for the first time now, but seeing
as it was a reread, I still managed to love it. If you want to read this book, you are going to love
Darian. He is sunshine, but he is the best kind: he is the rays that you want to have hitting your
face in the middle of July, he is a breath of fresh air, he is so genuine, he is so lovely,
he is so innocent, and Darian is just one of the best characters, he deserves the world. And I
like how this book is unashamedly British, Alexis Hall usually does this with his romances: where
you've got Darian's Essex accent written into the text so you can just imagine how he's saying
everything, where you've got cups of tea being poured all over the place, where you've got that
British sense of self-deprecating humour, but also the British sense of being very discreet
when you're being mean to each other. It's got the culture in there and I really like seeing it. I
thought it was a very good reread, cute romance, I loved it. Even though I didn't like Ash as much
this time around, I still loved this book. Then I read White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi
and I did not like this book unfortunately. In this one we follow these pair of twins who
live in this kind of sentient creepy house and we're especially following this main character
who has pika, which is this condition where she does not crave human food. Human food disgusts
her and she kind of craves objects so she likes eating plastic and chalk and things like that,
but she is human and it's not giving her sustenance. It did a good job of making me feel
off-centre because of the fact that seeing her slowly wither away as she fails to eat
food was absolutely awful and horrible but it was... I guess that's a certain type of horror,
but at the same time, I was just put off by this book because I didn't understand the point.
The writing style in this one is very strange and weird and sometimes I found it very creative for
that fact. Especially the way she transitions between scenes, I thought that was smart. But
also, it means that I was just lost in the words and I couldn't see where the storyline was going.
And because I read the whole book, when I got to the end, I was like: “what even does that mean?
What is this amounted to? I don't really see the point.” And a lot of the things
that happened seemed to be of no consequence, it didn't seem to add up to anything in the end.
So it was just a bit lost in the story, not really liking any particular character, not being gripped
by what was happening. The sentient house was there – I didn't see much interest in the sentient
house which takes a lot for me because I love the sentient house trope and horror. It just…
just wasn't the book for me unfortunately. Then I read a fantastic poetry collection and that is
All The Names Given by Raymond Antrobus. New favourite, instant five stars, this was
fantastic. So Raymond Antrobus is a Jamaican deaf poet and I mentioned that because it's a
theme in his poems and it really comes across. These ones focus on identity and relationships,
but it also focuses on deafness and disability. I… it's always hard reviewing poetry. What I really
liked about this one is that it's not chock full of imagery. When I usually read poetry,
I love the ones that have lots of images that are very stark, that are very specific,
and the collection of all of these images together is what brings you to a conclusion of the poem.
You understand the feelings and you understand the message from those images. This is not like
that – this one is more straightforward, it's got a more simplistic word choice,
it's got more narrative threaded through it. But all of that still amounts to the same thing,
all of that amounts to giving you a good sense of feeling and a good sense of the understanding
of the poem. What sets his poetry collection apart from other poetry collections is his use of closer
captions. Yes: closer captions. And in this, it's captions amongst the poetry that are of sounds,
but they're not always sounds that you can hear in a certain sense, you've kind of got to read
it to understand. But those insertions of the closer captions really worked for the poetry,
made the whole collection feel whole, and brought it to a sense of: yes, this is about identity,
yes, that is part of his identity. He has elements of his identity that are falling within
the caucasian ethnicity and the Black ethnicity, and it's where does he fit amongst all of that
which was very interesting to read about because that's not something I personally experience. And
then last but not least, I just want to mention the fact that the last section was my absolute
favourite. In that section, it's got poems that are inspired by true events to do with ableism,
and specifically ableism towards deaf people, and some of these situations are ones that I hadn't
even imagined or thought about myself because I didn't have the thought that somebody would do
that. But now I have since learned and it was very emotional and, yeah, very thought-provoking to
read those specific poems. Really recommend this collection – it is so good. I don't know how many
people read poetry on BookTube, but if you do, pick up All The Names Given. And then, last but
not least, I read another poetry collection and that was Bloodshot Monochrome by Patience Agbabi
and this poetry collection was unfortunately not one for me. This poetry collection has poems that
are very narrative driven but a very hard-hitting narrative driven. It does have very good
rhythm and rhyme, I would say. Reading these out loud is very, very satisfying. I like her use of
half rhyme amongst different lines, but overall, when it comes to the message of the poems, it just
wasn't really for me. They're quite surface level, they don't really dig deep into the emotion,
they're just trying to tell different kinds of stories. The poetry collection lacked a feeling of
collection because all of the poems were so random and about different things that it didn't
feel very wholesome. And in the middle, there's a section where she's responding to other people's
poetry queries and it just didn't feel like something that needed to particularly be
in a poetry collection. There you have it, those are all the books that I read in the month of
October. Please let me know in the comment section down below if you have read any of these books,
and if not, let me know: what was your recent read that you've finished? Give
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And you know what they say: onwards and upwards. Excelsior!