Once again, the awesome Lauren from Wonderless Reviews is hosting a Halloween Readathon during the whole month of October. The best thing about it? There are no rules! She has set some challenges and you decide on which to try your hand at. I’ll attempt just a few because I know I won’t be able to complete them all this year, especially since I’m already running late.
If you are looking for some inspiration for your own Halloween reads, you might want to check these out:
Another week, another Top Ten Tuesday, a meme created by The Broke and the Bookish. The topic for the week is a Halloween related freebie, so I’m going with creepy reads. This includes short stories, novels, non-fiction and poems that are either scary or disturbing for many different reasons. Let’s check them out!
– SPOILER FREE REVIEW –
Title: The Call
Author: Peadar Ó Guilín
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Horror
Release date: 30th August, 2016
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Description:
Thousands of years ago, humans banished the Sidhe fairy race to another dimension. The beautiful, terrible Sidhe have stewed in a land of horrors ever since, plotting their revenge . . . and now their day has come.
Fourteen-year-old Nessa lives in a world where every teen will be “Called.” It could come in the middle of the day, it could come deep in the night. But one instant she will be here, and the next she will wake up naked and alone in the Sidhe land. She will be spotted, hunted down, and brutally murdered. And she will be sent back in pieces by the Sidhe to the human world . . . unless she joins the rare few who survive for twenty-four hours and escape unscathed.
Nessa trains with her friends at an academy designed to maximize her chances at survival. But as the days tick by and her classmates go one by one, the threat of her Call lurks ever closer . . . and with it the threat of an even more insidious danger closer to home.
The Call is a pretty grim novel with a unique, twisted and nerve-racking concept that hooked me from page one. It introduces Nessa, a kick-ass main character that can’t walk quite well as the result of contracting polio as a child. Having a disabled character in an action-packed story such as this one is something we hardly see and I really enjoyed how the author did it.
I thought the concept had a lot of potential, but, by being so fast-paced and having so many points of view, there was hardly any time to explore all the themes or characters I would have wanted. Still, it was a very entertaining read that I’ve seen people describing as gruesome and not for the faint of heart, although I didn’t find it that graphic or gory (that might be my seemingly heart of stone talking).
Lauren @Wonderless Reviews is hosting a Halloween Readathon this October and I’m really excited to join in! The best thing about it is how chill it is. She gave out some challenges and you can try and accomplish as many as you’d like, but it really depends on what you want to do. I’ll be joining in on Twitter using the hashtag #HalloweenWR to show my progress or simply make any comment related to my Halloween reads. If you want to check which books I chose, keep on reading.
– SPOILER FREE REVIEW –
Title: This is Not a Test (This is Not a Test #1)
Author: Courtney Summers
Genre: Young adult, Horror
Release date: June 19th, 2012
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Description:
It’s the end of the world. Six students have taken cover in Cortege High but shelter is little comfort when the dead outside won’t stop pounding on the doors. One bite is all it takes to kill a person and bring them back as a monstrous version of their former self. To Sloane Price, that doesn’t sound so bad. Six months ago, her world collapsed and since then, she’s failed to find a reason to keep going. Now seems like the perfect time to give up. As Sloane eagerly waits for the barricades to fall, she’s forced to witness the apocalypse through the eyes of five people who actually want to live. But as the days crawl by, the motivations for survival change in startling ways and soon the group’s fate is determined less and less by what’s happening outside and more and more by the unpredictable and violent bids for life—and death—inside. When everything is gone, what do you hold on to?
I read this book practically in one sitting and became one of my favorites. From the first sentence, this book grabs you and surrounds you with the apocalyptic world where our protagonist Sloane lives, internally and externally. This is not just a zombie book, but rather a heart-wrenching depiction of depression and survival that is both action and emotion-packed. Continue reading “Review: This is Not a Test by Courtney Summers”
Chapter Adventures 