How did I do this spookathon?

You can check out my TBR here if you haven’t seen it and want to 🙂

Thriller

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer – Michelle Hodkin

⭐⭐⭐

I was hoping that the ending would solidify my 4 star thoughts on the book, but wow… the last hundred pages or so dropped my rating. The beginning had a lot of promise and Mara’s unreliable narration held the right amount of suspense.
However, what caused me problems was the paranormal element. It felt thrown in and its integration didn’t feel natural at all. Especially in terms of Mara and Noah’s relationship. Everything towards the end just felt rushed and a mess.

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Purple on the Cover

Toil & Trouble – Tess Sharpe ed.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

This was a wonderful anthology! Overall my ratings for this book averaged out at 4⭐ There was some that definitely fell short for me, but the majority were well written and had engaging stories and incredibly strong women characters. Also the amount of f/f and bisexual representation was so refreshing!

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These two books are the only ones I completed on my TBR and technically completed all the challenges… *cackles*

Toil & Trouble completes every challenge apart from the ‘thriller’ aspect, which I completed with Mara Dyer! haha

However, I did read a few other things:

The Kiss of Deception – Mary E. Pearson

⭐⭐⭐⭐

I finished the last 158 pages.

I think I’m in love with Lia. As we progressed through the plot, I found myself more and more won over by her actions. She will cut a bitch, but she’s also so caring and I love her. The plot is super interesting, especially the religious aspects and the lore.
I pretty much knew early on who was who in the male department. But I do like each of them. Rafe is lovely, but I do feel his character needs a bit of work, only because we spent so much more time with Kaden and he just seems more interesting at this point.

Also that little snippet of Pauline near the end… I swear if anything bad happens to her in the next book I’m going be mad!

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Mottled Dawn – Saadat Hasan Manto

⭐⭐⭐⭐

I finished the last 55 pages.

This was a rather powerful collection of short stories. Some stories fell flat a little, and I think that is a translation problem. I’ve read that the language and structure is far more simplistic than the original Urdu that Manto wrote in.
TW: rape, violence.

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The Last of the Spirits – Chris Priestly

⭐⭐⭐⭐

A fun and meaningful take on the classic A Christmas Carol.

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I only managed to get 45 pages of A Map of Days (Ransom Riggs) and I’m so excited to throw myself back into this world with all the peculiar children! ♥

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Overall, I had a great readathon and managed to read 1295 pages.

If you participated in the Spookathon, I hope it went well for you!

Thank you for reading! I hope you are having a lovely day~