January was one of the best reading months I’ve EVER had! I’m SO excited to share all of these books with y’all! This is going to be a long one, so let’s just get right into it!
In this month I read 13 books! Out of those, there were :
1 – ⭐
2 – ⭐ ⭐
2 – ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
5 – ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
3 – ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
- Monthly Average – 3.53 ⭐
- In total, I read 3,973 (+ Obscura) pages.
- 3 books were read during 24 in 48 Readathon.
- 6 physical books/ 3 e-books/ 4 audiobooks
- 1 review copy
- 8 male authors / 5 female authors
Genre Breakdown –
- 3 Science Fictions
- 4 Thrillers
- 1 Fantasy
- 1 Mystery
- 4 Horrors
Carrie – Stephen King {REREAD} // REVIEW
Carrie knew she should not use the terrifying power she possessed… But one night at her senior prom, Carrie was scorned and humiliated just one time too many, and in a fit of uncontrollable fury she turned her clandestine game into a weapon of horror and destruction…
GENRE – Horror
LENGTH – 253 pages
PUBLISHER – Doubleday
PUBLICATION DATE – 5 / 17 / 1974
RATING – 5 / 5 ⭐ !
- Favorite Part – The look into the whole town’s thoughts! It was such a realistic take on a natural disaster (with a supernatural twist).
- Least Favorite Part – None!
‘Salem’s Lot – Stephen King // REVIEW
Thousands of miles away from the small township of ‘Salem’s Lot, two terrified people, a man and a boy, still share the secrets of those clapboard houses and tree-lined streets. They must return to ‘Salem’s Lot for a final confrontation with the unspeakable evil that lives on in the town.
GENRE – Horror
LENGTH – 439 pages
PUBLISHER – Doubleday
PUBLICATION DATE – 10 / 17 / 1975
RATING – 4.3 / 5 ⭐ !
- Favorite Part – The return to the classic (scary) vampires!
- Least Favorite Part – The beginning was VERY slow and the ending left me wanting more.
Annihilation – Jeff VanderMeer // REVIEW
Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; all the members of the second expedition committed suicide; the third expedition died in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another; the members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within months of their return, all had died of aggressive cancer.
This is the twelfth expedition.
GENRE – Sci-Fi
LENGTH – 195 pages
PUBLISHER – Farrar, Straus and Giroux
PUBLICATION DATE – 2 / 4 / 2014
RATING – 4.5 / 5 ⭐ !
- Favorite Part – The tone of this book is so ominous and creepy. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time!
- Least Favorite Part – I didn’t really care about the characters and the ending was a little lackluster for me.
The Shining – Stephen King {REREAD} // REVIEW
Danny is only five years old, but he is a ‘shiner’, aglow with psychic voltage. When his father becomes caretaker of an old hotel, his visions grow out of control. Cut off by blizzards, the hotel seems to develop an evil force, and who are the mysterious guests in the supposedly empty hotel?
GENRE – Horror
LENGTH – 447 pages
PUBLISHER – Doubleday
PUBLICATION DATE – 1 / 28 / 1977
RATING – 5 / 5 ⭐!
- Favorite Part – I loved how even when the characters are doing bad things, they were still sympathetic.
- Least Favorite Part – None!
The Girl in the Red Coat – Kate Hamer // REVIEW
She is the missing girl. But she doesn’t know she’s lost.
Carmel Wakeford becomes separated from her mother at a local children’s festival, and is found by a man who claims to be her estranged grandfather. He tells her that her mother has had an accident and that she is to live with him for now. As days become weeks with her new family, 8-year-old Carmel realises that this man believes she has a special gift…
While her mother desperately tries to find her, Carmel embarks on an extraordinary journey, one that will make her question who she is – and who she might become.
GENRE – Mystery
LENGTH – 384 pages
PUBLISHER – Faber & Faber
PUBLICATION DATE – 1 / 13 / 15
RATING – 2 / 5 ⭐
- Favorite Part – The premise was good and I enjoyed the mother’s side of the story.
- Least Favorite Part – The daughter’s side of the story was stupid and the magical realism element was stupid. The tone was ALL over the place too.
You – Caroline Kepnes
When a beautiful, aspiring writer strides into the East Village bookstore where Joe Goldberg works, he does what anyone would do: he Googles the name on her credit card.
There is only one Guinevere Beck in New York City. She has a public Facebook account and Tweets incessantly, telling Joe everything he needs to know: she is simply Beck to her friends, she went to Brown University, she lives on Bank Street, and she’ll be at a bar in Brooklyn tonight—the perfect place for a “chance” meeting.
As Joe invisibly and obsessively takes control of Beck’s life, he orchestrates a series of events to ensure Beck finds herself in his waiting arms. Moving from stalker to boyfriend, Joe transforms himself into Beck’s perfect man, all while quietly removing the obstacles that stand in their way—even if it means murder.
GENRE – Thriller
LENGTH – 422 pages
PUBLISHER – Atria/Emily Bestler Books
PUBLICATION DATE – 9 / 25 / 2014
RATING – 4.2 / 5 ⭐
- Favorite Part – I was so invested in this story. Somehow I was rooting for an actual stalker throughout this book.
- Least Favorite Part – This book just felt overlong to me. I kept looking at how many pages I had left and was annoyed because it just kept going and going.
Night Shift – Stephen King // REVIEW
Never trust your heart to the New York Times bestselling master of suspense, Stephen King. Especially with an anthology that features the classic stories “Children of the Corn,” “The Lawnmower Man,” “Graveyard Shift,” “The Mangler,” and “Sometimes They Come Back”-which were all made into hit horror films.
“Unbearable suspense.” (Dallas Morning News)
From the depths of darkness, where hideous rats defend their empire, to dizzying heights, where a beautiful girl hangs by a hair above a hellish fate, this chilling collection of twenty short stories will plunge readers into the subterranean labyrinth of the most spine-tingling, eerie imagination of our time.
GENRE – Horror
LENGTH – 336 pages
PUBLISHER – Doubleday
PUBLICATION DATE – 2 / 1978
RATING – 3.7 / 5 ⭐
- Favorite Stories – Graveyard Shift, The Mangler, The Boogeyman, The Lawnmower Man
- Least Favorite Stories – Jerusalem’s Lot, Battleground, Trucks, Children of the Corn, Last Rung on the Ladder
Behind Closed Doors – B.A. Paris
GENRE – Thriller
LENGTH – 293 pages
PUBLISHER – St. Martin’s Press
PUBLICATION DATE – 2 / 11 / 16
RATING – 2.7 / 5 ⭐
- Favorite Part – I liked the ending, it had an interesting twist.
- Least Favorite Part – I hated all the characters and their actions, except two. They made such poor decisions and their dialogue wasn’t at all realistic.
The Chalk Man – C.J. Tudor
In 1986, Eddie and his friends are just kids on the verge of adolescence. They spend their days biking around their sleepy English village and looking for any taste of excitement they can get. The chalk men are their secret code: little chalk stick figures they leave for one another as messages only they can understand. But then a mysterious chalk man leads them right to a dismembered body, and nothing is ever the same.
In 2016, Eddie is fully grown and thinks he’s put his past behind him, but then he gets a letter in the mail containing a single chalk stick figure. When it turns out that his friends got the same message, they think it could be a prank–until one of them turns up dead. That’s when Eddie realizes that saving himself means finally figuring out what really happened all those years ago.
GENRE – Mystery
LENGTH – 280 pages
PUBLISHER – Crown Publishing Group
PUBLICATION DATE – 1 / 9 / 2018
RATING – 4.3 / 5 ⭐
- Favorite Part – The twists and turns were CRAZY I audibly gasped so many times throughout this book.
- Least Favorite Part – There were some similarities to some Stephen King books that were really distracting to me.
Nemesis – Brendan Reichs
GENRE – Science Fiction
LENGTH – 443 pages
PUBLISHER – G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers
PUBLICATION DATE – 3 / 21 / 17
RATING – 1.6 / 5 ⭐
- Favorite Part – The beginning had me interested.
- Least Favorite Part – Too many to count! Just go read my Goodreads review.
Every Heart a Doorway – Seanan McGuire
Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children
No Solicitations
No Visitors
No QuestsChildren have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere… else.
But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children.
Nancy tumbled once, but now she’s back. The things she’s experienced… they change a person. The children under Miss West’s care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world.
But Nancy’s arrival marks a change at the Home. There’s a darkness just around each corner, and when tragedy strikes, it’s up to Nancy and her new-found schoolmates to get to the heart of the matter.
GENRE – Fantasy
LENGTH – 173 pages
PUBLISHER – Tor
PUBLICATION DATE – 4 / 5 / 16
RATING – 5 / 5 ⭐
- Favorite Part – I thought the world building was fantastic, the characters were so realistic, and the mystery was fun too!!
- Least Favorite Part – None!
The Couple Next Door – Shari Lapena
Anne and Marco Conti seem to have it all–a loving relationship, a wonderful home, and their beautiful baby, Cora. But one night when they are at a dinner party next door, a terrible crime is committed. Suspicion immediately focuses on the parents. But the truth is a much more complicated story.
Inside the curtained house, an unsettling account of what actually happened unfolds. Detective Rasbach knows that the panicked couple is hiding something. Both Anne and Marco soon discover that the other is keeping secrets, secrets they’ve kept for years.
GENRE – Thriller
LENGTH – 308 pages
PUBLISHER – Pamela Dorman Books
PUBLICATION DATE – 7 / 14 / 2016
RATING – 3.5 / 5 ⭐
- Favorite Part – The mystery had me on the edge of my seat! I was so excited to know what the heck was going on. I cared about some of the characters as well.
- Least Favorite Part – The pacing was a little off, especially in the middle. Also, the ending was STUPID!
Obscura – Joe Hart
In the near future, an aggressive and terrifying new form of dementia is affecting victims of all ages. The cause is unknown, and the symptoms are disturbing. Dr. Gillian Ryan is on the cutting edge of research and desperately determined to find a cure. She’s already lost her husband to the disease, and now her young daughter is slowly succumbing as well. After losing her funding, she is given the unique opportunity to expand her research. She will travel with a NASA team to a space station where the crew has been stricken with symptoms of a similar inexplicable psychosis—memory loss, trances, and violent, uncontrollable impulses.
Crippled by a secret addiction and suffering from creeping paranoia, Gillian finds her journey becoming a nightmare as unexplainable and violent events plague the mission. With her grip weakening on reality, she starts to doubt her own innocence. And she’s beginning to question so much more—like the true nature of the mission, the motivations of the crew, and every deadly new secret space has to offer.
GENRE – Science – Fiction
PUBLISHER – Thomas & Mercer
PUBLICATION DATE – 5 / 8 / 2018
RATING – 4.3 / 5 ⭐
- Favorite Part – The tone was amazing. It was so ominous and I never felt like the main characters were safe.
- Least Favorite Part – I had trouble keeping up with the characters and was often confused because of this.
And that’s my wrap up for January! I’m so proud of what I accomplished!
What was your favorite read of the month? I’d love to know!
Thanks for reading!
SOCIAL MEDIA —
Check out my last post on my 24 in 48 Readathon Wrap Up HERE!
Spookyism 
One thought on “January 2018 WRAP UP!”