The Hype-A-Thon Readathon: Mini September Wrap-Up and October Announcement & TBR (the possibilities are endless!)

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Hello Hello! How are you?

It’s a wet and cold Monday in France but I am very excited to be posting today’s Hype-A-Thon monthly post as we have chosen really exciting books for October, and as my title hints, you can literally choose anything and everything, as long as its hyped of course!

Noly and I are still pushing forward with our reading sessions when we can, although the book that we have been reading for September has been so beautiful and mesmerising, but boy does it make us sleepy aha! It’s probably weird that we keep choosing new books every month when we haven’t always finished the previous ones, but we are getting there slowly and it’s lots of fun!

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SEPTEMBER WRAP-UP

September was a very special month for Noly and me, it was our one year anniversary of our Readathon, you can read the post I wrote about it here, and we decided to go back to basics and chose #StandaloneSeptember as the monthly theme, just like the first month we started this journey!

In September, we have been making our way through The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow, and we are loving it SO MUCH. Okay, we haven’t finished it yet, but it needs to go in this wrap up because I have thoughts and I need to tell you about them.

Firstly, I had no idea this book was going to be so beautiful, I think it says somewhere on my cover “painfully beautiful” or something of the sort and I couldn’t agree more, this is the type of book where the writing style is just absolutely amazing, beautiful, whimsical, engrossing, and it makes me so happy and sad at the same time.

We are about a third of the way through, the chapters are a bit too long for my liking, but honestly, this story is so mesmerising, I have no idea where it is going but I’m happy to let it drag me along for the ride, I think that it might be one of my favourites of the year, but we will have to see! Noly is loving it just as much as me, so it must be good because usually, she doesn’t enjoy these books AS much as I do!

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OCTOBER ANNOUNCEMENT

That little wrap-up was a bit of a flop as we haven’t actually finished anything this month (we are REALLY bad at this thing aren’t we?) but we are going to keep pushing through and jump into some new books this month too!

We really struggled to come up with a theme for October, we wanted something spooky but didn’t want to rehash all our original themes, so instead, we looked for hyped books and realised that a lot of fall/autumn and spooky books are often described as atmospheric, so the October theme is, therefore, #AtmosphericOctober (probably not the most exciting, but we like it!).

We actually had a bunch of books to choose from for this theme and we just couldn’t pick only one, so in October we are going to be reading two BOTMs: The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater and Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. I think we can all agree just by looking at the covers that they fit the prompt!

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GOODREADS SYNOPSIS

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

“There are only two reasons a non-seer would see a spirit on St. Mark’s Eve,” Neeve said. “Either you’re his true love . . . or you killed him.”

It is freezing in the churchyard, even before the dead arrive. Every year, Blue Sargent stands next to her clairvoyant mother as the soon-to-be dead walk past. Blue herself never sees them—not until this year, when a boy emerges from the dark and speaks directly to her.

His name is Gansey, and Blue soon discovers that he is a rich student at Aglionby, the local private school. Blue has a policy of staying away from Aglionby boys. Known as Raven Boys, they can only mean trouble.

But Blue is drawn to Gansey, in a way she can’t entirely explain. He has it all—family money, good looks, devoted friends—but he’s looking for much more than that. He is on a quest that has encompassed three other Raven Boys: Adam, the scholarship student who resents all the privilege around him; Ronan, the fierce soul who ranges from anger to despair; and Noah, the taciturn watcher of the four, who notices many things but says very little.

For as long as she can remember, Blue has been warned that she will cause her true love to die. She never thought this would be a problem. But now, as her life becomes caught up in the strange and sinister world of the Raven Boys, she’s not so sure anymore.

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Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

An isolated mansion. A chillingly charismatic aristocrat. And a brave socialite drawn to expose their treacherous secrets. . . .

After receiving a frantic letter from her newlywed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find – her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region.

Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom.

Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family’s youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family’s past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family’s once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness. And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.

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We also found a few other books that seemed to fit the prompt, so I thought I would add them to this post to help you along with your choice or give you some inspiration for choosing the book(s) that you want to read for this readathon in October!

For #AtmosphericOctober, you can read any book that is currently hyped or has been hyped in the past and that fits the prompt. It can be any kind of atmosphere, it can be light or dark, spooky or funny, sad or uplifting, we just want it to give you some kind of vibes and make you think “wow, what an atmosphere”, just like Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Marcia Machado, The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert, The Devouring Gray by Christine Lynn Herman or even The Wicked Deep by Shea Ernshaw!

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As always, you know that other than the BOTM we don’t have any mandatory books to read, this readathon is a really laid back one intended to help you get through all those hyped books.

You can read the BOTM with us and chat with us about it using the hashtags #AtmosphericOctober and #hypeathonreadathon.

You can read as many or as few books as you want for this readathon, as long as it has some kind of notable atmosphere, and it has been hyped in the past or is still hyped. Don’t forget to give us updates throughout the month!

That’s all for now, I hope you enjoyed this post, I am so excited for October and all my reads, and I can’t wait to see what the hype is all about! I hope you will join our little readathon over on Twitter.

See you soon, stay safe,

Ellie xx