What have you recently finished reading?

I’ve been reading a bunch of novellas, because bite-size has suited my brain well during a pretty busy time at work, so the last one I finished was Tabitha O’Connell’s Dirt-Stained Hands, Thorn-Pierced Skin; it’s a loose retelling of Beauty and the Beast which I thought was pretty well-handled, with some caveats.

Before that, I read Steven L. Peck’s A Short Stay in Hell; I’d picked it up because I was curious after another blogger hated it, and it was free in Kobo Plus. I really liked it, actually; I thought it was well written, and explored the idea in a way that was interesting to me.

What are you currently reading?

I’ve been keeping the list surprisingly slim: I’m still slowly working through John Goodall’s The Castle: A History a few castles at a time, and I’ve started one other book, but that’s it.

The other book is Rachel Harrison’s Kiss Slay Replay, which has been piquing my curiosity since reviews started coming out for it. I liked Harrison’s Cackle, so I ended up with several of her books to read in honour of October/Halloween, and this was one of them. I’m not far into it so far, and it’s only juuuust started bringing in the horror elements (someone’s lurking outside the wedding). I’m not 100% on board yet, because a lot of the detail so far just feels like “contemporary women’s fiction”… but I already know it’s going to take a turn, and I’m curious what that will be like.

What will you be reading next?

No idea. I’ve just added a bunch of interesting-to-me comics to my reading list on Comics Plus, so in my need for low commitment reads at the moment I might turn to those. I’ve also got a few more books added on Kobo Plus, like Akimitsu Takagi’s The Noh Mask Murder, that I’m very curious about.

I might also start something else from my Haunted Shelf TBR; maybe Sara Raasch’s The Nightmare Before Kissmas or Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint, for a bit of a change of pace.