On the Shelf: October 2023

It's November already? No. Uh-uh. I'm in denial about 2023 speeding to a close. Though if I count the year in books, it doesn't feel quite so bad. October saw me ranging all over from horror novels and contemporary romance to a swan-dive into yet more historical romance. Backlist historicals have really been a haven for me this year — I think because they meet genre expectations every time, and they're removed enough from the present to skirt the edge of fantasy. Horror operates in the same way for me, to a certain extent. Like, fake horror is less scary to me than what's actually horrifying in our real world. Knowing it isn't real is comforting. And that's about as philosophical as I am going to get today. Let's just go on to all the titles I read this month!

The Reading Rundown
Ana María and the Fox by Liana de la Rosa (historical romance)
A Summer Lesson in Romance by Noor Juman (contemporary romance, novella)
Lone Women by Victor LaValle (historical horror, speculative fiction, western)
Monstrous by Jessica Lewis (young adult horror)
The Lover by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (fairy tale, speculative fiction, short story)
There Should Have Been Eight by Nalini Singh (out 11/21, suspense, thriller)
Flawed by Shilpa Suraj (contemporary romance)
Technically Yours by Denise Williams (out 12/5, contemporary romance)

Backlist titles and rereads: I picked up To Steal a Heart by Kate Bateman because it was free on the 'zon and then ended up buying book two, A Raven's Heart. While the two titles whet my appetite for historicals with spies, they didn't quite land for me. So I went back to two old favorites, Joanna Bourne's Forbidden Rose and The Black Hawk for a reset. Then, Romance Twitter led me to another historical reread — Lorraine Heath's The Earl Takes All and some new-to-me titles from Lisa Kleypas' backlist, Where Dreams Begin, Worth Any Price, and Stranger in My Arms. Last, but not least, in the spirit of Halloween, I read The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson.

Currently reading: Some Winter's Evening by Erin Langston.

On the TBR/wish list
Isabel and the Rogue by Liana de la Rosa
The House of Last Resort by Christopher Golden
Blood Betrayal by Ausma Zehanat Khan