**Sunny, warm days have turned to cooler, shorter ones. For the first time in months, I fix myself a hot cocoa before pulling on a sweater to face the day. Leaving my cottage, the wind makes leaves break from the trees, causing them to say goodbye to the branches and hello to the wet soil beneath, the same wet soil I crunch across to walk into towne.**

Time to wrap up all the books I read in September! I ended up reading five books last month, which is actually one more than I thought I read. My reading has definitely been slowing down since the end of August, so I’m happy with whatever progress I have been making. September was not my best reading month, so I’m really hoping to find some good books in October and throughout the rest of the year. But before we get to finding those, we need to do a wrap-up of my September reads.

• House Arrest by K. A Holt

Alright, first up we have House Arrest. This was my book club’s book so I finally read this after putting it off for a while. It basically is journal entries spanning one year that our main character keeps after being put on house arrest after stealing a credit card to try and buy his baby brother medicine. He serves his time through house arrest and a court appointed journal as he reflects on his actions and goes through the year with his mom and brother, who has a difficult medical condition. This book was a very quick read, so if you want something to fly through, this is something you could read. I thought the story itself was just okay. I got a bit more invested later, but I don’t feel like I really took anything away from it. I think the journal entry format made it feel less like a story and it was difficult for me to feel overly invested.

• Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

TJR is a pretty popular author, but my only book by her had been Forever Interrupted a few years ago which wasn’t too bad, but when I saw the cover of Atmosphere I knew I wanted to read it. I loved the cover of this so it was totally a cover buy. Anyway, this takes place in the 80s and follows a space mission, and our main character Joan is one of the first female astronauts recruited to NASA. There’s a lot more to it, but I’ll leave it there to avoid spoilers. I unfortunately didn’t like this as much as I hoped I would. The writing style was very choppy for me. It had short sentences and it was in third person, so the amount of times I read Joan’s name was insane. I did like the past/present timeline since I think it helped pace the book well with seeing the timeline but also the point where the story ends up at the same time. I had seen reviews of people saying they sobbed while reading this, and I didn’t really feel any emotional connection at all. I think it was again due to the writing, but I feel like there wasn’t too much to the story either. It didn’t feel like there was much going on in scenes so I didn’t love it as much as some other people.

• Thicker Than Water by Brigid Kemmerer

I would definitely put this as my favorite book of the month. I love Brigid Kemmerer, but this is one of her older titles so I wasn’t sure how I’d feel. It follows a teen boy who recently moved to a small town after his mom got married, and we start off the book at the mom’s funeral, where everyone thinks our main character is the culprit. I feel like nothing went right for our main character Thomas. He’s going through a lot but I do like that his new step-dad was on his side even though he was an outcast. We also have the perspective of Charlotte, who is the youngest sister to three cop brothers who are convinced Thomas did it. I think these two characters made some really stupid decisions, but the mystery was really interesting and I had no clue what would happen. I also think the pacing was pretty good. I don’t remember ever feeling bored or like the plot was moving too slow. This does have a paranormal aspect, which I kept waiting for since I remember seeing it in the synopsis, but it kind of comes out of nowhere so it was kind of strange to see how it was implemented. However, I still enjoyed this book and recommend giving it a read.

• Caller Number Nine by Carrie Jacobs

This is a self-published romance following a woman who won a camping trip on a radio show and reconnects with a high-school ex who stood her up at prom. I really wanted to love this. I love finding self-published books to read to support small authors, but I was dragging myself through this one. I swear nothing really happened other than the two main characters walking around the campsite, sitting by the lake, and grabbing food. I do think some people could enjoy this one, but I need more plot in my romance books. This is also the second book I’ve read where the family is overly intrusive and tries to make comments and dictate the main character’s life, and I have learned that I hate that trope. It was the same thing in Part of Your World by Abby Jimenez and I have never felt more annoyed when reading. I also wish the relationship between our two main characters was fleshed out more. We learn about this backstory between the two and how the fmc holds this anger towards the mmc, but it doesn’t really get resolved and kind of just is a forgive and forget kind of thing which I didn’t like. Overall, not my favorite so I’m glad I finished.

• Peanuts: Batter Up, Charlie Brown

To squeeze in one last book in September, I picked up this Snoopy graphic novel. This one has different baseball related stories. I read another one last year that was the Beaglescouts and I LOVED it which is why I wanted to try this one. I honestly wasn’t a huge fan. I feel like the story was lacking and there wasn’t much substance. Every story felt very similar with Charlie Brown’s team being the worst team and everyone picking on him. It felt very repetitive and like there just wasn’t an actual story involved which I didn’t like. I was also hoping for more humor since I thought the other graphic novel had several comedic moments, but I didn’t really find any funny moments which was kind of disappointing.

That wraps up all of my September reads. I am really hoping to find something I like in October since I wasn’t a fan of most of the books I read last month. My current read is taking a little while so I am really trying to finish soon so I can give something else a try. Hopefully something really good comes along soon!

xoxo,

Just another reader