What I Read in October

 Must Reads -

Grady Lake by J.L. Hyde - I found this author after a friend added her first book, Underground, on her TBR list on goodreads and bought it for her birthday.  I then started following her on instagram and I am now buying every one of her books on the day they come out.  Grady Lake is set in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and is a murder mystery that moves back and forth from the disappearance of the main character's sister 20 years prior and the current situation in Grady Lake with another girl that has gone missing.  The ending has me so excited for book two in this series out in 2024!

A Woman is No Man by Etaf Rum - “ This debut novel by a Palestinian-American voice takes us inside the lives of a conservative Arab family living in America. In Brooklyn, eighteen-year-old Deya is starting to meet with suitors. Though she doesn’t want to get married, her grandparents give her no choice. History is repeating itself: Deya’s mother, Isra, also had no choice when she left Palestine as a teenager to marry Adam. Though Deya was raised to believe her parents died in a car accident, a secret note from a mysterious, yet familiar-looking woman makes Deya question everything she was told about her past. As the narrative alternates between the lives of  Deya and Isra, she begins to understand the dark, complex secrets behind her community.”

I really liked this book. It was so moving.  I wanted to have a discussion right after I finished it!

The Beauty of Your Face by Sahar Mustafah - The book starts with a principal of a Muslim girls school going about her day when a shooter breaks into the school.  This is not really a school shooting book as much as it is about her life leading up to that point and all of the different bigotry, trauma, and heart ache that leads to this horrific act of hate.

Honorable Mentions

A Fever in the Heartland by Timothy Egan - This is a nonfiction book about how the Klan took off in the state of Indiana in the 1920s and the undoing of the man in charge.  It was fascinating, disgusting, and a look into a part of history that I didn’t know about.

The Celebrants by Steve Rowley - I read this earlier in the month and honestly would have been higher up on my list but I just read so many good books! This book follows college friends through their adulthood.  They decide after one of them dies right before graduation that they want to have their funerals before they die.  They want to leave nothing left unsaid and agree to meet up whenever one of them demands their funeral.  

Hello, Transcriber by Hannah Morrisey - This one started off a little slow, but I really liked it.  It is set in Wisconsin and is about a woman who is in a crappy relationship in a dark town and is starting a job as a police transcriber in hopes of using this to spark ideas in her own personal writing.  She and her neighbors get involved in drug deaths and vicious murders while she desperately tries to figure out who did it and pull herself away from her crappy husband.

Eh - Christine Falls and The Surgeon

What did you read in October? What would you recommend to me?