October was blogtober month and I have achieved it to some degree of success. I have blogged for 25 days out of 31 this month and this has been for varying reasons. I ran out pre-scheduled posts pretty quickly and by the halfway point I had reach a significant drop off of site visitors. Honestly by that point I was writing what I felt to be pretty good content but I think readers were just getting blogtober fatigue. Throughout October too the heavy rains led to our roof leaking substantially, our washing machine broke, my son had his front tooth knocked out at school, the children’s school then shut unexpectedly for a week due to building safety issues, we have half term this week too. Finally in absolutely devastating news the littlelest Leeloo cat has taken another poorly turn, she now has a heart murmur which on top of her other medical issues is very bad, it’s all really sad.  I still feel like a great achievement has been reached by missing only 6 days.

Despite all this I have actually managed to read a decent amount this month helped by audio and a couple of long train journeys.

My 5 Star reads this month

My 4 Star Reads this month

My 3 Star reads this month

I read Iron Gold on audio, as I have done for most of this series, and I have to admit I didn’t enjoy the multiple narrators, whilst i eventually warmed to Lyria, Lysander was just terrible casting in my opinion! To give it it’s dues, Captain America was a 3.5 but the lack of any kind of representation felt frustrating, but I suppose that’s the risk when writing in an already established universe.

Book Mail!

We’ve been very blessed with book mail this month, Biba had a wonderful surprise with the early delivery of the November We Read Box, we loved this box so much and you can check out her rep unboxing on the blog (just search under unboxings) or pinned to my Instagram story highlights. Whilst we’re on topic of unboxings we also received the Geeky Clean Christmas collection which is beyond fabulous and full of perfect festive gifts. Titan Books have been amazing this month with sending me Captain America (above) Sherlock Holmes’ The Christmas Demon by James Lovegrove and also Skein Island. Finally from Rock the Boat news Biba received an Arc of Monsterous Devices – I’m hoping it’s not too frightening for her but we are overwhelmed to have got picked to receive a copy!

Looking Ahead

I’m looking forward to taking a more relaxed approach again to the blog next month even though I do have plenty of great reads and a buddy read lined up! I’ll still be posting but giving myself a rest from posting too many tags or opinion pieces. It’s Biba’s birthday next week and whilst we were going to take her to the Pop Up Pokemon Centre in London, the queues are still horrendous and not much birthday fun to be had queuing in the cold and dark for hours. Friends there today arrived at 4.15 at there were already 200 people in the queue which was already out the door and into the street! We’re still going pokemon shopping, just within the confines of what we have locally.  But a quiet month ahead hopefully!