YA and Middle Grade Oct Bookclub - Part 1

October 15, 2024 8:16 AM

Hello! Welcome to the chat post for the YA and Middle Grade October book club. The extended post includes an update to our reading schedule for this month.

The revised schedule is below. I am switching the order of "Darkness Within Us" and "Shadows Between Us" since they are a series and Shadows Between Us comes first.

Here are some chat questions: Since it's spooky season, what is the best horror book you've read recently? What are you reading in general? How's life?


October
Refugee by Alan Gratz
The Shadows Between Us by Tricia Levenseller


November
The Sun and the Star by Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro
The Darkness Within Us by Tricia Levenseller


December
Wings of Fire: A Guide to the Dragon World
Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross

January
The Misfits: A Royal Conundrum by Lisa Yee
Lightlark by Alex Aster

February
Odder by Katherine Applegate
Two Sides to Every Murder by Danielle Valentine

March
They Call Me No Sam! by Drew Daywalt
Ruthless Vows by Rebecca Ross

April
Chasing Embers by Glenn Beck with Mikayla G. Hedrick
Murtagh by Christopher Paolini

May
Heartless Hunter by Kristen Ciccarelli
Second book chosen through voting

posted by CMcG (3 comments total)

I don't read or watch a lot of horror. I like spooky but not scary, mostly because I hate jump scares and also gross things. I can handle thrillers and witchy stuff just fine. Not sure if Stephen King' Fairy Tale qualifies as horror, but I enjoyed it except for the late second act where it got really gross. Same with The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires, luckily the yuck was minimal.

Last year I read a whole crop of spooky themed graphic novels, mostly on Libby:

Younger kids would like Witches of Brooklyn, Garlic and the Vampire (has 2 or 3 sequels)
Not fantasy but fall themed: Pumpkinheads by Rainbow Rowell
For the older kids: Snapdragon - Kat Leyh, Hollow - Shannon Waters, Coven - Jennifer Dugan, Blackwater - Jeanette Arroyo

My recent books are more in the Sammy Keyes series, plus 2 from Netgalley: How to Summon a Fairy Godmother and The Legend of the Last Library. Godmother was good but had a lot more of the fae world than I thought it would including all the tricky flirting you would expect. It is the first in a planned series. Library seemed like it would be magic/fantasy from the cover but it was more dystopia/scifi.
posted by soelo at 10:51 AM on October 15

Oh, interesting! I am going to check out Legends of the Last Library.

I wonder what you would think of How to Sell a Haunted House (same author as SBCGtSV). I thought it was really interesting from a craft perspective because sometimes the horror was so ridiculous I was laughing, but it was still scary somehow.
posted by CMcG at 2:41 PM on October 15

I am trying to listen to The Shadows Between Us and I am about halfway through it. Do the two main characters get any more likeable? I was reading some reviews and many people said this was called a Slytherin romance when it first came out. I can handle antiheroes or grey morals, but this one is not clicking for me.
posted by soelo at 8:06 AM on October 29