TCHAU, VERÃO! Gosh, I’m so glad to send summer right out the door and welcome in the best season ever: SPOOKY AUTUMN! It’s going to be so much fun, and I have so many exciting plans that I’m just bursting with joy over here. I wasn’t able to sleuth my way into figuring out who created this tag, but I did see it over at Destiny @ Howling Libraries, so let’s get cooking!

First, some stats since I think it’ll be neat to have on hand given the questions below. I’m counting books from June, July, and August, so, in total, I read 32 books. 10 were contemporary & 18 were fantasy. 10 were adult, 18 were young adult, and 3 were middle grade. I also read 2 nonfictions & 1 book in verse.

What was your favorite book this summer?

I feel like everyone is going to expect this answer? Like, if you’ve even been kind of paying attention in the last few months, you know that it’s Felix Ever After by Kacen Callender. I just constantly had moments of OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OH MY GOD for the entire book, and it was such a delight to read. This is saying a lot, too, because I read mostly four and five star reads this summer, and I definitely found some new all-time favorites (looking at you, Filigree Street), but not only was this book truly outstanding, it had the perfect summery vibe, too, so, all combined, it’s the best.

What was your least favorite book this summer?

Man, I thought for sure that it’d be Colin Meloy, but, I totally blacked out reading The Book of Life by Deborah Harkness because I hated it that much. I posted a review about why I had so many issues with the All Souls trilogy, and the tl;dr is that it’s misogynistic and abusive, and I just can’t stand a single page of the third book.

What book do you wish you read this summer?

I really wished that I’d read Fellowship of the Ring in June so that I would have been motivated to read TT in July and ROTK in August and just really had a summer of Tolkien. I was supposed to read & review the entire trilogy, plus begin the History of Middle-earth, and that has gone much less swimmingly than I’d envisioned, and I don’t really know why? It would have been so fun, too, to read & watch them all in a row, but alas, I am the worst.

What was your favorite classic you read this summer?

Uhhhhh, well, you see, I haven’t been reading classics in a while now, but I guess Tolkien is a classic, so? I meant to read a bunch of classics, too! I had the rest of my Austens planned out for this year, and I was going to read both of them this summer, plus another Brontë, and then Wuthering Heights made me want to abandon all hope, so I just–didn’t. I’d still like to read Persuasion and Mansfield Park before the end of the year, but, as I have to buy a Brontë, that probably won’t happen for a while.

Did you stray into a different genre
and pick up a new and exciting book?

Nope! Everything that I read is generally within my usual reading. I did read a horror–Sanctum by Madeleine Roux–but I know that I like that series, and the only thing odd is that I usually save all my horrors for autumn & winter. I read a lot of contemporaries, which is abnormal for me because I’m generally on the fantasy train 90% of the time with a few contemporaries thrown in, but it’s also summer, and romance feels perfect for summer, so I guess that wasn’t new, either.

What was your favorite movie adaptation this summer?

Hands down, The Old Guard. I watched a few other adaptations (The Witcher, The Handmaiden, Boy Erased, The Umbrella Academy, and Fellowship of the Ring), but the first two, I haven’t read the books (I’ll read Fingersmith eventually), I don’t remember the comics for TUA enough to be like YES BEST ADAPTATION, and I’ve seen FOTR too many times to actually count it. And though I read the graphic novel for The Old Guard after I watched the movie, I also watched the movie three times and preordered the next volume, so sim, it was definitely my favorite. In fact, I deserve to watch it again.

What was your favorite new book release?

Yo, why you gotta do this to me? Y’all really want me to choose between The Empire of Gold by SA Chakraborty and The Faithless Hawk by Margaret Owen? Nahhh, I literally can’t, they were both freaking phenomenal, and such excellent series finales! I was amazed equally by both of them, and there were so many elements in each that I just absolutely adored.