Fall Flurries, October 2025

[Booknblues]

Please post your reviews of your Fall Flurries Books for October here. You might read a book that is spooky, Autumn related, Hispanic Heritage, Italian Heritage or other topics which relates to October.

[LibraryCin]

Halloween

Atlas of Unknowable Things / McCormick Templeman
3 stars

Robin’s devastated with her best friend, Charles, steals her research and writes a paper and gets all the credit for it. She decides the best revenge is to do more, better, research, so she finds an opportunity to head to Colorado to a small university where another researcher recently disappeared, but that researcher had an artifact that could really help Robin out with her own research. But when she arrives, things are very odd, even creepy, and the other academics act oddly toward her. What is going on?

It seemed like a good premise, but I think it might have been the writing style that just didn’t draw me in like I’d hoped. I did have some trouble following as Robin started figuring things out, but it could also be that I was skimming a little bit by that point and missed a few things? I was definitely confused by the very end.

[Amy]

The Silent Touch of Shadows by Christina Courtenay; 3 stars

This one has been on my TBR for almost to over a decade. When I needed a medieval book, I saw an opportunity to finally get to it. Plus its October Fall Flurries, so a ghost book really hits the spot. Listened to it in audio.

OK - so it wasn't a not to be missed. And you sort of just have to roll with it. Let me just call this a standard ghosty three.

[Olivermagnus]

Halloween

Moon Dance - J.R. Rain - 3.5 Stars

I needed to read a book with a vampire in it for a recent challenge so I searched my Kindle books and discovered I had a copy of a book called Moon Dance. It features Samantha Moon, wife, mom of two, and former federal agent now working as a private investigator. Unfortunately, she's also a vampire. Six years ago she was attacked while out jogging one night and it changed her life forever. As a cover story she tells her children she has a rare skin disease that forces her to stay out of the light. Only her husband and sister know the real story.

In the first book of the series, Samantha is hired by Kingsley Fulcrum to investigate the murder attempt on his life. As the case unfolds, Samantha discovers Kingsley isn't exactly what he appears to be, which shouldn't surprise the reader who wonders how he survived five shots to the head.

This isn't the greatest book I've ever read but I ended up enjoying it more than I expected. The plot was okay but I never felt like I was reading a mystery or a vampire novel. It's a really quick read and I finished it in a very short time. I think the series has a lot of potential and would be willing to read another book in the series to see if it gets better.

[LibraryCin]

Halloween

The Night That Finds Us All / John Hornor Jacobs
3 stars

Sam (Samantha) Vines gets a job as an engineer on a hundred-year-old sailboat that’s said to be haunted. She meets a colourful cast of characters on the boat, but she already knew one of them ahead of time, an old friend. Sam does, indeed, start seeing things that make her wonder about the haunting stories, though she wouldn’t normally believe in that kind of thing. But no one else seems to believe her, until one of the other sailors disappears while in port, then others start dying.

There was a lot of sailing terminology that I don’t know. There is also a lot of swearing, but they are sailors. It also started very slow, in my opinion. I’m also not sure if I didn’t like the writing style or if it was all the sailing terminology that I had a hard time with, especially at first. The diary Sam found was a bit more interesting, and things did pick up, particularly at the very end, but overall I’m keeping it at 3 stars for me (ok).