Hello Friends! Happy Fall and welcome (or welcome back) to the blog.

** Quote ** 
“I must be losing my mind. It’s not nearly as fun as I anticipated.” – Wednesday, Sn. 1

Friends, I hope you’re enjoying some creature comforts of the season, slowing down to enjoy the Christmas holiday, reading a new book, and for your sanity …” put down that phone!” (LOL)

“My 12 Days of Christmas series kicks off tomorrow, and honestly… I’m still not ready. The holidays have been full and a little chaotic, and I hate when the season starts feeling rushed. I just want to slow down, savor the cold weather, enjoy the decorations, write a few cards, and settle in with a couple of good titles.”

I’m powering through a few titles on Libby, as well as one more book I hope to finish by the end of December, but we’ll see how that goes.

The Bookish* Newsletter!

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Issue No. 10 | NOVEMBER 2025 | Blog Version | PDF
Check out my bookish updates on Goodreads, including progress, upcoming titles, lists, and reviews!

LATEST BOOK REVIEW

Diavola, Jennifer Marie Thorne [HORROR, PARANORMAL, GOTHIC]
3.81 Good Reads Rating

QUOTE: “You were looking for the weak one in the flock, right? The one you could draw aside and push over the edge. Isolate from everyone and feed upon, but see, that was the first flaw in your logic: I’m not a lost lamb. I’m a black sheep.”

There was so much buzz around this book when it first came out that I immediately added it to my TBR, but I never got around to it with everything else I was trying to read. But when Libby has a copy, you jump on it.

I didn’t revisit the synopsis before starting the audiobook, but this title pops up on nearly every horror list during the Halloween season. Plain and simple, Diavola starts off reading like a haunted house story, but slowly shifts into more of a ghost story as it unfolds.

Have you ever read a book that frustrated you to no end? The characters in this one put me squarely in that place—especially the Pace family. Anna, one of the three Pace siblings, is joining her family on a trip to a remote villa in the tiny village of Monteperso. What’s odd is not just the isolation, but the residents of the town, who strike Anna—our protagonist—as just as strange.

Anna is the sibling who can seemingly do anything she sets her mind to. She’s a talented artist and speaks several languages, which unfortunately becomes a burden on this trip, since she’s the only one who speaks Italian, and her family leans on her constantly. At one point, she even says, “You know, there’s Google Translate,” which absolutely cracked me up.

Anna also seems to be the scapegoat for anything that goes wrong during every family gathering. Her sister is wound so tight she fixates on the smallest details, her brother-in-law barely cares about anything, her mother placates and ignores, and her father hides behind a book or newspaper—only stepping in when absolutely necessary. And don’t even get me started on her twin brother.

When the locals warn you not to open the door to the villa’s tower, you listen. You don’t start poking around in places you know nothing about just because you’re curious or because you feel entitled to every corner of a rental. That locked door exists for a reason. But once that boundary is crossed, the damage is done. The cat is out of the very obvious bag, and the strange happenings only escalate from there.

Of course, all these supernatural occurrences immediately get pinned on Anna, and my first thought was: Is her family actually stupid? How is she supposed to be in two places at once? I swear, if it rained, they’d find a way to blame Anna for that, too, which is exactly why her family frustrated me to no end.

There’s definitely more to this story, and for all its chaos, it turned out to be a solid read—an excellent bump-in-the-night kind of tale, perfect for any time of year..

Latest Approved ARC Titles! I haven’t requested any additional ARC titles, as I’m trying to catch up on my Kindle reads, which I now have about six, excluding any physical book purchases.

Great Book Sources 🍁 BookTrib ִ ࣪🍁 🍁 Good Reads ִ ࣪🍁 🍁 Book Riot ִ ࣪🍁 🍁 Literary Hub 🍁 🍁 Booktrovert 🍁 🍁 Fable 🍁

Next ARC Titles ➢➢➢➢➢➢➢

🚨 Upcoming Mystery, Thriller A BOX FULL OF DARKNESS Simone St. James [MYSTERY, THRILLER] (Release date, January 20, 2026) Siblings return to the house they fled eighteen years before, called back by the ghost of their long-missing brother and his haunting request to come home. Strange things happen in Fell, New York: A mysterious drowning at the town’s roadside motel. The unexplained death of a young girl whose body was left by the railroad tracks. For Violet, Vail, and Dodie Esmie, the final straw was their little brother’s shocking disappearance, which started as a normal game of hide-and-seek.

📖 My Current Read MAN, FUCK THIS HOUSE Brian Asman HORROR, PARANORMAL, HUMOR Sabrina Haskins and her family have just moved into their dream home, a gorgeous Craftsman in the rapidly-growing Southwestern city of Jackson Hill. Sabrina’s a bored and disillusioned home-maker, Hal a reverse mortgage salesman with a penchant for ill-timed sports analogies. Their two children, Damien and Michaela, are bright and precocious. At first glance, the house is perfect. But things aren’t what they seem.☕ 🍵 📖 hdey

🎧Wish List📚 Titles not listed on my  2026 Good Reads Challenge. He Calls By Night, S.D.W. Hamilton The Weight of the Satchel: Control Ends Where Fear Begins, James Badman Teenage Girls Can Be Demons, Hailey Piper The Merge, Grace Walker A Resistance of Witches, Morgan Ryan

DECEMBER READING CHALLENGE☕ “Read a Christmas murder mystery.”

📖 Completed November Titles! Diavola, Jennifer Marie Thorne Incidents Around The House, Josh Malerman This Delicious Death, Kayla Cottingham

Well, friends, that’s it for today. Don’t forget to check my “Book Tracker” for more updates.  Thank you so much for stopping by today. Please consider subscribing or following along.  — Duces.✌🏽 —