October 2025 Reading Wrap-Up
I read 6 books and got 5 Goodreads challenge achievements this month!
Now lets look at the breakdown :)
StoryGraph Reading Challenge Progress: 20/20
Goodreads Fall Challenge Progress: 8/12
Top Genre read as at October 2025: Fantasy
My first read for October and Book #36 was How To Beat Anyone At Chess by Ethan Moore. Rating: 2/5
I would like to reiterate that I know very little about Chess. This book taught me 3 things: Chess notation, Castling and that most chess players are just swotting. I'll try out some of the moves on my board just so I understand the notation bits better so let it not be said I learnt nothing from this.
Book #37 was Immortal Dark by Tigest Girma. Rating: 3/5
*side-eyes booktok* This is one of those books that would be better off as a show, I think. I also feel a MMC POV might have been helpful to the romance portions and also get us more insight on the vampire aspects. Either that or the sister's POV would have been nice. I don't know if I care enough about the characters to read the second book but that might change if the price is right.
Immortal Dark helped me earn the Community Picks achievement in the Goodreads Fall Challenge!
Book #38 was Solito by Javier Zamora. Rating: 4.5/5
Bless Javier wherever he is because this was a read. The chapters were long but I didn't mind because there were chapter breaks and they were sectioned for every step in his journey. I don't think I ever thought about what people when through trying to illegally enter la USA and this story really opened my eyes to what they've gone through. I really wish I knew what happened to the other characters in the story but neither does the author so I just gotta suck it up lol.
Solito helped me earn the Hispanic Heritage & Memorable Memoirs achievements in the Goodreads Fall Challenge.
Book #39 was Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. Rating: 4/5
I really appreciate when an author tells us a story about slavery and doesn't need to black suffrage the reader to death to get the story told. I liked the two timelines approach a lot and that it gives us a bit of what happened on the Gold Coast when slavery became illegal.
Homegoing helped me achieve the Fiction Faves achievement in the Goodreads Fall Challenge.
Book #40 was The Drowned Life. Rating: 1.5/5
This book was a wild card pick that I didn't need to pickup because I definitely had The Bewitching on standby as my spooky read but no, I deviated. I wanted something horror from my existing Library to help me through those unending hours of a 24-hour readathon, this was too "new weird" to get the job done. I liked maybe 20% of the stories in this collection, I found most of them too confusing to be engaging.
Book #41 was Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree. Rating: 4/5
Love when a book does exactly what it says on the tin. Very lovable characters, the story is very low stakes. I wanted, just a little bit, to see the bad guys and assholes get their ass beat but Travis said it's not that kind of story. As for the queer rep? Yea I guess technically.
Legends & Lattes helped me earn the Heart-Warmers achievement in the Goodreads Fall Challenge
My eyes did a lot of work this month!
Happy reading & see you next month!