What I Read // October 2021

October is one of my favorite months for reading. Just like with the shows and movies I watch, October is all about everything spooky.

Yours Cruelly, Elvira by Cassandra Peterson • ★★★★☆

I kicked off this month with the perfect spooky season read. In Yours Cruelly, Elvira, the Mistress of the Dark shares the twisted path she took from a tiny Kansas town to the stages of Las Vegas to turning into everyone’s favorite goth bimbo (I say this with extreme affection).

This was, in my opinion, the perfect celebrity memoir. Peterson told her story with a great sense of humor and let readers in on all the celeb details, like the time Elvis gave her career advice, how she met Robert DeNiro and when Brad Pitt came knocking at her door. And while she didn’t skimp on exciting stories or jaw-dropping anecdotes, it was also really sweet to hear about how she fell for her current partner and came out later in life.

If you’re a Halloween fiend like myself, please pick this up. It was an exceptionally fun listen.

Truly Like Lightning by David Duchovny • ★★★★☆

At 445 pages, Truly Like Lightning took me a bit to finish, but it was one hell of a ride.

I started describing this book to my husband after 50 pages and it sounded wild then: A Hollywood stuntman inherits hundreds of acres of land outside Joshua Tree. The condition of him accepting the land is that he has to convert to Mormonism. Well, he does and he does it with some extreme and unusual conviction—even starting a small commune there with his wives and children.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. As you can imagine, if that’s the prologue, the rest has to be pretty wild.

The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling • ★★★☆☆

Spooky season is my favorite season, but this year I knew I needed a few lighter reads to keep my mind right. And The Ex Hex was the perfect book. A cute little rom-com about witches? Yes, please.

This was the literary equivalent of a caramel apple: perfectly seasonal and sweet.

The Mad Women’s Ball by Victoria Mas • ★★★★☆

I am, unsurprisingly, a huge fan of Jezebel’s annual scary story contest. Several years ago, there was a story about an asylum in the South hosting a dance for its patients. It’s obviously stuck with me, so when I saw The Mad Women’s Ball come up as a recommended read, I was in. I know it’s not the same story, but a similar, ultra-specific theme.

This book wasn’t quite what I was expecting but it was a satisfying read that packed a lot in just 224 pages.

The Keepers of Metsan Valo by Wendy Webb • ★★☆☆☆

I’ve read every book by Wendy Webb. She’s been dubbed “the queen of Northern gothic” which is maybe the ideal genre for me.

And I’ll give Wendy this: Her story ideas are always intriguing, the settings picturesque and the setups interesting. However, I do feel like in her books, including The Keepers of Metsan Valo, she stumbles when it comes to realistic dialogue. It’s as if she’d rather try to be funny or quirky than realistic. After a half dozen of her books, that’s sort of getting to me. Those bits of silly chatter take you out of the ghoulish feel. I’d like to get into the spooky feeling and stay there.