📚On Reading in October 2025

Welcome to what my recent reading month looked like. October brought my second wave of audiobook titles for an award I’m a judge for and that always kills my personal reading so last month was a lot of started books and less finished titles. I did still finish a handful of books that I’m happy to put on your radar.

A Matter of Murder (A Lizzie & Darcy Mystery #2) by Tirzah Price

This was a perfect ending to a delightful duology –which technically I can say is a trilogy. Publishing, am I right? Okay, so I’ll start with the series details to know: the first book that introduced readers to Lizzie Bennet as an aspiring solicitor and Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy as a legal rival is Pride and Premeditation. It’s a very fun reimagining that adds murder and sleuthing to Jane Austen’s universe. The following two books in that series (Sense & Second-Degree Murder and Manslaughter Park) continue the Jane Austen universe with sleuthing and murder but do not follow Lizzie and Darcy. That’s where a spinoff from this series came in: In Want of a Suspect, which is marketed as the first in the duology that ends with Matter of Murder. I really hope I clarified that for readers rather than making it more head-scratchy!

Anyways, if you want a delightful Jane Austen universe that understands the time period and language but turns many things on its head with a murder plot and Lizzie fighting for her agency, working as a solicitor and sleuth, and falling in love with a lot of banter and head butting, this is a great series. Bonus for good audiobooks!

Oxford Soju Club by Jinwoo Park

This was a good blend of literary novel (focused on Korean identity) and spy thriller (plenty of action). Readers follow South Korean, Korean-American, and North Korean spies in past and present timelines after one spy’s mentor is killed.

Mystery James Digs Her Own Grave by Ally Russell

An actually spooky middle grade horror novel? Thank you! I love that this equally focuses on plot and character struggles, is set in a cemetery/funeral home, and really delivers scary and tense moments. Mystery James is a thirteen-year-old struggling with questions of who her mom was and why she was abandoned as a newborn in a cemetery when her Tía Lucy is accused of stealing jewelry off a deceased client. Along with two friends, Mystery must solve the mystery (heh.) in order to save her tía—but that will also open the door to plenty of danger!

Scarlet Morning by N.D. Stevenson

I am convinced that N.D. Stevenson must have grown up loving the same things I did because this feels like my childhood faves (from Pippi Longstocking to The Neverending Story) while being completely unique and new. It’s the first book in a duology (the sequel can’t come fast enough!) which follows two lonely children on a pirate ship adventure captained by Mrs. Snarky Pants (that is not her name at all but that’s her personality!). My absolute favorite thing about this book is how it allows children to engage with things that are gross, and weird, and scary, and eccentric and trusts them to navigate the information. It was those types of stories when I was a child that truly made me fall in love with reading and also—unbeknown to me at the time—develop critical thinking and learn to regulate my feelings. The printed book has lovely black and white illustrations throughout and the audiobook has the wonderful narrator, Ramón de Ocampo.

An Amateur Witch's Guide to Murder by K. Valentin

I needed something with brujas and this delivered in the most chaotic and fun way. I loved Mateo’s voice (funny with a lot of observational snark), that it’s dark (“accidental cannibalism”) but in a fun way, has found family + slowburn MM, and that Mateo, Topher, and Ophelia are not seasoned fighters of curses and demon possession which creates one disaster after another as they try their best to stay alive.

That’s all for now! Thanks for reading, and as always feel free to shout out anything you’ve been loving lately!