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Wrap Up: September 2024

Hello my sundrops, happy end of September! As you know with the end of the month comes monthly wrap up time, get comfy and cozy and let’s chat about September!

Overall, I think September was a really good reading month! It felt nice to have a good month after August, which felt so stilled (even with all the great reads that I had). September had more varied ratings, but I felt like I got back into the swing of things this month! I had some really fantastic reads, as you can see with the 4-5 star reads, and then a…very horrible read, and some generally solid reads!

Books read this month:

  • The Spare Room by Andrea Bartz (3 stars)
  • Late Bloomer by Mazey Eddings (4 stars)
  • Savor It by Tarah DeWitt (4.5 stars)
  • Triple Sec by T.J. Alexander (3 stars)
  • The Skeleton Key by Erin Kelly (4 stars)
  • The Examiner by Janice Hallett (4.5 stars, ARC)
  • The Dark We Know by Wen-yi Lee (5 stars)
  • Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter (4 stars)
  • A Good Girls’ Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson (reread, 5 stars, annotation)
  • Lady Macbeth by Ava Reid (1 star)
  • The Pumpkin Spice Café by Laurie Gilmore (3 stars)
  • The Main Character by Jaclyn Goldis (3 stars)
  • Queen Macbeth by Val McDermid (3 stars)
  • The Cinnamon Bun Bookstore by Laurie Gilmore (3.5 stars)

Blog posts and vlogs I loved this month:

  • I grew up watching Unsolved Mysteries, so I’ve been obsessed with mysteries and the paranormal since I was a child. I’ve heard of paranormal Youtube before, but it wasn’t until this month that I started watching Amy’s Crypt on YouTube and honestly, I’m obsessed. I watched four videos in one night and really haven’t stopped since. It’s also perfect timing considering we’re about to enter the Halloween season! 
  • I’ve got an ARC of Emma Lord’s newest YA release The Rival waiting on my Fire Tablet and Helena’s review made me even more excited to read it, and I’ll just have to make time for it this October with all my Halloween themed reads. 

My posts this month:

With the end of the 3rd quarter of 2024, it’s time for me to share my stats for July, August and September! You may notice that the color scheme is different from when I last shared stats in June. Well, this month when I went to update my reading tracker, I don’t know what happened but it completely messed up my spreadsheet (ironic that it happened while I was updating with my worst book of the month), so I had to completely redo the ENTIRE spreadsheet and I ended up changing the colors, so that’s why it looks different! Anyway, onto the stats. As always, we’ll start with books read

As you can see, in July I read 17 books, a mere 8 in August, and 14 in September, which leads to a total of 39 books in the 3rd quarter, which is less than I had hoped for, but obviously great numbers and I do think the overall quality of the books I read in this quarter (with the exception of a few) was really solid. I had no DNFs during this quarter which is great!

I always say that you can tell which months were busiest based on the number of pages read vs. hours listened. As the third quarter included a full month of summer camps and August was filled with work and traveling leading to me reading fewer books, the numbers kind of speak for themselves. In July I read 2,823 pages and listened to 30.23 hours of audiobooks. Page count wise, my August numbers were not too different from July’s at 2,443 and only 6.1 hours listened — which makes sense considering I only read 8 books in August. For September, I read a total of 2,881 pages and listened to 20.7 hours on audio.

As per usual, I read mostly novels this quarter, but I did read 2 novellas and one musical script. Unlike last quarter, the majority of my reads were done via ebook and audiobook (both at 14) with physical reads at 11. Because I read fewer books physically, I read less of my physical TBR in the 3rd quarter of the year with 10/39 of my reads being books I already owned/had purchased for myself. 18/39 reads were either from the library or everand, with 9/39 reads being ARCs and then 2/39 reads from Kindle Unlimited

I’ve been reading a lot of romance lately and you can really see that in the breakdown of genres read. I read 14 romance novels, which was 6 more than my second most read genre of the quarter, horror, followed by mystery, thriller and historical fiction, contemporary and fantasy. Aside from historical fiction, I do think this is pretty regular for me; my most read genres every year tend to be mystery/thriller, romance and horror.

I did have a few rereads this quarter with 7/39 being rereads. I did a few annotations this quarter, which is where 3 of the rereads come from. I reread the Bonnie & Clyde musical script while I watched the proshot in July, and then I reread 4 of Emily Henry’s books. 

Y’all know I’m more of a standalone reader, but I did start some new series. Namely The Lady Janies by Cynthia Band, Brodi Ashton and Jodi Meadows, Sworn Soldier by T. Kingfisher and Dream Harbor by Laurie Gilmore, all of which I plan on continuing.

And lastly, star ratings! In general, I think that 2024 has been a good year for ratings! The majority of my reads have been around 3.5-5 stars, which is really great! This quarter you can see I had mostly 4 star reads with 15/39 of the books coming in at 4 stars. 12/39 reads at 3 stars, 9/39 at 5 stars (7 of these were rereads), 2/39 books coming in at 1 star (yikes) and 1/39 coming in at 2 stars. 

You can also see the breakdown of .5 stars which doesn’t really change anything dramatically, but it is nice to see how many were on the high or low end of their star rating.

I got to see Beetlejuice Beetlejuice this month and I loved it! I thought it was so fun and a really fun sequel — I loved that they had so much of the original cast, I loved the new characters and it was just a super fun time and definitely one that I’ll rewatch. I got some GORGEOUS hydrangeas at the farmer’s market, and while they didn’t last long (I think the heat got to them because we, once again, had a crazy heatwave that weekend), they brought me a lot of joy and they were gigantic, so I was happy to have them.

This month I went to Allison Saft’s book event and signing for A Dark and Drowning Tide on release day, which was really special. I loved getting to listen to Allison talk about A Dark and Drowning Tide, her writing process, where she pulls inspiration from, as well as learning a bit more about the behind the scenes of being an author/the publishing industry. It was a great night and she was so lovely to meet.

Yesterday I went apple picking with my sister and brother in law, and we had a lot of fun! The ranch that we went to had a lot of varieties of apples, though they were a lot smaller than I had hoped they would be, but that doesn’t matter, they’ll taste good in desserts no matter what! We also tried the pie that they serve at the ranch — I got a slice of their very berry pie fresh from the oven and it was delicious, then we went to lunch at a pizza restaurant nearby and I had a really great pizza. 

I’ve quite literally been obsessed with watching Paranormal YouTube and end up watching multiple videos every day. What can I say? I love ghosts and ghost stories. That’s the majority of what I’ve been watching this month. I’m slowly continuing my One Tree Hill rewatch. I’ve started my Nancy Drew rewatch and we’ve got a new season of The Great British Baking Show that started on Friday,, but it’s been a big Paranormal YouTube month for me. 

A meal I’ve been really obsessed with lately is homemade burrito bowls! I’m trying to spend less money on ordering food when it’s not absolutely necessary, and this has been one of my go-to dinner meals. I get everything from Trader Joe’s and I love to make it with spanish rice, black beans and fajita chicken, then I add fresh jalapenos, hot salsa, sour cream, cheese and lettuce and it’s a delicious and filling meal, so I’ll definitely continue to be making these! My sister has also been making this tomato, mozzarella and basil salad with a homemade dressing that is so good, we’re pretty obsessed with it. I’m not really a great cook, but there are some things that I can do pretty well once I get the hang of them and I’m hoping to start learning some new dishes this fall!

Once again this month I’ve really only been listening to Niall Horan and Sabrina Carpenter. If you want to see what variation of their songs were in my top 10 most played songs this month, you can here. I swear, I listen to other artists, but at the moment they’re the two I’m listening to most consistently.

I started playing Animal Crossing again, which has been so much fun and really relaxing! I completely restarted my island, so I’m still getting most things set up, but it’s going by pretty quickly since I already know what to do. I really did forget how much I enjoy playing Animal Crossing and how chill it is, so if anyone has any other fun, chill and cozy Switch game recommendations drop them below!

And that’s it! September felt a little slow in comparison to the hectic months of June, July and August, but I’m not at all mad about that! It was nice to have some time to relax and (mostly) recharge.

What was your September like? What did you read? Did you do anything fun? Let me know in the comments below!

Until next time 💜

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