We are just weeks away from one of my favorite reading challenges, Winterween! Winterween is a yearly readathon hosted by GabbyReads and is a way to bring the Halloween vibes to the winter months! This year, Winterween is from January 9th – 15th and you know I’ve been planning my tbr since Gabby announced the readathon.
Grab your favorite beverage, get cozy, maybe turn on a Halloween playlist or film, and let’s talk about my Winterween tbr!
As always, there are 5 prompts for Winterween this year.
- read a book in the dark or at night
- read a horror or thriller book
- read a book with red on the cover (or blood)
- read a book with vampires (or werewolves, witches, etc)
- read a 2025 release you never got around to
I know that I say this every time, but I really do love that the prompts for the “ween” readathons are always pretty general and accessible. It definitely makes it easy to figure out your tbr! This year, for Winterween, I will be reading books only from my physical tbr (okay, one of them is my sister’s but I do have the physical copy from her!).
For the prompt read a book in the dark or at night, I’ll be focusing on I’ll Be Waiting by Kelley Armstrong. I’ve had this book on my tbr since it came out in 2024 and I’m glad that I’ll finally be getting around to it.
Nicola Laughton never expected to see adulthood, being diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis as a child. Then medical advances let her live into her thirties and she met Anton, who taught her to dream of a future… together. Months after they married, Anton died in a horrible car, but lived long enough to utter five words to her, “I’ll be waiting for you.”
That final private moment became public when someone from the crash scene took it to the press—the terminally ill woman holding her dying husband as he promised to wait for her on the other side. Worse, that person claimed it wasn’t Anton who said the words but his ghost, hovering over his body.
Since their story went public, Nicola has been hounded by spiritualists promising closure. In the hopes of stopping her downward spiral, friends and family find a reputable medium—a professor of parapsychology. For the séance, they rent the Lake Erie beach house that Anton’s family once owned.
The medium barely has time to begin his work before things start happening. Locked doors mysteriously open. Clouds of insects engulf the house. Nicola hears footsteps and voices and the creak of an old dumbwaiter…in an empty shaft. Throughout it all she’s haunted by nightmares of her past. Because, unbeknownst to the others, this isn’t her first time contacting the dead. And Nicola isn’t her real name.
That’s when she finds the first body….
I love books that include mediums and séances and to me, reading them in the dark is the best way to consume them. Everything about the summary for this book sounds really interesting to me, especially the descriptions of the way the house changes once the séance has occurred and the fact that our main character has contacted the dead before and then she finds a body. I’m really excited for this one, and I hope I love it as much as I think I will.
I always love the read a horror or thriller book prompt, because those are two of my favorite genres, so I always have a lot of options for this one. If you’ve been in the book community for a while, you’ll have heard of Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova many times; it’s been all over my feed since it’s 2023 release and I’ve heard nothing but incredible things about it from many of my favorite book reviewers.
Grieving mother Magos cuts out a piece of her deceased eleven-year-old son Santiago’s lung. Acting on fierce maternal instinct and the dubious logic of an old folktale, she nurtures the lung until it gains sentience, growing into the carnivorous little Monstrilio she keeps hidden within the walls of her family’s decaying Mexico City estate. Eventually, Monstrilio begins to resemble the Santiago he once was, but his innate impulses—though curbed by his biological and chosen family’s communal care—threaten to destroy this fragile second chance at life.
A thought-provoking meditation on grief, acceptance, and the monstrous sides of love and loyalty, Gerardo Sámano Córdova blends bold imagination and evocative prose with deep emotional rigor. Told in four acts that span the globe from Brooklyn to Berlin, Monstrilio offers, with uncanny clarity, a cathartic and precise portrait of being human.
To be fully transparent, this one intimidates me a little bit, and I think that’s why I still haven’t read it yet. I think the premise sounds amazing and absolutely heartbreaking, but I’ve been putting it off for a while though I’m not completely sure why. I do think that this will be a really emotional read, so I’ll be sure to have some tissues on hand!
The third prompt for Winterween is to read a book with red on the cover (or blood). I love this theme since the design that Gabby’s sister Rachel (remarkablyrach) drew for this year features this adorable little vampire ghostie as the theme for this Winterween is Blood Bath. For this prompt, I’ll be reading Hazelthorn by C.G. Drews.
Evander has lived like a ghost in the forgotten corners of the Hazelthorn estate ever since he was taken in by his reclusive billionaire guardian, Byron Lennox-Hall, when he was a child. For his safety, Evander has been given three ironclad rules to follow:
He can never leave the estate. He can never go into the gardens. And most importantly, he can never again be left alone with Byron’s charming, underachieving grandson, Laurie.
That last rule has been in place ever since Laurie tried to kill Evander seven years ago, and yet somehow Evander is still obsessed with him.
When Byron suddenly dies, Evander inherits Hazelthorn’s immense gothic mansion and acres of sprawling grounds, along with the entirety of the Lennox-Hall family’s vast wealth. But Evander’s sure his guardian was murdered, and Laurie may be the only one who can help him find the killer before they come for Evander next.
Perhaps even more concerning is how the overgrown garden is refusing to stay behind its walls, slipping its vines and spores deeper into the house with each passing day. As the family’s dark secrets unravel alongside the growing horror of their terribly alive, bloodthirsty garden, Evander needs to find out what he’s really inheriting before the garden demands to be fed once more.
I haven’t actually read a C.G. Drews book yet — though I am hoping to read Don’t Let the Forest In this month — but once I heard about Hazelthorn I knew I had to pick it up. Anything that includes estates surrounded by gardens/woods sets the expectation for impeccable vibes, so I hope that Hazelthorne delivers on that. There’s a gothic mansion, murder, family secrets, I mean what more could I ask for?
I won’t lie, I’m not the biggest fan of vampire books, I tend to prefer vampire stories in the tv/film media, so I was happy to see that this theme included a few other options. Our fourth prompt for Winterween is to read a book with vampires (or werewolves, witches, etc) and I went with witches because of course I did. For this one I decided that I’ll be reading The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst.
iela has always had trouble dealing with people. Thankfully, as a librarian at the Great Library of Alyssium, she and her assistant, Caz—a magically sentient spider plant—have spent the last decade sequestered among the empire’s most precious spellbooks, preserving their magic for the city’s elite.
When a revolution begins and the library goes up in flames, she and Caz flee with all the spellbooks they can carry and head to a remote island Kiela never thought she’d see again: her childhood home. Taking refuge there, Kiela discovers, much to her dismay, a nosy—and very handsome—neighbor who can’t take a hint and keeps showing up day after day to make sure she’s fed and to help fix up her new home.
In need of income, Kiela identifies something that even the bakery in town doesn’t have: jam. With the help of an old recipe book her parents left her and a bit of illegal magic, her cottage garden is soon covered in ripe berries.
But magic can do more than make life a little sweeter, so Kiela risks the consequences of using unsanctioned spells and opens the island’s first-ever and much needed secret spellshop.
Like a Hallmark rom-com full of mythical creatures and fueled by cinnamon rolls and magic, The Spellshop will heal your heart and feed your soul.
I’ve heard a lot of people say great things about this book, and I have wanted to try more cozy fantasy, so I felt like this would be a great choice for this prompt. Also, how could I not want to read a book with a magically sentient spider plant!??! I feel like this will be a nice cozy read for the winter, and I’m excited to read it!
The last prompt for this year is to read a 2025 release you never got around to, which is a fantastic prompt for me! Once I saw this prompt I knew right away that I’d be reading The Ghostwriter.
In June 1975 the Taylor family shatters in a single night when two teenage siblings are found dead in their home. The only surviving sibling, Vincent, never shakes the whispers and accusations that he was the one who killed them. Decades later, the legend only grows as his career as a horror writer skyrockets.
Ghostwriter Olivia Dumont has spent her entire professional life hiding the fact that she is the only child of Vincent Taylor. Now on the brink of financial ruin, she’s offered a job to ghostwrite her father’s last book. What she doesn’t know, though, is that this project is another one of his lies—because it’s not another horror novel he wants her to write.
I’m super intrigued by the premise of The Ghostwriter. I have so many questions. Obviously, who murdered Vincent’s siblings, but how does that affect him and lead to him becoming a horror writer? What was it like for Olivia, to grow up with a father who people think killed his siblings? If he’s a writer himself, why is Vincent having his daughter ghost write his story? The objectivity and lack thereof with your child ghostwriting, what sounds like will be the true story of what happened the night that his siblings died? SO MANY QUESTIONS! I can’t wait to read this one and find out the answer to all of these questions.
Look at me not overloading myself with a huge tbr and only picking 1 book per prompt! We call that growth! I’m really excited for this tbr because I’ve really picked books that I’m excited to read and I think it’s gonna set me up for the best success to not only complete all the prompts, but also to rate all of the books pretty highly. Is it January 9th yet?
Will you be participating in Winterween? If so, let me know what’s on your tbr and which book do you think you’re going to start with? I’m not sure which one I’ll read first, but maybe it’ll be The Ghostwriter…
Until next time 💜
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