I have been a bit out of the loop when it comes to readathons lately, mainly because I was either participating in a group challenge on Goodreads or because I was in a bit of a slump. I love readathons though since I find it fun to pick out a specific book that matches whatever prompts are given.
I almost didn't catch that this readathon was happening until I saw that booktubers were taking part in it and I panicked a bit. That readathon would be Summerween, which is a horror-based readathon hosted by booktubers gabbyreads and oliviareadsalatte. Last year was the first year they hosted this readathon and I did end up participating in it (you can go here to check out what I read last time). I didn't want to miss this because Gabby is pretty much the reason why I started to pick up horror/thriller books.
The readathon this year takes place July 2nd-9th. If you also want to participate, check out Gabby's announcement video below to see if this is the readathon for you!
Without further ado, here are all the books I am planning on reading for Summerween!
READ A BOOK IN THE DARK
We are going to go with a short book for this one. I've never been motivated to pick up any of Gillian Flynn's books, but I decided to try The Grownup upon Emily Fox's recommendation.
Unfortunately, this didn't really give me much. It is more of a long short story and you can really tell by the way the story ends. I can't blame my disinterest in this on the length, however, as I have read short stories far shorter than this that packed way more of a punch. I think it has more to do with the way the story started which was a bit odd. Reading this in the dark didn't even make this any more scary.
READ A PARANORMAL BOOK + READ A HORROR BOOK
I hate a love/hate relationship with paranormal horror. I love a good paranormal book, but I hate it when horror books are marketed as paranormal horror, only for it to be revealed in the end that it was a human all along. I talked about this in a post about tropes I hate or love, the Scooby-Doo is a no-no for me. But, for this challenge, I am going to give The Nesting a shot.
It was recommended by Gabby as a book that has similar vibes to Bly Manor which sounded promising. Unfortunately, I ended up DNFing this pretty early on even if the story could have been interesting. It gave me The Turn of the Key vibes right away, and I just didn't think I was going to vibe with an unreliable narrator. While it sucks that I just threw two prompts down the drain, I would rather move on to another book.
READ A BOOK WITH A BLACK AND/OR ORANGE COVER + BAKE OR MAKE A DRINK WITH YOUR SPOOKY READ
I am probably cheating a bit here, but The Dead House is mostly (kind of) black so I am going to say it counts. This is another paranormal horror book (I'm on a roll here). Unfortunately, any horror in this was very minimal. This felt more like a drama with some horror elements. Nothing of interest really happened in this either which was disappointing. The best thing about this entire experience was the lovely hot chocolate I made to fulfill the second prompt.
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