Earl Grey Books

It’s almost Halloween, which means it’s the perfect time to be doing the Halloween Creatures Tag today! This tag was originally created by Keep Reading Forward, and I was tagged by Sylwia, who is one of my favourite booktubers (and now blogger) so you should absolutely be heading to Wish Fulfillment right now. But without further ado, onto the tag!

Witches: A book or character that is magical

Right now I’m reading Blood and Honey by Shelby Mahurin so this feels like the perfect one to mention for this question. This is the sequel to Serpent and Dove which follows a witch and a witchhunter into an arranged marriage. Blood & Honey is, of course, following on from that. I’m not very far into it yet, about 80 pages or so. But I was gifted this for my birthday from Angel and I was so beyond excited to finally have it in my hands.

Mummies: A book or character you can’t wrap your mind around

There are a couple of books I could’ve gone for with this one, but I think I’m going to say The Witcher series by Andrzej Sapkowski. I know a lot of people love this series and everything that comes along with it, but I couldn’t get into any of it, not even the show. It’s just not the sort of fantasy I enjoy reading!

Vampires: A book, series, or author you can’t live without

Could I live without Agatha Christie? In theory, yes—I made it 15 years without having read any of her books and I was just fine. Having read over 20 of them now, could I just completely stop reading them and be okay? Less so. Here’s the thing: I grow out of authors really quickly, my reading tastes are constantly changing and developing, but I have put countless hours into Christie’s books. I’ve spent probably hundreds of dollars on them. I can’t just stop reading them and leave Poirot off halfway through the books if there was even the slightest chance that I could, you know, just read them.

Werewolves: A book best read in the middle of the night

When you have as much trouble sleeping as I do, this is basically every book. But I do have to highly recommend the books of Evie Dunmore for the sole reason that I’ve read Bringing Down the Duke twice, both times in the middle of the night.

Zombies: A book you picked up for the 2nd time or continued after DNFing it

Ha, okay. Yeah, I don’t do this. If I’ve DNFed a book, that’s it, I don’t pick it up again. If we’re talking more books I put down because of time restraints or being busy or whatever, I have been working on Becoming by Michelle Obama for a number of months now.

Ghosts: A character you saw right through, or a book you easily predicted a twist or the ending of

I am so bad at these questions—I can’t think of anything I did this with. Again, if we look at the flip side, I have so many books I never saw the twist or ending of, most recently Allegedly by Tiffany D. Jackson. Yes…I just wanted another reason to bring it up.

Frankenstein: A book that truly shocked you

I couldn’t not mention The Binding by Bridget Collins for this one. I picked this up when it came out in January last year on a complete whim. It’s a beautiful book—the spine looks like an old book and it’s just gorgeous. All that aside, I didn’t know anything about the story and I ended up absolutely loving it. I forced two of my friends to read it and have bought it for numerous others since. It’s one of my all-time favourite books and it still surprises me that I ended up loving it so much. Bridget Collins also has a new book coming out next month, so get ready to hear me squeal about her all over again.

Skeletons: A book or character that either chilled you to the bone or got your funny bone

I still think about The Fourth Monkey by J.D Barker sometimes and get freaked out. It was one of those books that just well and truly got into my head and started to mess with me. There’s one particular scene that I think will stay with me forever.

Goblins: A greedy character or a character that loves gold and jewellery

The only character that comes to mind right now is St Vincent from the Wallflowers series by Lisa Kleypas. I think he’s quite greedy and selfish (and just an all-around dickhead) for a while there until he comes good, or as good as he can be.

Devil: A dark, evil character

I don’t want to spoil anything, but there are some characters in Devil’s Bride by Stephanie Laurens who are just plain cruel. Sorry, not sorry.

Grim Reaper: A character you loved or hated that died

This is so hard to do without spoiling anything! You know what? Rebecca from…Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. I think she was the absolute worst—people rarely talk about her but I really, really disliked her. Also not a spoiler because her death is the entire premise of the book. That’s the only way I can think to work around this one.

Scarecrows: A book or character that scares you

I know this is a kid’s book, but I low-key used to have nightmares about Charlotte. Here’s the thing: a lot of my family were terrified of spiders, because you know, we live in Australia and why wouldn’t we be? But as a kid, I learnt that pretty quickly. So while this was a book I loved as a child and read many, many times, I used to have nightmares about talking spiders at night for ages. Maybe it had something to do with all the other instances of talking or just plain creepy spiders in other books I was reading about this time, but hey, there it is.

Has anyone worked out by now that I never know who to tag in these things other than Angel? So guess what? I’m just tagging Angel again. I’d love to hear down below if you’re happy to be tagged in things!