Orilium Overview

As we are approaching the month’s end, I thought I’d do an overview of what I’ve read for the Orilium Magical Readathon. I did pretty well when it came to the number of books this month. I read thirteen total for the month, six of which went to the readathon. I started out with What Asexuality Reveals about Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex. It was a fascinating social science piece which I reviewed here.

I then read Golden Girl by Reem Faruqi. It was a middle-grade book focusing a young woman who suffers from kleptomania and tries to calm her anxiety about her father doing criminal activity and having to be out of the country. She starts out stealing and feeling guilty about it, but it eventually reaches a breaking point when she tries to steal something valuable thinking she’s helping her family.

Next I read the Makers Club, which dealt also dealt with South Asian and other POC characters starting a STEM based club in their school. I think it was more trying to be informative about STEM than it really was focusing on the book. But it was still fairly engaging.

Next I read The Sea Witch by Katee Robert. I’ve read multiple books of hers before. But I think this one is a favorites along with Wicked Beauty. I’ve liked the whole Wicked Villains series so far, except for the Jasmine and Jafar one because I personally don’t like the dynamic.

The next book I read was the Baker and Bard, it was a cute queer story about two characters adventuring in a forest for magical mushrooms. It was by far the cutest thing I’ve read this month.

I also read several graphic novels including Knots, We are Big Time, and the first volume of the Apothecary Diaries. I’ve really enjoyed the show for Apothecary Diaries so far and I like the manga a lot.

My other graphic novel of note was Lunar Boy which was another exciting LGBTQ story again dealing with South Asian characters this time Indonesian native mythology and beliefs regarding queer people. The longest book I read for this months readathon was Belladonna by Adalyn Grace. Normally I don’t think I would have read it, it was kind of slow to pick up in the beginning but once it got there I really liked it. It was a murder mystery/romance. I know that is a weird combo. But it was basically a young woman who can see Death falling in love with him and trying to solve a murder in her new family home.

Finally I read Evocation by S.T. Gibson. It was a mystery book about sorcerers fighting the devil for a man’s soul. And it left me on the edge of my seat. I was reading it for the Guild book club for Orilium for the Order of the Crescent. I think I had a pretty successful Orilium month. I only have to finish up a few short books and I should be able to get those by the end of the month.

Stay tuned for my October Plan Out this coming week.