Amelia Hruby: 00:01

Hello, and welcome to Pleasure Reading. I'm your host, Amelia Ruby. And this is a podcast about the pleasure of reading, where I share curated reading lists, author rankings, chats with my bookish friends, and more. If you too take pleasure in reading, I hope that you will subscribe and share the show with a friend. Cheers to your next best book.

Amelia Hruby: 00:26

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to Pleasure Reading, a podcast all about the pleasure of reading, where I, your host, Amelia Froomey, curate recommended book lists on all sorts of themes ranging from books about girl boss influencers to series about romantic witches to today's topic, which is creature features for the girlies. So this is a list of spooky and not spooky books that feature fictional creatures of some kind. So we are talking dragons, mermaids, werewolves, vampires, minotaurs, shape shifters. Those are all going to come up in today's episode. Some of them for their spookier features and others as romantic interests, question mark.

Amelia Hruby: 01:21

We'll see where we get. I will say in advance that I have not included every single type of fictional creature here. There are no ghosts, there are no fairies, there are no witches, which could all be considered under a creature feature title, but I am leaving those to some other lists that I've been curating. So in this episode, we will get into the monstrous together in a variety of ways. The episode will be broken into 3 parts.

Amelia Hruby: 01:49

I'm gonna start with some spooky Rex for those of us who love a darker read around Halloween, then we will get into the not spooky Rex, and I will wrap us up with a little creature feature TBR of the 3 books featuring creatures that I hope to read next. As always, I hope you find 1 or many books that you're excited to read in this episode. And if you do, please consider purchasing them from the links in the show notes, which will take you to my bookshop. And if you make a purchase through that link, I will receive a small kickback as thanks for offering you the rec and creating this fun episode. All right.

Amelia Hruby: 02:28

All of that said, let's go ahead and dive into these creature features. We're kicking off the list with 6 spooky wrecks, and I'm going to begin with one that I read last year. And after I read it, my review was something like, okay, I thought this was a thriller, but it is obviously a horror book. So that review belongs to The Return by Rachel Harrison. In The Return, Julie went missing, nobody ever thought that she would come back until one day she did.

Amelia Hruby: 03:04

And so exactly 2 years to the day that she disappeared, she reappeared with no memory of where she had been or what had happened to her. And the setup for this novel is basically that 4 friends, Molly, May, Elise, and Julie, are reuniting at this remote hotel lodge inn sort of situation and trying to reconnect with Julie and support her as she comes back from this mysterious period of being gone. And when they see her, there's obviously something wrong with her. She physically appears to be in poor health, she's acting a little oddly, she's saying and doing some things that don't make sense, and throughout the book, her friends are kind of trying to figure out what's going on. I don't wanna say much more than that, and honestly, even including this in a creature feature list is maybe a little bit of a spoiler for you.

Amelia Hruby: 03:57

But I will leave my recap there and just invite you to go get this book if you like books about how friendship can be a little monstrous about the monsters inside of all of us and things of that nature. So that's The Return by Rachel Harrison. I would give this like 4 out of 5 on a spooky scale and 4 out of 5 creature features. I think that it's definitely got good spooky horror vibes. Although, as I said in my original review, like, the tension kind of ramps up like it's a thriller, and then all of a sudden you're oh, got it.

Amelia Hruby: 04:28

Horror, which I love. I love that sort of, like, shift in tone, but I was really into kind of how the monstrous appears in the book and what happened with that. So, again, that's The Return by Rachel Harrison. Up next on our spooky rec list is Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield. This book came out in summer 2023, and I saw it all over booktube and book reviews and websites last fall this year, and I knew that I really, really wanted to read it.

Amelia Hruby: 04:59

It has a very cool cover, especially when it got released in paperback. It's this sort of melting watery face image that I was really into and definitely brought in some creepy factor. The plot of the book goes something like this. Leah is this marine biologist and she left for this expedition months ago, but instead of it being a few days or weeks long, her submarine sank to the bottom of the sea. And when she finally gets home, she is totally changed in sort of a lot of weird ways.

Amelia Hruby: 05:33

Leah's wife, Miri, knows that something is obviously wrong. Like, she's like, you seem like a different person than the one who left me. You were gone for way longer than expected. You can't say anything about what happened while you were gone, and something is not right here. So this is a very short novel, in fact, and it operates in these sort of two timelines and point of view.

Amelia Hruby: 05:54

So we're going back and forth between Mary's point of view, figuring out Leah in the present day, like this Leah that's returned and is now in her apartment being super strange, and then flashing back to Leah's experience on the submarine and what's happening there. So we move between those points of view throughout the book and we see how this unfolds. I see this classified everywhere as a horror book. I think that it has spooky elements, which is why I've put it in my spooky list, but the writing really reads much more like contemporary literature, literary fiction vibes. It feels very elevated.

Amelia Hruby: 06:28

It's very poetic at times. And it also, in that sort of lit fit kind of way, really keeps this in the realm of these characters' point of view. We're not learning any lore. We're not seeing anything gory or creepy. We are kind of deep in the psyches of these 2 people and their experiences.

Amelia Hruby: 06:48

And I think that to me, that is both the strength of the book. And sometimes as a reader who loves horror, for me it was a little bit of a weakness because, like, if the characters, they didn't really know what's going on. So as a reader, we didn't always know what's going on and we didn't really learn what's going on maybe by the end. Maybe we learned some things. It depends on how you take the latter third of the book.

Amelia Hruby: 07:07

But overall, I really enjoyed Our Wies of the Sea by Julia Armfield. I personally would give it, like, 2 out of 5 for spooky. I think if you're a sensitive reader, it may feel higher, but for me, it was pretty low on the spooky scale. In terms of creature feature, we're gonna go with like 3 out of 5 creature features. There is definitely some weird creature y stuff here, but I also felt like the point of view stayed so human and didn't take us all the way into the creature esque ness of it.

Amelia Hruby: 07:39

So I love this book, but I don't know if I loved it as, like, the ideal creature feature as much as I loved it as, like, queer contemporary fiction. So if that's your vibe, highly recommend Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield. Okay. 3rd book on our spooky rex list is The Ancestor by Danielle Truzzoni. This book also came out in summer 2023, and I honestly have not really seen anybody talk about it, and I don't even know how it was recommended to me.

Amelia Hruby: 08:09

But after I read it, I was like, woah. This is wild. I need way more people to read this book. So if I could have a personal request, somebody listening to this, please read this book and reach out to me and tell me what you thought about it. Because the premise of this book is essentially, what if Princess Diaries was a horror story?

Amelia Hruby: 08:28

Like, that's kind of the vibe here and I was so into it and it went places I never expected it to go. So I'm gonna tell you the setup, but I am not gonna tell you anything about the creature feature aspect of this because you gotta read it to experience it. So here is the synopsis of the book. After a DNA test reveals that Alberta or Bert Monti is the sole heir of a wealthy noble family in the Italian Alps, she leaves New York to visit the family estate, Mont Bianco Castle, a centuries old compound isolated in the mountains. What appears to be a fairy tale inheritance, however, soon turns into a nightmare as Bert begins to uncover the dark legacy of her family, dot dot dot.

Amelia Hruby: 09:11

So this book is a spooky read. As I said, it's very Princess Diaries esque, but in a totally different direction than that fairy tale romance went. And I don't wanna give anything else away about the creatures in this, so I am going to rate it 3 out of 5 on the spooky scale. I didn't really find it scary in any way, but the setup is definitely kind of dark and twisty. And for me, it's gonna get 5 out of 5 on the creature feature scale for reasons I cannot tell you about.

Amelia Hruby: 09:46

So that's The Ancestor by Daniel Truzzoni. I hope that you get a copy and reach out to me and let me know what you think of it. The 4th book for our spooky rex in this episode is The Woods All Black by Lee Mandello. So this is a horror novella, and as it's described by the publishers, it's equal parts historical horror, trans romance, and blood soaked revenge, all set in 19 twenties Appalachia. So the main character here is named Leslie Bruin.

Amelia Hruby: 10:17

Leslie works for the Frontier Nursing Service, which is this service that goes out and vaccinates rural communities as well as provides training in midwifery and child birthing to try to, like, lower the rates of, like, women dying in childbirth or people dying in childbirth. And Leslie is trans, and these rural communities are often very religious and very judgmental. So when he goes there as a nurse, he's often facing all of these different types of not just social dynamics, but straight up, like, discrimination and bigotry. And so Leslie has entered this community called Spar Creek at the very beginning of the novel or is traveling to Spar Creek to vaccinate and provide this type of nursing support, and there is something, like, really ugly and dark happening in this community. You have to read the book to see how it unfolds and what happens from there, but let me tell you, the first 2 thirds of this book, I was like, okay, I don't really think this is spooky at all.

Amelia Hruby: 11:22

Like, maybe there's a monster in the woods sort of vibe, but this just seems like historical fiction. And then I got to the final third, and this book is graphic. This book is gruesome, this book has a lot of sex. This book, like, really went off the rails at the end. And it's such a short book, so you really can propel through it in an afternoon.

Amelia Hruby: 11:45

So if you are interested in any of those things, historical horror, trans romance, monsters, queer sex, any of that, that's up your alley and you want to read about it, highly recommend The Woods All Black by Lee Mandello. I would give this definitely a 4 out of 5 on the spooky scale. Could be a 5 out of 5 for some people. I think that it does get pretty gruesome toward the end, and if that really creeps you out, be careful with this read. And on the creature feature scale, I think it's a 4 out of 5 creature for me.

Amelia Hruby: 12:19

I feel like the creature isn't as explained or developed as I might like, and I just kinda wanted more. So definitely present, definitely a creature in this feature, but maybe not like my fave one of the series. So that is The Woods All Black by Lee Mandello, yet another one on this list that I highly recommend with some caveats around, you know, these different graphic depictions, as well as just some content warnings around if reading about transphobia and transphobic communities is not for you. I can understand why, and this may not be the right read for you at this time. Okay.

Amelia Hruby: 12:56

Moving on to our final two books in the spooky rex portion of this creature feature episode, the next book I'm recommending is Night's Edge by Liz Kerin. So Night's Edge is a vampire book. That's pretty obvious from the description, but it's somewhat of a unique vampire book or maybe even more in the realm of, like, a resident evil type of vampire because it's also a pandemic book. So in this book, we're introduced to Mia and her mom, Izzy. And Izzy is a single mom to Mia, and when Mia is, I think, 10 years old, Izzy is essentially turned into a vampire.

Amelia Hruby: 13:38

And the way this happens is that there is this virus called the seravirus, s a r a, which has been shortened from Saratov, which is the family of scientists that, I guess, created this in Russia. There's some, like, lore explaining that. And Izzy is one of the earlier people to be turned through the virus, so Mia and Izzy work together, mother daughter pair, to hide Izzy's condition. And, like, they have to travel to do that and move, and there are all these complications, and nobody can know that Izzy has the virus because she would be, like, locked away in one of these, what they call, recovery centers that, like, nobody ever comes back from. So this is really a book about a very tense, and I would say, abusive relationship between a mother and daughter and how they bond together to try to stay together even though Izzy has been infected and Mia has not.

Amelia Hruby: 14:34

That's the setup of the book, and we kind of learn that history through some dual timeline that's going on throughout the book. So it flashes back between 2010 when the turning was originally happening, and I think just about a decade later when we're seeing Mia and Izzy interact now that Mia is, like, 23 or something like that. And I really thought that this was well done. There were some pieces that could have been more explained or more explored for me, And I was definitely uncomfortable at times in the ways that the abuse manifested in this relationship. But I thought that the writing was really compelling.

Amelia Hruby: 15:12

I thought that the plot moved forward really fast, and I liked some of the side characters here as well. This is also another there's also another queer romance at the center of this book, and I'm realizing now that at least half of the spooky list features queer romance queer characters or queer relationships of some kind, so obviously something that's important to me in my horror reading and all reading. But I would say overall, if you're interested in vampires, if you're interested in viruses, if you're interested in thoughtful explorations of problematic relationships between mothers and daughters, this is a great horror read for you. I would give it 3 and a half out of 5 on the spooky scale. Like, as long as you're okay with the

Amelia Hruby: 15:56

spookiness of vampires and blood, you probably won't be

Amelia Hruby: 15:56

too creeped out by this book, but of vampires and blood, you probably won't be too creeped

Amelia Hruby: 16:00

out by this book, but I know that is just, like, creepy for some people. I was

Amelia Hruby: 16:01

never scared while reading it, although there were some tense times. I also think the sort of, like, relationship dynamic adds a layer of trauma to this book that leans into the horror of it. And on creature feature, it's probably like a 2 out of 5 for me. It's obviously a vampire book, but other than bringing in the lens of the serovirus, it doesn't do anything necessarily, like, unique for me in the realm of vampires. And I think there are some interesting conversations it brings up around, like, if these people have been infected with the virus, what rights should they retain?

Amelia Hruby: 16:38

So maybe I'm talking myself into like a 3 out of 5 creature feature rating for this one, But, overall, I think that the mother daughter relationship is the center of the novel, and the virus and vampireness of it is at the center of that. So that's all kind of wrapped up together. So that was Night's Edge by Liz Keirin. And that takes me to our final spooky rec for this episode, which is Night Bitch by Rachel Yoder. So another book with night in the title that's about mothering and relationships with mothers, which I did not intentionally put these next to each other, but that's how it goes.

Amelia Hruby: 17:16

I'm not going to talk too much about this book because I'm going to go into it more for an episode later in the year about books that have been turned into movies and TV shows in 2024. And this book is being turned into a movie starring Amy Adams that will be out in December 2024, which I'm very excited about. But let me at least read you the synopsis so that you have a sense of what Night Bitch is about. An ambitious mother puts her art career on hold to stay at home with her newborn son, but the experience does not match her imagination. 2 years later, she steps into the bathroom for a break from her toddler's demands only to discover a dense patch of hair on the back of her neck.

Amelia Hruby: 17:56

In the mirror, her canine suddenly looks sharper than she remembers. Her husband, who travels for work 5 days a week, casually dismisses her fears from the faraway hotel rooms. As the mother's symptoms intensify and her temptation to give into her new dog impulses peak, she struggles to keep her alter canine identity secret. Seeking a cure at the library, she discovers a mysterious academic tome, which becomes her bible, and meets a group of mommies involved in a multilevel marketing scheme who may also be more than what they seem. So this book is about parenting.

Amelia Hruby: 18:27

It's about being a mother. It's about the way that reshapes your identity, and it is also about shape shifting into a dog. That's the alter canine identity that they're talking about in the synopsis. As I read this book through the first half, I was kind of like, I don't know if I like this, but I really liked where it ended up for me. I thought that was really interesting.

Amelia Hruby: 18:49

I'll talk about it more once I do the episode about the movie, but for now I am going to give this one a 3 out of 5 on the spooky scale. I think that it might hit different if I were a mom and maybe a little spookier or more upsetting to me. In that case, so we're going to leave it solidly at 3 out of 5. And I would give it a 4 out of 5 creature features. I think that the transformation is so integral to this book and, like, really fascinating to read about, even if I wasn't necessarily super into, like, the creature dog itself.

Amelia Hruby: 19:24

So 4 out of 5 creature features for Night Bitch by Rachel Yoder, and stay tuned for a future episode where I will talk more about this book. That takes us into our list of not spooky rex. So in this episode of 13 creature features for the girlies, we had 6 spooky rex, and now I'm gonna do 4 not spooky rex, and then give you my final three next up TBR list. As you can probably tell so far, when I say creature features for the girlies, what I'm talking about is books that are not written from a white male perspective, which frankly is like the majority of horror, although that has been changing so much in the past few years and I love it. I also mean books that feature women or non binary folks as the main characters or the primary point of views.

Amelia Hruby: 20:17

And then as we've seen with many of these books, they take on themes about gender and they feature queer relationships. And all of that to me is what makes it for the girlies. And this list of not spooky recs, I have one book that's about friendship, 2 that are definitely romances, and then one that's like a really thoughtful reflection on trauma. So we'll start with that one first. The first book in our not spooky rec list is The Deep by Rivers Solomon with David Diggs, William Houston, and Jonathan Snipes.

Amelia Hruby: 20:50

On the surface of The Deep, this is a book about mermaids, but it is a book about so much more than that. So let me read you the synopsis so you have a better sense of what I mean by that. Yetu holds the memories for her people. Water dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave owners, who live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly, is forgotten by everyone save 1, the historian.

Amelia Hruby: 21:19

This demanding role has been bestowed on Yetu. Ye2 remembers for everyone, and the memories, painful and wonderful, traumatic and terrible and miraculous, are destroying her. And so she flees to the surface, escaping the memories, the expectations, and the responsibilities, and discovers a world her people left behind long ago. So in this novel, and this is also a very short one, maybe more of a novella, we meet Yetu, who is the historian for her people, and her people are mermaids of a kind, but their lineage is that they're the descendants of the pregnant African slave women who were thrown overboard by slavers crossing particularly the Atlantic Ocean. And so there's this exploration in the book of how the ocean saved them and how they survived, as well as how their history is so traumatic that it is not remembered by the entire community, it is remembered by these individual figures, the historians.

Amelia Hruby: 22:21

And then once a year, it seems the historian gathers everyone and shares the history with them so they can remember where they come from and hold that for a period of time, and then the historian takes it back. And this role, as the synopsis says, has been destroying Yetu. It's taking a toll on her body, on her mind. She feels like she's losing herself. And so 1 year when she goes to share the memories with the people, she runs away and doesn't take them all back.

Amelia Hruby: 22:51

And the book traces what happens, how she's grappling with the history, how she leaves it behind, and then perhaps how she comes back to it in a certain kind of way. So this is a book about trauma. It's a book about history and lineage. It's a book about forgetting and remembering. It's a book about slavery.

Amelia Hruby: 23:12

It's a book about blackness and white supremacy, and it's a book about community and care, and it's incredibly powerful and it's also a creature feature. Right? So I wanted to include it in this list because how I first found out about it was like on a list of mermaid books, but I think that it just brings so much deeper, as the title suggests, themes to it than that, and it felt really resonant and present. I will also say if you're a music fan, this book is based off of a song written by Clipping, and that was based off of work done by a group of activists. And so there's a reason that the book is co authored and all of that's explained in EndNote in the book as well.

Amelia Hruby: 23:58

So just like so many layers to this text on every single level, and I cannot recommend The Deep by Rivers Solomon highly enough. Up next in our not so spooky creature feature list, we are gonna leave the depths by far, and we are gonna go to a vampire werewolf romance, the opposite end of literature perhaps. And I'm gonna talk about and recommend Bride by Ali Hazelwood. So Ali Hazelwood is a contemporary romance writer. She typically writes books about scientists, like, in romances.

Amelia Hruby: 24:33

I talked about one of her audiobook features in my last episode. But in February 2024, she took a new path and put out a vampire werewolf romance. So in bride, we meet Misery Lark who is the only daughter of this powerful vampire, and she has been living anonymously among the humans. She's an outcast. She has been living away from the vampire community.

Amelia Hruby: 24:58

But at the start of this book, she's been called back because she has to be married off to the vampire's enemies, the werewolves, or weres as they're called in this book. So misery is now engaged to the were alpha, Lo Morland, and she has to move to live with the werewolves even though they have been the enemies of the vampires forever. So this is, like, a very unsafe position for her to be in. She feels surveilled the whole time. She feels like nobody there trusts her, even though she's, like, not really close with the vampires either because they also rejected her.

Amelia Hruby: 25:33

So throughout the book, we we come to understand why Misery has agreed to this marriage, what's at stake for her in all of this, and we see their romance as, like, a sexy good kind of time over the course of some other plot twists and and scandal and political machinations and violence that happens inside of the book. So that's Bride by Ali Hazelwood. If you are a very online person, this book also has some omegaverse vibes to it that you can know about in advance or Google if you have no idea what I was talking about, which is what I had to do. And then I was like, this is a world I don't typically live in. But I thought this was a fun read.

Amelia Hruby: 26:12

I think it's a great creature feature. So I'm not going to rate these on a spooky scale because all this part of the list is not spooky, but for me, this book definitely 5 out of 5 creature features. It's just got different fun creatures. We learn different things about who they are, how they are, how they work, and I really enjoyed it. Up next, I've got another vampire book for you, and actually another Rachel Harrison book for you.

Amelia Hruby: 26:34

Although when I made this list originally, I didn't realize that I had 2 of her books on there, but she's just put out a new book this year called So Thirsty, and this is a really fun vampire kind of time. So at the beginning of the book, we meet Sloan Parker and it's about to be her birthday and she is dreading it. She is not into her birthday, she's been not into her life lately, but her husband surprises her with this birthday weekend to getaway with her best friend, Naomi. So it's not her husband going on the getaway. He's like, go off, enjoy this weekend with your BFF who's been working in Europe and you haven't seen her forever, go have this great weekend together.

Amelia Hruby: 27:12

So Sloan and Naomi go off for the weekend and they meet some people in the town that they are visiting, and they're vampires. Not so surprised based on knowing this is a vampire book. I don't wanna give away too much more from there, but this basically eventually becomes this really funny, bloody vampire road trip sort of thing, and I really enjoyed it. I did not think this book was spooky at all. I thought it was kind of funny, I thought it was enjoyable, and I thought it was like a rollicking good time.

Amelia Hruby: 27:50

Of course, if vampires or blood or violence are no goes for you, I would not read this. You will find it kind of spooky. But if you're interested in those things, it felt more like a satirical slasher to me at times than it did like a scary book at all. So I'm gonna give this one 4 out of 5 creature features because the creature characters are fun and funny, and really at the heart of this book, we have this friendship between Sloane and Naomi. And I thought that the book did a really good job of showing what happens when we stay friends with our high school friends, but now we're like in our thirties and we're kind of different.

Amelia Hruby: 28:27

And some of the dynamics that have been seated in our friendships since the beginning no longer serve us, and we have to actually deal with that. Like, what if you had to deal with that on top of becoming vampires? So just, you know, have that question in mind. And if you wanna answer it, read so thirsty by Rachel Harrison. And last but not least in our not so spooky creature features list, we have punt on dark waters by Katee Robert.

Amelia Hruby: 28:52

So Katee Robert is best known for her series Neon Gods, which is a smutty, steamy romance series with Greek gods in it, essentially, like pairs up different Greek gods for these different endeavors and pleasures together, let's say. But now she started a new series, and this is a spicy fantasy romance that includes just, like, way more sorts of creatures. So I was first introduced to this book because I actually read, like, a quick blurb about the sequel to it, which is about a vampire selkie romance. And I really love selkies and was like, how on earth is that gonna happen? And was like, I wanna read that book, but it's the 2nd book in a series, so I should probably go read the first book first.

Amelia Hruby: 29:34

So so Hunt on Dark Waters is the first book in the new fantasy romance series from Katee Robert, which is called the Crimson Sales series. So let me read you the synopsis for this book so you can decide if it might be for you. Evelyn is a witch with a perfect storm of impulses, terrible taste in bed partners, sticky fingers, and a lust for danger. After she steals from her vampire ex and falls through a portal to another realm, she's fished out of the waters by a band of seafarers and their telekinetic captain. She's immediately given a choice, join their ship's crew or die.

Amelia Hruby: 30:08

There's more in the description, but I think I'll pause there because that's kinda all you need to know at the beginning of this book. It is yet again a, like, rollicking romp of a time, and this time it has a lot of spicy, smutty scenes involved as well. We see Evelyn fall for this boat captain, as you might expect, and everything unfolds from there. By the time we get to the second book, that's where this vampire ex comes back and falls for the selkie and I got to enjoy that as well. But I would say that this one is definitely a creature feature, like 5 out of 5 creature features because it just includes so many different creatures.

Amelia Hruby: 30:44

And it's not a book that you read for the literary depths of it at all. It's a book that you read to have a good time and enjoy your afternoon or your late night, depending on, you know, what this vibe is for you. So that is Hunt on Dark Waters by Katie Robert, and that's the end of our not so spooky recs in our creature feature episode. I'm gonna wrap this up real quick with our final three books, which are my next up TBR for creature features. The first book on that list is Chlorine by Jade Song.

Amelia Hruby: 31:18

All I know about this book is that it's about a teen girl. I believe she's Asian American. I believe she's on a swim team, and I know that she really wants to be a mermaid. I have also heard that this book is incredibly weird. So all I needed was teen girl, mermaid, weird.

Amelia Hruby: 31:33

Sign me up. I'm here for it. Can't wait to read Chlorine by Jade Song, and I actually have it checked out from the library right now. So it is truly on my next up list. The second book on that list is Bull Moon Rising by Ruby Dixon.

Amelia Hruby: 31:47

This is a brand new, like, just came out this month brand new, Minotaur romance, which I feel weird even saying out loud, written by the author who brought us Ice Planet Barbarians. So if you know anything about that book, she's back with the beginning of a whole new series, and this book has something to do with, like, artifact collection and falling in love with a minotaur, and I have no clue if it's any good, but I bought it because it is beautiful. The cover is gorgeous. It's got this, like, beautiful rainbow gradient. I just, like, couldn't resist.

Amelia Hruby: 32:20

And then it felt like also the perfect book for this series. So very soon I will be reading Bull Moon Rising by Ruby Dixon, and maybe I will come back and tell you what I think about it once I've read it. And the final book of our creature feature list and my next up TBR is, drum roll, please, a book that everyone else has read, 4th Wing by Rebecca Yaros. So now that this book is finally out in paperback, maybe I will read it. It has sold over 2,000,000 copies.

Amelia Hruby: 32:49

So many people have read this book or own this book at the very least. And, I mean, I like dragons, seems like a good time. I just haven't gotten around to it yet. Sometimes when books get too popular, I just avoid reading them. Maybe I'm a little bit of a snob like that.

Amelia Hruby: 33:03

Maybe I just don't have enough interest in dragons, but this is on my TBR and I'm hoping to get to it before the end of the year. So if you have read 4th wing, I would love to know what you think about it. You can head to the show notes to learn how to contact me and tell me all of your 4th wing thoughts or your thoughts on any of these books. So thank you so much. This was a slightly longer episode than usual because we went through 13 creature features for the girlies.

Amelia Hruby: 33:29

I hope that you will read 1 or more of the books on this list. I've read, you know, the first ten of them and really enjoyed and highly recommend all of them depending on the type of reader that you are. And I feel like I've already talked enough about them. So let's wrap things up here for today. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode of Pleasure Reading.

Amelia Hruby: 33:49

Again, if you liked the sound of any of these books, please consider purchasing them through my links in the show notes, and I will receive a small affiliate payment as a nice little thank you or high five for the book rec. If you do read any of them or you have read any of them and you wanna reach out and let me know what you thought, you can find my contact info in the show notes. For now, it has been a pleasure reading with you today. Cheers to your next best book.