A Night in the Lonesome October

This was my October read for the Sword and Laser podcast. This book is a fun read for the spooky season. As you can guess from the title, it takes place over the month of October, with a chapter for each day. (Apparently some people like to read it that way - one chapter for each day, so if that sounds good to you you'll have to put this on your calendar for next year??) Our protagonist for the book is a dog, which is also fun. Through his eyes we slowly learn about a “game” being played by a variety of humans and their animal companions.

If you are a fan of spooky season and/or other horror tropes, you should give this book a try. Spoiler alert - I am a spooky season Scrouge so I think a lot of this was lost on me. Clearly I am supposed to “get” who all the “players” are at some point (maybe? I think?), but alas I was lost on probably half of them (including the protagonist). I did figure out The Count, who sleeps in a coffin and has a bat companion, though! Despite this I did enjoy the story, so I'm not mad about it, just clearly a book that someone else would enjoy more than I did.