Books I read in October 2025
As the nights have drawn in and the evenings have turned colder, October has been the perfect month for curling up with a good book (or several!). It’s been another brilliant mix of emotional, thought-provoking, and edge-of-your-seat reads this month, some I loved, some I didn’t, and a few surprised me along the way. You can read longer reviews for each book in my October Book Reads Blog (Amazon Affiliate Links)
I can’t believe that last year I hadn’t read any of Kristin Hannah’s work, and now I’m utterly addicted. Fly Away was a brilliant, emotional rollercoaster of a follow-up to the heartbreaking ending of Firefly Lane. It delves deeper into Tully’s mother’s backstory, while exploring the fallout for Kate’s family and Tully herself following Kate’s death. I devoured this one and was left once again in awe of Hannah’s ability to portray love, loss, and resilience so powerfully.
Lucy Foley has such a gift for crafting twisty, character-driven thrillers. I love the way she constructs her stories through multiple perspectives, each chapter revealing a new layer of the mystery. The Midnight Feast was unputdownable, tense, atmospheric, and clever to the very end.
I joined a new book club this month, and this was our first pick. Written as a dialogue based on Adlerian psychology, The Courage to Be Disliked challenged me to step away from the academic lens and think about what the ideas meant in practice. Chapter one sparked a mix of frustration and fascination in equal measure, it certainly made for an interesting first discussion! I’m looking forward to seeing how our conversations evolve as we continue.
Sometimes you just need some pure escapism, and for me, that often means diving into one (or three!) of J.D. Kirk’s DCI Logan thrillers. These were exactly what I needed to balance out a busy and challenging month. Dark humour, tight plotting, and characters I’ve come to know well made for an enjoyable trio of crime reads.
This one has been sitting on my shelf for a while. I knew the broad outline of Christopher McCandless’s ill-fated journey into the Alaskan wilderness, but Krakauer’s account offers so much more depth. What began as a magazine assignment became an exploration into McCandless’s life, values, and motivations. I found myself constantly oscillating between viewing him as an idealistic fool and an enigmatic adventurer.
Kate Atkinson’s work has come up in several conversations recently, so I decided to revisit this one, which I’d first read years ago and could barely remember. It’s an intergenerational story exploring family, memory, and identity, intricately woven with historical events. While I didn’t love it quite as much as I’d hoped, I appreciated the way Atkinson captures everyday British life and women’s voices so vividly.
Sometimes you just need some pure escapism, and for me, that often means diving into one (or three!) of J.D. Kirk’s DCI Logan thrillers. These were exactly what I needed to balance out a busy and challenging month. Dark humour, tight plotting, and characters I’ve come to know well made for an enjoyable trio of crime reads. A Dead Man Walking, set in a remote Scottish castle on a stormy Halloween night, was particularly well-timed!
This one had been on my radar for a while, recommended by several friends, and it didn’t disappoint (eventually!). At first, I found the writing style quite jarring, highly descriptive and fragmented, almost poetic rather than conventional prose. But once I adjusted, I became completely absorbed in the story. By the halfway point I couldn’t put it down, and by the end I was in awe of how cleverly the plot came together. I’ll definitely be exploring more of Whitaker’s work.
Earlier this year I read It Ends with Us, so when I spotted It Starts with Us in a charity shop, I thought I’d give it a go. I wish I hadn’t bothered. It felt clumsily written, with endless justifications of the characters’ motives that really detracted from the story. There was far less emotional depth than in the first book, this sequel added little and, for me, would have been better left to the imagination.
This month’s official book club read was Engleby by Sebastian Faulks, my first of his works. Unfortunately, I found it an endless, rambling monologue, unsettling but not in an engaging way. The narrative dragged, and I found myself turning to five other books in between just to get through it. It hasn’t left me rushing to read more of Faulks’s novels.
Sometimes you just need some pure escapism, and for me, that often means diving into one (or three!) of J.D. Kirk’s DCI Logan thrillers. These were exactly what I needed to balance out a busy and challenging month. Dark humour, tight plotting, and characters I’ve come to know well made for an enjoyable trio of crime reads.
I then picked up Transcription, one of Atkinson’s more recent novels. Set during and after the Second World War, it’s a tale of espionage, BBC formality, and quiet resilience. While it didn’t quite grip me like Kristin Hannah’s emotional storytelling, it still showcased Atkinson’s trademark wit and sharp characterisation, particularly of women navigating male-dominated spaces.
Rounding off the month, I finished with another Kristin Hannah novel, The Four Winds. This was an epic tale of struggle, survival, and a woman finally finding her voice. Set against the backdrop of the Great Depression, it captured my imagination and my heart. At times devastating and frightening, it was also full of hope and courage. Hannah’s storytelling once again swept me away; she has a rare gift for portraying the resilience of the human spirit.
As we move into November, I’m continuing my Kristin Hannah obsession with The Great Alone.
I'm also starting Us Against You, the second in Fredrik Backman’s Beartown trilogy. I can't wait to dive in!
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