It’s Spookathon time again! One year ago I started my bookstagram account specifically to participate in this readathon. For those that don’t know, Spookathon is the annual readathon hosted by Books and Lala and it’s all about reading spooky books and thrillers. Spookathon runs from October 15 – October 21. If you’re looking to get into the Halloween spirit, I definitely recommend joining this readathon!

There is a group book as well as reading challenges. This year the group book is Toil & Trouble: 15 Tales of Women & Witchcraft. If you’re trying to find a book that knocks out as many challenge as possible, definitely pick this one up! It covers every challenge expect Read a Thriller.

Here are all the challenges and books I’m trying and read this week!

1. Read a Thriller

This challenge is a part of every Spookathon. Pretty much any book on this list could fulfill this challenge, but I decided to choose a single book for each challenge as I have a long 4 day weekend during the readathon. For this challenge I went with Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager. The synopsis of this book reminds me a lot of Pretty Little Liars in reverse. Four teen girls are at camp. Emma, the youngest of the group, wakes to see the other 3 sneaking out of the cabin – it’s the last anyone sees of them. Years later, Emma is rising artist in NY. She is drawn back to the camp and tries to solve the mystery of her friends’ disappearance.

2. Purple on the Cover

For this challenge I’m going to read the group book, Toil & Trouble. I’m so excited for this! I’ve been in such a witchy read mood, so I’m looking forward to all the feminist, witchy stories. Plus anthologies always make great a readathon choice because they are such quick reads.

3. Not Set in the Current Time Period

This could be in the future, past, or alternate time-line. For this I chose Broken Girls by Simone St. James. This book has some of my favorite tropes – a boarding school setting and dual timelines (it jumps between 1950 and 2014). At a boarding school built for girls no one wants, one girl mysteriously disappears. Years later, another girl is murdered at the school. And even though a man was convicted, the girls younger sister can’t shake her suspicion that there is more to the story.

4. Spooky Word in Title

For this I’m going to try and squeeze in an audiobook – City of Ghosts by Victoria Schwab. I’m not very good at sticking with audiobooks and I haven’t loved Schwab’s other books (I know… unpopular opinion). But this book just seems so perfect for October. A young girl had a near death experience and now can see ghosts. When her family travels to Scotland, she finds herself surrounded by ghosts. Her she discovers she needs to help these ghosts move on.

5. Book with Pictures

I know a lot of people were annoyed with this challenge, but I found tons of books to fit this that weren’t graphic novels. Here are a couple I found. There’s something for everyone, Non-fiction, thriller(ish), YA, Middle Grade, Romance, and Short Stories.

I’m planning to read either Stalking Jack the Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco or Dead Mountain. Right now I’m leaning to toward Dead Mountain because it was actually in one of Lala’s videos that I heard about it, so it seems fitting. It’s a true story about 9 hikers in the Russian Ural Mountains who mysteriously died on an elevation known as Dead Mountain. This seems so creepy and dark and I NEED to pick it up this month.

Are you participating in Spookathon? What are you planning to read? I’d love to follow you on here or Instagram so we can chat during the readathon!