Offbeat Offline: October 2026 (I Post, Therefore I Exist)

Welcome to Offbeat Offline, where I bring you up-to-date with what went on in my life during the month just gone, give you a sneak peek of my next shenanigans, and share my favourite posts of late!

What happened last month to yours truly? Not much, but I was even more stressed and tired than usual, and angry at...things (example below). I got lucky with books though (I was even approved for the upcoming InCryptid installment by Seanan McGuire, after being shunned for the previous two! Who has a clue why these things happen? Not me, that's for sure). Let's start with the bookish stuff as usual...

📚 WHERE DID THE TIME GO?!? I can't seem to take advantage of my hiatuses the way I used to anymore...for instance, how did I manage to read 7 books and review 4 in August? I only read 4 and reviewed 3 and ½ this month (I haven' finished my last one yet), and I don't really know where the time went (or, I know...into mindless computer games when I felt too tired to absorb words or produce them). And here I got such exciting approvals...

Approvals (4):

• The Book of Lost Chances by Jennifer Lindquist (Adult, portal fantasy)

As children, three wayward sisters – wandering the grounds of the family’s mysterious seaside hotel in Northern California, on the day of an annual masquerade auction – discover (and steal) a highly desirable and expensive book...and accidentally fall into another, more magical world.

At least, Agatha and Ellery do – Margery, the eldest Ellison sister, stays behind.

At first too cautious, then panicked and furious with regret, she’s the only witness to her sisters’ disappearance. She’s also the only one to miss them during the 48 hours of their absence...and when the two younger sisters reappear, they are alternately terrified and awestruck at the fantastical, dangerous years they’ve spent in another world. Determined to protect them, Margery gets rid of the book, so that none of the sisters can ever be tempted to return...

As grown-ups, the Ellison sisters are separated by distance and disappointments. Agatha is wayward and searching for magic denied, while Ellery has taken her penchant for storytelling and become a bestselling author – with a book that echoes the fantastical story of another world. Margery has thrown herself at the joys of motherhood, and the mundane disappointments of her marriage – but it’s impossible to pretend she doesn’t still yearn for the chance she hadn’t taken.

All three will be drawn together again as their secrets spill out in the face of a threat: a dangerous, enigmatic group is looking for a magical book that was stolen decades ago. And they are willing to kill to get it back...

• Pride and Poltergeists (InCryptid #16) by Seanan McGuire (Adult, urban fantasy)

For James Smith―now James Price―normal was never going to be an option. The only son of a sorcerer who died before she could teach him how to use his abilities, he was miserable in the town of New Gravesend, Maine...at least until Antimony Price declared him her adopted brother and swept him off to a new life. Among the Prices, James stands out less for being a sorcerer, and more for his poor cryptid-wrangling and hand-to-hand combat skills.

Becoming a Price didn’t come with an instruction manual, and James is still trying to figure out how he fits in this chaotic new family. How can he be a good brother, son, and, maybe―given the looks he's been getting from the cute guy who owns his new favorite waffle truck―boyfriend? And how can he balance it all when poachers and poltergeists refuse to leave him alone, and when the old family mystery of what happened to Aunt Laura starts calling?

Maybe he should have stayed in New Gravesend after all.

• The House Where Nothing Hurts by Ali Fountain (Adult/YA, supernatural? magical realism?)

As a senior in high school, Leah and her best friend Christian lead their volleyball team to victory after victory. But when Leah, Christian and their team break into their town's haunted mansion to celebrate a win, everything changes. The girls discover that within the house's walls, wounds magically heal, haircuts grow back, even death can be undone.

But as the girls' visits to the house turn increasingly dangerous, Leah remains untouched by the house's magic. Desperate to hide her differences, Leah begs her identical twin, Laura, to impersonate her for one night. But the house won't be deceived...

Twenty years later, Leah has built a life elsewhere - pregnant, and convinced she's carrying twins, despite scans only showing a single baby girl. When a call from the blue pulls Leah back to her hometown, the secrets left in the house are about to collide with the present.

• The Tumbler by Chris Wimpress (Adult, multiverse)

What if grief had the quantum power to shatter reality?

Following the sudden, shock loss of their partner, a nameless narrator finds the fabric of the everyday world beginning to fray. Strange anomalies slip through the cracks of existence, suggesting their intense sorrow has unlocked something impossible: a doorway into the multiverse.

But they are not the only ones navigating these fractured timelines. Others are moving through the quiet spaces between worlds—some driven by their own desperate losses, others guarding the boundaries of reality with dangerous intent.

As the universe splinters, the infinite expanse offers a temptation: How far would you cross the boundaries of space and time to hold the one you love just one more time?

The Tumbler is a lyrical, mind-bending exploration of the physics of sorrow, the permanence of change, and the lengths we go to outrun our longing.

Reads (4):

• Pride and Poltergeists (InCryptid #16) by Seanan McGuire (see above)

I may be biased, because I love it when the series brings us to the afterlife...but this installment in the Price saga has got a lot more going for it. There's never a dull moment while the plot weaves sorcery and action, dangerous creatures and all-too-human monsters, coming of age and romance, family and Aeslin mice. James' first foray into narrating makes for a fast-paced yet meditative, fun yet emotional, all-round engaging chapter in the InCryptid saga.

• The Tumbler by Chris Wimpress (see above)

This was both an action-fueled and a meditative take on the multiverse trope, but also an examination of grief, loss, and the most human form of quantum entanglement: love. While both the action bits and the protagonist's grief came across as more subdued than I would have liked, there was a lot to enjoy in the titular Tumbler's journey. Recommended for alt-universes fans who value introspection over exploration. 

• The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma (YA, magical realism – reread [pub. 2015])

One of my favourite books of all time! TWAU is many things: a contemporary novel about innocence, guilt and punishment. The story of a friendship gone bad. A depiction of the fiercely selfish, delusional mind of a girl and the desperate world of another. The story of a third girl who doesn't know how to fend for herself. But the glue that ties all those components together is what people call "magical realism"...a label that can be applied to many different kind of stories. In this case, we're talking about ghosts. And not your regular ghosts. I can't give away their role in the story - suffice to say, their interaction with humans will flip the book upside down in the end. Here's my old review.

• Through Gates of Garnet and Gold (Wayward Children #11) by Seanan McGuire (YA, portal fantasy – reread [pub. 2026])

When I started reading this series, I used to write full reviews for each and every book. Nowadays I only do minis for novellas (like these), but the completionist in me won't let me break up with the tradition I established since I read the first installment of Wayward Children - so, despite my having already written a mini review, I reread this one and produced a full review that will be posted later...(well, this is actually the one review I still have to finish...).

Reviews (4):

• The Last Star in the Void (The Echo Archives #3) by Melissa Caruso (Adult, multiverse/supernatural/mystery).

Review to come on the 5th.

• Pride and Poltergeists (InCryptid #16) by Seanan McGuire (see above)

Mini review to come closer to pub date.

• The Tumbler by Chris Wimpress (see above)

Mini review to come closer to pub date.

• Through Gates of Garnet and Gold (Wayward Children #11) by Seanan McGuire (see above)

Mini review to come on the 28th.

Here are my scheduled reviews for this month:

• The Last Star in the Void (The Echo Archives #3) by Melissa Caruso (on Thu 5th);
• The Big Bad Book of Kaiju by Jonathan Maberry et al., We Hexed the Moon by Mollyhall Seeley and Hell to Pay by Lora Beth Johnson (in a mini-review round on Mon 9th).
• Velveteen vs. series by Seanan McGuire* (in a mini-review round on Fri 13th);
• Through Gates of Garnet and Gold (Wayward Children #11) by Seanan McGuire (on Sat 28th).

        *(I wrote reviews for the original Velveteen trilogy years ago, but recently the series was

        completed and reissued - so I updated my old reviews accordingly, and wrote a new one

        for the last batch of stories. And of course all the changes meant I'd need to repost the

        whole thing...).

Reviews aside, I have a Tell Me Something Tuesday round-up scheduled for Tue. 17th, in which I answer all the November questions up to that date (I'll cover the last question of the month in a separate post). In the meantime, here's the TMST prompt list for the month of November, in case you want to join in:

• November 3rd: What's your proudest achievement?
• November 10th: Which emoji do you use the most?
• November 17th: Which tropes do you enjoy the most? (a question I submitted)
• November 24th: Which books are you looking forward to reading this winter? (December-February)

👩‍⚕️NICE TO "MEET" YOU... I had a first approach with my new doctor, and it was kind of crazy. Premise: my husband had to change doctor a while ago, and he chose this lady because her office is near our home - and more recently, when it was my turn to find a new doctor because my old one was retiring, I chose her too. All this time we had never seen her in person - my husband requests his prescriptions via email. A couple of weeks ago, my husband talked with her on the phone about getting our shots, and she said she could administer them at our home if we wanted, but we had to regroup because the COVID one wasn't available yet. A few days after, at 8.45, the bell started to ring and ring - I literally had to come out of the bathroom to respond because we had barely woken up. It turns out, it was the doctor, and no matter what I told her, she insisted she had notified us BY PHONE she would come. She was already starting to sound impatient when she said "Well, anyway, I'm here now", and when I told her we had just woken up (which should have made her understand we weren't ready for her...we were literally in our pajamas and everything was a mess), she replied (rudely) "OK, if you want to get it, fine, if not, I'm going back to my round". I was dumbfounded...anyway, I politely asked if she wanted to come back later then, to which she replied, in the same tone as before "I'll be back" while already distancing herself from the intercom - no goodbyes, no nothing. So we waited and waited, and at midday she wasn't back yet - so my husband emailed her (she prefers emails to phone calls...) and said, sorry for the misunderstanding, but we never made an appointment, and should we make one now? After a few minutes, she replied saying she was sorry for the misunderstanding as well (but she offered no apology for her rude behaviour), though she STILL was sure she had notified us about her visit - and said she'd come back the following Thursday.

This was such a disastrous first impression, and it made me seriously want to change doctor again...but there were only a couple available in my immediate area when I chose her (which is a requisite for me, in case I have to go there on foot), and I heard the other one isn't much better...Anyhow - three days ago she came and administered the vaccines, and even briefly visited my husband, and said sorry for the misunderstanding, and...let's hope she was just having a bad morning the week before. But...what's gotten into people these days? Everyone is so rude...Also, we need doctors to be polite and empathic, not whatever THAT was. Good grief.

...I mean, can I have HIM?

🖥️ BLOG BONANZA. A few blog-related/book-related things...

• October 14th marked my fourteenth blogoversary! Isn't that CRAZY?!
• Goodreads finally implemented fractional star ratings...so of course I had to go back and adjust the ones of 552 books 😅 (well, not really - a lot of them were round ratings - but still). It wasn't the ordeal you may think, because all my reviews where the half star was involved stated that at the beginning, so it was easy to locate them just by scrolling through the book list - but yeah, not my favourite pastime...
• I got a comment on a 2013 review no one had commented on EVER, which made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside...
• My beloved Christopher Pike is back after 11 (!!!) years with a YA trilogy?!?!?!

• Also, did you know that Seanan McGuire has a new book out in 2027 as Mira Grant? And it sounds viscously (no, I don't mean "viciously") good! Read Seanan's announcement here and all will be explained...

Since I was on hiatus, I haven't blog-hopped at all in October, so I've got nothing 🙁. But I'm getting back in the game, so this section will be operative in my next monthly recap! (Also, if you made it this far, SORRY for the extra-long post!!! But so many things happened this month...).

That's it for now. My next post will be up on November 5th, and it will be the review for The Last Star in the Void I mentioned above.

So, what were your highs/lows in the past month?