Like this blog? You can find more of my monthly reads here.
My book choices are quite different from each other this month.
Second chance romance, The Day Our Lives Collided, has been picked to support the author, Laura Pearson, who recently found herself in and out of hospital with a serious diagnosis during her publication week. Contemporary horror, 13 Doors by G J Phelps… because who doesn’t want a good ghost story in October?
I’ll be reading both these books this month. Why not try them for yourself? If you like them, do leave them a review on Amazon. My review of my September read, SENTENCED, by M J Whelan, is below.
The Day Our Lives Collided by Laura Pearson. A story of friendship, first loves and unexpected soulmates. (Published 2026)
It’s the first day of term, and the lives of three new university students are about to collide. They’re going to introduce each other to more friends too. People who will be in their lives forever.
They’re young when the weddings start. Tash and Adam seem destined for each other, only 22 but with a baby already on the way. Even when a chance remark from Adam’s best man about their other friend, Hayden, puts everything at risk.
By the time the second wedding comes around, everything’s changed. And even more by the third…
Because it turns out, our soulmates aren’t always who we think they’ll be. And life has a funny way of switching things around. Just when you least expect it.
13 Doors by G J Phelps. (Contemporary Horror. Published 2023)
Thirteen doors, thirteen hauntings. News reporter Joe Baxter has a plan.
His idea is simple – to use his newsroom contacts across England to find thirteen haunted places to stay, and then record his experiences in a book. From an abandoned cinema to a dank pub cellar, from a World War Two airfield to a lonely, landlocked cruise liner, Joe is prepared to spend long nights in the cold and dark, but has no idea what he is about to unleash.
For, as he endures increasingly dangerous vigils, meeting a succession of gruesome, tragic and terrifying spectres, a terrible truth begins to emerge.
Something – or someone – is reaching out to Joe, awakening long-buried memories of his father’s death, a dark family secret and his teenage brush with madness. And then there is Wilko, the imaginary friend who haunted his childhood. After decades of silence, Wilko has found his voice again…
A spine-tingling supernatural mystery entwined with chilling ghost stories, 13 Doors places the reader at the dark heart of the moment, from gut-wrenching action to eerie vigils.
SENTENCED, by M J Whelan. (Contemporary, Psychological, Fiction. Published 2025)
REVIEW:
This will not be your easiest read this year but it might be one of your most important. A well crafted story of love, hardship and redemption, that will make you think, long after you’ve put the book down.
Each month, I aim to review and read books that are either self-published or by less well known authors. Laura Pearson is better known than most of my picks, as a best selling author on Amazon.
If you’d like me to read and review your book, please let me know, using my website’s contact page or email info@joannebarkerauthorevents.com
You can find all my news, reading lists and short story posts here.
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