Hello!

You’d think for someone who has made reading as much of her personality as I have, that I would have joined in with a bunch of readathons – especially as they’re so accessible online. I never have before because in an ideal world I’d want to do nothing but read for the weekend or week or day of the readathon and because I haven’t been able to ‘commit’ properly, I just didn’t bother, but this year I decided to take part in GabbyReads Summerween readathon!

I’ve been following Gabby for a couple of years and whilst she predominantly reads thriller and horror books (and I don’t), I just love her vibe and she does also read romance books so I love hearing her perspective on those.

The prompts for Summerween, despite being a thriller/horror focused readathon inspired by bringing Halloween to Summer, are generally quite broad and only one of them really focuses exclusively on those genres.

So I figured I’d give it a go! I was meant to be going on a trip during the first weekend of the week-long readathon but that ended up being postponed and what I thought would be a very quiet week turned out to have some kind of major work stuff and be the only three days my husband was home until the end of the month so I didn’t get to prioritise reading as much, but I still tried my best.

Here are the books I chose for each prompt:

• read a book in the dark: The Thin Executioner by Darren Shan (my book club pick which coincidentally happens to be horror!)
• read a thriller/horror book: Sixteen Souls by Rosie Talbot (also on my 24 in 2024 list)
• read a book with five words in the title: One of Us Is Lying by Karen M McManus (also on my 24 in 2024 list!)
• read a book with a night sky on the cover: The Kiss Countdown by Etta Easton
• read a book set in the summer: You and Me on Vacation by Emily Henry

Even though I picked a book for each prompt, there was cross over in the first three all being in the thriller/horror genre and I do a lot of reading at night, so arguably many of these books were at least in part read in the dark!

The first couple of days of the readathon – which started on Friday July 5th – I made a lot of time for reading. My trip had been postponed and I was meant to have 3-4 hours of driving each way, so I mimicked that from home whilst sat on my sofa finishing off a cross stitch project and getting on with mindless chores.

On that Friday I managed to finish my leftover read from June A Sense of Freedom by Jimmy Boyle, then to kick off the readathon I listened to 226 minutes of One of Us Is Lying by Karen M McManus whilst doing my cross stitch (which equated to 129 pages of the physical book) and then I read 50 pages of The Thin Executioner by Darren Shan before I went to sleep. I’ve not read that much in a day in a very long time!

On Saturday, I had a similar kind of day – most of the day itself I had things to do, chores etc, but in the late afternoon/evening I settled in to finish my cross stitch and binge more of my audiobook whilst joining in on the public reading sprints Gabby ran on her channel.

If you’re not familiar, reading sprints are essentially using the pomodoro productivity method of using timers for a certain length of time to mark focused time and then having a shorter timer for a rest period. This readathon was 50 minutes of reading followed by 10 minutes where Gabby chatted to her co-hosts, her friends from other reading channels.

I love this method cos those 50 minutes absolutely flew by without me really noticing the time and having those ten minutes to readjust your eyes, give your brain a moment to think about something else and digest the story was so useful. I use pomodoro style lofi YouTube videos a lot when I’m working and I need to do this more often with my reading too!

So in total on the Saturday I listened to 193 minutes (107 pages) of One of Us Is Lying and then when I went to bed after the reading sprints were over, I read 32 more pages of The Thin Executioner.

Sunday was a really nice slow day but it meant it took me a lot longer to get my to do list done, so I didn’t do any reading until I was in bed that night but my audiobook app was telling me that I had about 2.5 hours of listening time (at the speed I was listening) to finish One of Us Is Lying, so I decided to coread the last 124 pages and made my way through the last 224 minutes even faster because it’s easier for me to process auditorially when I have the words in front of me to comprehend!

First book of the readathon finished!

Monday was when I started prioritising other things aside from the readathon – my husband came home from a long job away and he was home for less than 72 hours so I wanted to spend as much time with him as possible. I started a new audiobook in You and Me on Vacation by Emily Henry on my drive to and from my dance class that night for a total of 58 minutes / 31 pages of that book, then read 36 pages of The Thin Executioner before I fell asleep.

Honestly, this is still quite a lot of reading for me in one day but it’s nothing on the 170 odd pages I read on day 1!

Tuesday was much the same – one drive to and from the dance studio for work was 75 minutes / 43 pages of You and Me on Vacation and I only managed 10 pages of The Thin Executioner because my husband I had a late night Stardew Valley session and didn’t go to bed till gone 1am… we are grown adults… maybe.

Wednesday was the worst day of the readathon for me so far, but it was the only day my husband and I had to spend the whole day together, so whilst he slept in I edited a TikTok video I needed to post, then we went into town for a little lunch date and a mooch around some of the shops (buying nothing, I’m so proud of us), and we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening playing Stardew Valley again because it’s our current addiction.

We went to bed at a slightly more reasonable time because he needed to leave about 5am the next morning, but I only managed 20 pages of The Thin Executioner before bed.

So when he did get up at 5am on Thursday morning, I woke myself up enough to say goodbye and went back to sleep… until about 10.30am! I was absolutely exhausted and really needed it, then by the time I got up I had to immediately get ready for my therapy appointment.

Honestly, at this point I was a bit overwhelmed – I wanted to finish way more books in this readathon than I have but I also had other things on my to do list for the day, so I made a schedule and had some lunch before going to the gym, doing some of my other freelance work before making dinner, editing a video and then heading to bed.

I managed to read 38 pages of The Thin Executioner – I would have made an effort to read more but I’d already accepted that wasn’t going to finish anymore books during the readathon so there was no point putting the pressure on myself to do so.

Then just to round out the weekend, I read 34 pages of The Thin Executioner (and accidentally started reading a new book – The Roommate Risk by Talia Hibbert on my Kindle app, 38 pages) and I went up to stay with my mum at the weekend so I had 4 hours of driving total to get there and back. On Saturday, I listened to 167 minutes (91 pages) of You and Me on Vacation by Emily Henry then 17 pages of The Thin Executioner (socialising at family gatherings wipes me out, I had no energy 😂) then on Sunday I listened to 177 minutes (102 pages) of YAMOV and then 35 pages of TTE.

So in total, I only finished 1 book, but I did achieving 3 of the prompts – read a book in the dark, read a thriller/horror book and read a book with five words in the title! This book wasn’t set in the summer and it didn’t have a night sky on the cover, but three prompts in one book isn’t too bad! By the end of the readathon on Thursday, I’d read 45% of The Thin Executioner and 21% of You and Me on Vacation.

All round, it was a lovely readathon experience – the reading sprints live show with Gabby was super fun and to have such a relaxed weekend doing so much reading was something I really enjoyed. I definitely hope to take part in more readathons in the future and I’m glad I chose Summerween as my first one!

I think I’m going to try and finish my Summerween tbr throughout the rest of the month, but my July tbr is already long so we’ll see how well that goes!

Thank you so much for reading,

Sophie xx