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October Animals
OCTOBER ANIMALS follows four teenage friends—Lizzie Bat, Owl, Spider, and Kat—who live in the riverside city of October, Illinois. Lizzie Bat, still grieving the loss of her father and at odds with her mother, plans to rob the town’s Halloween store the night of October 31st, and intends to use the money to escape to a new life. And, her friends are all too eager to help.
Owl, best friend and confidant. If Lizzie Bat’s heart aches for her father, then Owl’s heart aches for Lizzie Bat.
Spider, brave and loyal, had his secrets, and he kept them.
Kat, adored, she was the newest member of the group and the object of Lizzie Bat’s affections.
But their scheme threatens to tear the friends apart as they find themselves in the path of supernatural forces and monstrous local legends: haunted houses; doppelgängers; grave robbing; ghosts and vampires; monsters in the river and, even worse, monsters in the home.
October is a town that loves Halloween but no one realizes that their whole world is about to become Halloween … forever.
Owl, best friend and confidant. If Lizzie Bat’s heart aches for her father, then Owl’s heart aches for Lizzie Bat.
Spider, brave and loyal, had his secrets, and he kept them.
Kat, adored, she was the newest member of the group and the object of Lizzie Bat’s affections.
But their scheme threatens to tear the friends apart as they find themselves in the path of supernatural forces and monstrous local legends: haunted houses; doppelgängers; grave robbing; ghosts and vampires; monsters in the river and, even worse, monsters in the home.
October is a town that loves Halloween but no one realizes that their whole world is about to become Halloween … forever.
- GenresHorror
90 pages, Paperback
First published April 30, 2023
1 person is currently reading
55 people want to read
About the author
Nicholas Day
37 books50 followersNicholas Day is an award-nominated author who writes predominantly within the horror, science fiction, and crime genres.
Currently, he co-owns Rooster Republic Press and Strangehouse Books with fellow writer Don Noble. In addition to this, the duo handle acquisitions and oversee production for Bizarro Pulp Press, an imprint of JournalStone.
Currently, he co-owns Rooster Republic Press and Strangehouse Books with fellow writer Don Noble. In addition to this, the duo handle acquisitions and oversee production for Bizarro Pulp Press, an imprint of JournalStone.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
February 23, 2023
My thanks to the publisher for a chance to read this ARC early. When I first got this in my hands I knew it would take me away to another place. It was a beautiful book to behold. I took it to work with me and read it at my desk because that’s how excited I was. I truly enjoyed this, the way the story flowed took my mind into another place and I truly felt like I was relating to the characters. The transformation of each of the characters and the way they all folded into one through the story really made me keep reading. Highly recommend.
March 20, 2023
Struggling to cope with the loss of her father and constantly at odds with her mother, Lizzie Batson, aka Lizzie Bat, hatches a plan. She and her friends are going to rob the local Halloween shop, Trick R Treats, escape from their going-nowhere lives in October, IL, and start over somewhere fresh.
I suspect plenty of us have felt like Lizzie Bat at one point or another in our lives. I spent plenty of time in high school and post-college working a dead job that was suffocating me, dreaming about skipping town, taking what meager savings I had and building a new life. John Grisham's The Partner gave me a semi-blueprint for how to do it, too, if only I could grow a beard, lose a bunch of weight, and steal millions of dollars from rich, entitled jackasses before fleeing to Brazil or the Bahamas or even the Pacific Northwest under an assumed name. It was all fantasy, though, the daydreams of a picked-upon teen coping with a broken home and, later, a 20-something seeking a way out of a hellish work experience who knew all too damn well it didn't have to be this way but still needing money for rent and food.
I could, and in some ways still can, relate to Lizzie Bat. She wants a better life for herself, wants to reinvent herself, but is constantly forced into the same box she's been placed in by her mom, her town, her friends. She wants all of them to be free so they can realize their fullest potential. October Animals is hardly straight-forward about it, which is part of what makes it so damn appealing. Nicholas Day constantly challenges his readers here to determine how much of Lizzie Bat's story is literal versus metaphor, to separate the real from the fantasy. Is her bloody-mouthed witch of a mother gorging herself on pieces of broken glass a scene we are meant to take seriously, or is it the imaginings of a put-upon teenager adding significant color and embellishments to her otherwise would-be mundane day to day?
Day captures this mood well, letting his prose be shaped by the viewpoints of this big-dreaming Bat. His style here is weighted, portentous, and melodramatic, as teenagers themselves so often are as they rail against any given inconvenience or loss with furious screams about how their young lives are being destroyed because they didn't get the right shoes or missed a concert or, more seriously, are trying to cope with an outsized loss that is so much bigger than them.
Lizzie tries to connect with her departed father through old photographs and a copy of the book he wrote. Her mother wants to move on, wiping away any trace of the man she once loved. Therein lies the conflict, and we can understand each of their pains, even as we wish they would just both talk to one another and set aside their own id and egos. Death has changed them both, divided them, at least in Lizzie's thickly grief-clouded mind. One can't help but wonder what would happen if these two just sat down and talked, openly and honestly, with one another, and what kind of reinvention such a conversation might spur. Maybe a lot of lives would be spared on that fateful Halloween night. Or maybe not...
I suspect plenty of us have felt like Lizzie Bat at one point or another in our lives. I spent plenty of time in high school and post-college working a dead job that was suffocating me, dreaming about skipping town, taking what meager savings I had and building a new life. John Grisham's The Partner gave me a semi-blueprint for how to do it, too, if only I could grow a beard, lose a bunch of weight, and steal millions of dollars from rich, entitled jackasses before fleeing to Brazil or the Bahamas or even the Pacific Northwest under an assumed name. It was all fantasy, though, the daydreams of a picked-upon teen coping with a broken home and, later, a 20-something seeking a way out of a hellish work experience who knew all too damn well it didn't have to be this way but still needing money for rent and food.
I could, and in some ways still can, relate to Lizzie Bat. She wants a better life for herself, wants to reinvent herself, but is constantly forced into the same box she's been placed in by her mom, her town, her friends. She wants all of them to be free so they can realize their fullest potential. October Animals is hardly straight-forward about it, which is part of what makes it so damn appealing. Nicholas Day constantly challenges his readers here to determine how much of Lizzie Bat's story is literal versus metaphor, to separate the real from the fantasy. Is her bloody-mouthed witch of a mother gorging herself on pieces of broken glass a scene we are meant to take seriously, or is it the imaginings of a put-upon teenager adding significant color and embellishments to her otherwise would-be mundane day to day?
Day captures this mood well, letting his prose be shaped by the viewpoints of this big-dreaming Bat. His style here is weighted, portentous, and melodramatic, as teenagers themselves so often are as they rail against any given inconvenience or loss with furious screams about how their young lives are being destroyed because they didn't get the right shoes or missed a concert or, more seriously, are trying to cope with an outsized loss that is so much bigger than them.
Lizzie tries to connect with her departed father through old photographs and a copy of the book he wrote. Her mother wants to move on, wiping away any trace of the man she once loved. Therein lies the conflict, and we can understand each of their pains, even as we wish they would just both talk to one another and set aside their own id and egos. Death has changed them both, divided them, at least in Lizzie's thickly grief-clouded mind. One can't help but wonder what would happen if these two just sat down and talked, openly and honestly, with one another, and what kind of reinvention such a conversation might spur. Maybe a lot of lives would be spared on that fateful Halloween night. Or maybe not...
May 8, 2023
The nitty-gritty: An atmospheric setting and the promise of an intriguing story couldn't make up for the scattered plot and over-the-top prose.
October Animals is a short novella (or perhaps even a novelette) that I really wanted to love, but unfortunately, it didn’t work that well for me. The story is rather convoluted, and I finished the book wondering if I had missed something. Other reviewers on Goodreads seem to love it, though, so perhaps I’m just not the right audience.
First, a brief story recap, and then I’ll give you my thoughts. The story takes place in the town of October, Illinois and revolves around four high school friends. Lizzie Bat is struggling with the loss of her father, but when she discovers a copy of his memoir up in the attic, she’s hoping to learn more about what happened to him. Her mother, though, wants nothing to do with old memories, and so she destroys all her father’s possessions, including his book.
Lizzie has had enough of her mother and October, and so she convinces her friends—Owl, Kat and Spider—to help her rob the local Halloween store, Trick R Treat, so she’ll have money to leave town. But first they have to get past Lawrence Ragsdale, a local boy who works there, and who just might be a vampire.
I want to start with some elements I enjoyed. First, I immediately got Ray Bradbury vibes from the story. There’s a whimsical, nostalgic feel which reminded me of Something Wicked This Way Comes or The Halloween Tree, especially since this story takes place in a town called October. Some of the scenes are extremely eerie, and Day sets up an interesting mystery that deals with Lizzie’s dad and his memoir. Excerpts from this book are scattered throughout and add a sense of intrigue to the story.
Unfortunately, though, I struggled with just about everything else in this book. The writing style was not to my taste at all. The prose is overly flowery, almost to the point where individual sentences don’t make any sense:
“Risk existed in the collapsing space between lips just before a kiss and the banks of the Mischief River were a cemetery to all that the currents no longer wanted.”
There’s also a lot of repetition, certain phrases repeated over and over, and while I understand this was probably a stylistic choice made by the author, for me it simply muddied the waters of the plot and pulled me out of the story. It also made this feel like a children’s book, where repetition is common, and based on some of the things the characters do in this story, this is definitely not a book for children.
I found the plot to be confusing as well. Day sets up an intriguing scenario in the beginning: a girl who is trying to leave her past behind decides to rob a local store in order to escape. But that never actually happens. Instead, Lizzie asks her three friends to “...steal something for me. Something only you could steal, but something you’d never dream of taking.” This weird tangent didn’t make sense, and the plot never really went anywhere.
October Animals almost feels like experimental fiction, meandering in odd directions. All its strange parts never really come together, and even the author’s notes at the end did little to explain what he was trying to do. Alas, I can’t really recommend this based on my experience, but readers looking for something very different might have better luck than I did.
October Animals is a short novella (or perhaps even a novelette) that I really wanted to love, but unfortunately, it didn’t work that well for me. The story is rather convoluted, and I finished the book wondering if I had missed something. Other reviewers on Goodreads seem to love it, though, so perhaps I’m just not the right audience.
First, a brief story recap, and then I’ll give you my thoughts. The story takes place in the town of October, Illinois and revolves around four high school friends. Lizzie Bat is struggling with the loss of her father, but when she discovers a copy of his memoir up in the attic, she’s hoping to learn more about what happened to him. Her mother, though, wants nothing to do with old memories, and so she destroys all her father’s possessions, including his book.
Lizzie has had enough of her mother and October, and so she convinces her friends—Owl, Kat and Spider—to help her rob the local Halloween store, Trick R Treat, so she’ll have money to leave town. But first they have to get past Lawrence Ragsdale, a local boy who works there, and who just might be a vampire.
I want to start with some elements I enjoyed. First, I immediately got Ray Bradbury vibes from the story. There’s a whimsical, nostalgic feel which reminded me of Something Wicked This Way Comes or The Halloween Tree, especially since this story takes place in a town called October. Some of the scenes are extremely eerie, and Day sets up an interesting mystery that deals with Lizzie’s dad and his memoir. Excerpts from this book are scattered throughout and add a sense of intrigue to the story.
Unfortunately, though, I struggled with just about everything else in this book. The writing style was not to my taste at all. The prose is overly flowery, almost to the point where individual sentences don’t make any sense:
“Risk existed in the collapsing space between lips just before a kiss and the banks of the Mischief River were a cemetery to all that the currents no longer wanted.”
There’s also a lot of repetition, certain phrases repeated over and over, and while I understand this was probably a stylistic choice made by the author, for me it simply muddied the waters of the plot and pulled me out of the story. It also made this feel like a children’s book, where repetition is common, and based on some of the things the characters do in this story, this is definitely not a book for children.
I found the plot to be confusing as well. Day sets up an intriguing scenario in the beginning: a girl who is trying to leave her past behind decides to rob a local store in order to escape. But that never actually happens. Instead, Lizzie asks her three friends to “...steal something for me. Something only you could steal, but something you’d never dream of taking.” This weird tangent didn’t make sense, and the plot never really went anywhere.
October Animals almost feels like experimental fiction, meandering in odd directions. All its strange parts never really come together, and even the author’s notes at the end did little to explain what he was trying to do. Alas, I can’t really recommend this based on my experience, but readers looking for something very different might have better luck than I did.
March 21, 2023
OCTOBER ANIMALS follows four teenagers —Lizzie (Bat), Owl, Spider, and Kat—who live in the riverside city of October, Illinois. Lizzie is grieving the loss of her father and has a dysfunctional relationship with her mother. In order to escape the family drama, she plans to rob the town’s Halloween store, brining her friends along for the felony.
OCTOBER ANIMALS has a lucid dream quality to it; I love the uniqueness and disquieting aspects to the storytelling. The approach is disquieting as you never know what acidic trip-like journey each stanza is going to bring. I wouldn’t go so far as to categorise OCTOBER ANIMALS as literary fiction but it’s damn close. Author BLAH makes you stop and think about each character’s underlying drama unfolding between the book’s poetically ink stained pages akin to the most crafty horror writers of modern memory.
Whilst short in terms of page count, OCTOBER ANIMALS crams a lot of spooky goodness into a tightly written package. A perfect read for Halloween season.
OCTOBER ANIMALS has a lucid dream quality to it; I love the uniqueness and disquieting aspects to the storytelling. The approach is disquieting as you never know what acidic trip-like journey each stanza is going to bring. I wouldn’t go so far as to categorise OCTOBER ANIMALS as literary fiction but it’s damn close. Author BLAH makes you stop and think about each character’s underlying drama unfolding between the book’s poetically ink stained pages akin to the most crafty horror writers of modern memory.
Whilst short in terms of page count, OCTOBER ANIMALS crams a lot of spooky goodness into a tightly written package. A perfect read for Halloween season.
February 23, 2023
Dreamy drips of dark honey falling on fall leaves, bitterness, love, hope and struggle. That is the feeling I take away after finishing this book. This will probably be the first ARC I read repeatedly. The writing felt like fractal storytelling that presents as a flowing unity. I have plenty of quotes I’d like to go back and tab. I wish the ending had lasted longer…but don’t we all? The themes of death are displayed in a unique way here. Death of life, of love, of hope, and what comes after that. For a short novel, this packs a bigger punch than I think a lot of people will expect. I have a very few small qualms that objectively don’t take away from my enjoyment or critique, so I will gladly sit this at a clean 5 ⭐️ I can’t wait to reread and tab.
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April 10, 2023OCTOBER ANIMALS by Nicholas Day bleeds autumn and is saturated with Halloween dreams. This lyrical, bittersweet tale of death, rebirth, and metamorphosis is a poetic love letter to spooky season but especially, to POSSIBILITY. It's a beautiful, unique book in every way.
June 9, 2023
Being a teenager is tough. I'm old now, but I can remember it. Trying to find yourself, to figure out who you are and who you're people are. Nicholas Day explores this and more with this latest book. His protagonist, Lizzie Bat, deals with these issues and so much more. She recently lost her father and her mother has become cold and distant. She's had enough of life in October, Illinois and wants to bust out, to break free, and even her tight-knit friend group can't convince her otherwise. What follows is her determination to find out more about her father before she leaves, interspersed with interludes of her friends trying to find the perfect, unique, leaving gift for Lizzie.
The prose is equal parts poetry and sharp introspection; Lizzie toils with her role as a daughter and as a friend, struggling to reconcile with a mother struggling to keep it together for her daughter. They spend the vast majority of the book at odds with each other, a reflection of teenage years many of us will remember all too well, especially those of us who lost a parent and took it out on the one who remained. Too often we are caught up in our own grief and fail to see how the loss left others just as distraught. I won't spoil anything but, often, those who are left aren't the bad guys we make them out to be, and those who left fail to live up to our memories. Sometimes their reason for leaving isn't straight forward and, sometimes, it is altogether more tragic. Day dissects these situations like a surgeon wielding a razor-sharp scalpel and shows us the messy parts on the page, using raw emotion and beautiful words to create a bridge of empathy between the reader and the character. Anyone can write a piece of fiction. Hell, most of us can tell a story. But what Day does transcends that. He creates life on the page and takes us on a tour of these relationships, close enough that we can feel the transition from Summer to Autumn.
Lest I forget, this is a halloween book. There are plenty of spooky moments to enjoy along the way. Most notably, the separate tales of Lizzie's friends: Kat, Owl, and Spider. They are each tasked with stealing a going-away gift for Lizzie. "Something only you could steal. But something you'd never dream of taking." It seems like a simple writing-prompt. But Day has to make each reconcile with his characters. These are no generic quests; each is unique to each character. And they are all terrifying, thanks to Day's art of storytelling. With each quest I found my breathing becoming more shallow, slowing. I felt my eyes widen. I felt tense. The horror is palpable; it grasps for the friends, physically. But so too does it seek to ensnare them mentally. Each is terrible, but especially terrible to each of the friends experiencing it. Day doesn't do this by blind luck: it is the product of attention to character development, precise, poetic pithiness. He imbues his characters with heart, invites us to take them into our own, and then breaks hearts all over.
And I can't wait to go through it all over again. I loved it.
The prose is equal parts poetry and sharp introspection; Lizzie toils with her role as a daughter and as a friend, struggling to reconcile with a mother struggling to keep it together for her daughter. They spend the vast majority of the book at odds with each other, a reflection of teenage years many of us will remember all too well, especially those of us who lost a parent and took it out on the one who remained. Too often we are caught up in our own grief and fail to see how the loss left others just as distraught. I won't spoil anything but, often, those who are left aren't the bad guys we make them out to be, and those who left fail to live up to our memories. Sometimes their reason for leaving isn't straight forward and, sometimes, it is altogether more tragic. Day dissects these situations like a surgeon wielding a razor-sharp scalpel and shows us the messy parts on the page, using raw emotion and beautiful words to create a bridge of empathy between the reader and the character. Anyone can write a piece of fiction. Hell, most of us can tell a story. But what Day does transcends that. He creates life on the page and takes us on a tour of these relationships, close enough that we can feel the transition from Summer to Autumn.
Lest I forget, this is a halloween book. There are plenty of spooky moments to enjoy along the way. Most notably, the separate tales of Lizzie's friends: Kat, Owl, and Spider. They are each tasked with stealing a going-away gift for Lizzie. "Something only you could steal. But something you'd never dream of taking." It seems like a simple writing-prompt. But Day has to make each reconcile with his characters. These are no generic quests; each is unique to each character. And they are all terrifying, thanks to Day's art of storytelling. With each quest I found my breathing becoming more shallow, slowing. I felt my eyes widen. I felt tense. The horror is palpable; it grasps for the friends, physically. But so too does it seek to ensnare them mentally. Each is terrible, but especially terrible to each of the friends experiencing it. Day doesn't do this by blind luck: it is the product of attention to character development, precise, poetic pithiness. He imbues his characters with heart, invites us to take them into our own, and then breaks hearts all over.
And I can't wait to go through it all over again. I loved it.
April 1, 2023
Searching for monsters can be dangerous.Lizzie Bat lives in October, Illinois, the most haunted city in the country. Grieving the loss of her father, she has a “cemetery heart”.
“I can’t do this anymore.”Owl is Lizzie’s best friend.
Lizzie Bat’s heart ached for her father. Owl’s heart ached for Lizzie Bat.Then there’s tactless but loyal Spider and Kat, who recently moved to Illinois.
Lizzie has a plan for her and her friends to escape October. They’re going to rob Trick R Treats, October’s Halloween store, on Halloween night.
This is a story where the natural and supernatural collide, one where you aren’t always sure what’s real and what’s metaphorical. It’s the agony of grief, the longing for something better and the parts of ourselves we don’t share.
Going into this read, you may suspect that things won’t turn out exactly as planned for this group of friends. You have no idea what’s coming.
I don’t know if other readers will do this or not but I pictured each character as the animal they shared their names with rather than people. Whether this was the intention of the author or not, it was a really fun way to navigate this book.
At under one hundred pages, this is easily a read in one sitting book, although you may want to schedule a reread to get more out of the story. When I reread it, I’m hoping to get a deeper understanding of the ending.
I love discovering something new, even if it’s only new to me. This book came with two discoveries, a new author and a new publisher. I’ll definitely be on the lookout for more of both.
It wasn’t the forgetting that was painful. It was remembering.Thank you so much to Rooster Republic Press for the opportunity to read this novella.
Blog - https://schizanthusnerd.com/
October 13, 2025
A suitably schmaltzy Midwest tale; some middle schooler’s newest obsession, but also just genuinely readable, well-paced stuff. I mean, seriously, this opener— “Risk existed in the collapsing space between lips just before a kiss and the banks of the Mischief River were a cemetery to all that the currents no longer wanted” — pretty much sums up the experience. Nicky’s got heart, I’d share a cig with him any day. The plot meanders but that’s the charm, like hopping stone-by-stone across a foggy creek. I love Halloween.
March 1, 2023
in the small town of october, a teenage girl grieving the loss of her mysterious father and longing to escape her mother's abuse makes a plan with her friends to run away together on halloween night, but things go terribly awry. this was strange and dreamy and so, so beautifully written and for such a teeny tiny book it sent me through a shocking number of emotions. this was lovely and enchanting and sad and heartbreaking. gosh. 4/5.
March 6, 2023
“Let life be a lovely cemetery.”
This book feels like you’re watching the fleeting beauty of fall. It’s beautiful but tragic in that you know it will end. There is something magical in its melancholy though. Definitely one to sit with and re-read. The poignant prose will linger with me for a while.
I did receive this book as an ARC but that did not influence my thoughts or opinions about it.
This book feels like you’re watching the fleeting beauty of fall. It’s beautiful but tragic in that you know it will end. There is something magical in its melancholy though. Definitely one to sit with and re-read. The poignant prose will linger with me for a while.
I did receive this book as an ARC but that did not influence my thoughts or opinions about it.
April 30, 2023
Beautifully and often poetically written, October Animals might leave a little to be desired in the plot department, but its brisk 92 pages encapsulate the essence of the fall and the time when the veil between life and death, this world and the other(s), is thinnest. A fun, fast read.
March 30, 2023
Review to come
June 5, 2024
October Animals by Nicholas Day.
A short, but in no way light read dealing with loss and metamorphosis. Perfect for the more poetically and ambiguously inclined reader this spooky season (even if it was a bit too heavy for me)
A short, but in no way light read dealing with loss and metamorphosis. Perfect for the more poetically and ambiguously inclined reader this spooky season (even if it was a bit too heavy for me)
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews