Fall is my absolute favorite season, from sweater weather to warm honey oat lattes, Halloween decorations in overkill to shorter days and deliciously longer nights, and everything in between. That first day of a lingering chill in the air is pure magic to me. But perhaps the thing I love most of all about fall is the plethora of new books, many of which lean hard into the season’s magic and mystery. Here are seven magical fall titles I can’t wait to cozy up with as nights runs ever deeper and darker.
For those who like romances with a sprinkle of delicious food, Best Hex Ever by Nadia El-fassi and Deja Brew by Celeste Martine serve up spicy and sweet romances centering around cooking. In Best Hex Ever, a kitchen witch in London with a nasty curse that gives anyone who falls for her some serious bad luck has had enough and decides to try breaking the curse after falling for the best man at her best friend’s wedding. In Deja Brew, ex-celebrity chef Sirena Caraway’s cooking magic, and subsequently her life, has gone haywire. After a huge mishap, she makes a desperate wish just before midnight on Halloween and finds herself stuck repeating the same magical month. When Gus, currently a non-practitioner, asks her for help deciphering a mysterious cookbook, she realizes he may be the key to getting her life and her magic back on track. This sweet slow-burn perfectly captures the warmth and magic of fall.
Destiny Soria offers up a cozy romantasy nod to You’ve Got Mail in The Cottage Around the Corner. Charlie Sparrow, proprietor of her family’s struggling magic shop finds herself pitted against Fitz, owner of the new the big business magic shop trying to gain a foothold in town, to solve a mysterious magical pandemic that’s causing everyone’s spells to go haywire. Their intense rivalry does nothing to dispel the increasing chemistry between them, and when the town council has to vote on whether to allow Fitz’s business to stay, it’s not just Charlie’s livelihood at stake.
The Lovers by Rebekah Faubion is a fluffy, sapphic rom-com set against the backdrop of a destination wedding at Joshua Tree National Park, influencer culture, and tarot readings. Despite being told by a fortune-teller at age twelve that they were twin flames and destined to be together, childhood best friends Kit and Julia fall out after a failed romance in high school. Ten years later, they get a second chance when they end up working at the same celebrity wedding.
In Bright I Burn, Irish author Molly Aitken (winner of the Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction) weaves a fierce tale about the first woman accused of witchcraft in Ireland. Born in the thirteenth century to a wealthy tavern owner, Alice vows never to suffer the fate of her mother and instead learns the family trade, discovering a talent for business. With three dead husbands and set to marry a fourth, Alice draws the suspicious eye of the Church and faces a growing tide of public resentment over her wealth and status, leading to deadly accusations.
Saving the best for last, my most anticipated fall reads are The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society by C.M. Waggoner, and The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy. Described as a “mix of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Murder, She Wrote,” (I want it NOW!) The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society features a librarian with a penchant for finding dead people, and a talent for finding out who murdered them. With bodies piling up and her cat possessed by a supposedly ancient demon, she realizes there may be something supernatural afoot in her small town. I’ll read anything Margaret Killjoy wants to write, especially when it’s the opener of a new fantasy series featuring trans witchcraft. The Sapling Cage follows Lorel, a trans witch-in-training who must hide her identity from the coven of female-only militant witches as they work to uncover the source of a mysterious land rot threatening the entire kingdom, while fending off ruthless knights sworn to a power-hungry Dutchess.
Click here to see the full list of fall books I’m most excited to read.
~ posted by V.
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