my spooky season tbr (2024)

I don't know about you, but I have a terrible habit of putting off my most anticipated spooky reads for September/October. There are simply not enough days in a month for me to get to everything! And yet year after year I postpone reading certain books until the autumnal atmosphere arrives. (This is why I'll never manage to empty my tbr, lol)

Since there's a little overlap with the upcoming releases for Oct, these are my most anticipated* tbr picks.

*that weren't already mentioned in a previous post 😅

A staple to spooky season is this genre that I like to refer to as surreal horror lit. It normally features some sort of disaffected, female protagonist who is in her mid twenties and drifting aimlessly through life and then either gets sucked into someone else's cult or develops her own strange fixation.

From what I know, both of these books sound like they'll fit the bill. There's some cannibalism (omnom) but also some beautiful writing-- interspersed with some very what-the-fuck writing. I can't wait.

Though I read a ton of books (honestly too many) it's not often that I start to consider a new author as a favourite. But after initially reading Rachel Harrison's Black Sheep last year and then dipping further into her back catalog in 2024, I think she could be a contender.

So to start off October, I'm going to be tackling all of her books (6 to date) and hopefully blogging about it. There are already some consistent themes I've noticed in her writing, but I'm also curious to see how she's evolved over time.

You may not yet know this about me, but Dark Academia is one of my all-time favourite subgenres (Gideon the Ninth is the ultimate dark academia book and someday I'll write a post telling you all the reasons why).

A Deadly Education is an absolute comfort read for me, also the second most read book I own, and it just feels right to welcome the back-to-school season with a return to my favourite deadly magical school.

I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast is Me is another re-read which I'm planning to do right before dipping into my ARC of the sequel. This book honestly took me by surprise with how much I liked it. Like obviously the title is an 11/10 banger and the cover is gorgeous, but I didn't expect to become as engrossed as I did.

Lastly, Blood Over Bright Haven and An Academy for Liars are both releases from authors I've read before. I think my hype for BOBH is insurmountably high at this point and I'm not sure it can live up to it, but AAfL has set my expectations so low that I'm not sure I cant manage to at least trip and accidentally find it went better than I expected, lol.

There are also a whole bunch of new releases coming out from authors I've loved before! Some are sequels (like Throne of Secrets and On Vicious Worlds), and others are new standalones.

I'm not gonna lie, I'm a little nervous for most of these:

While I was absolutely blown away by House of Roots and Ruin last year, I didn't really care for Small Favors by the same author; but I'm hopeful The Thirteenth Child will be a win.

Rest Stop will be Nat Cassidy's first male protagonist (I think) and I'm curious if he'll still be able to capture the same magic.

The surprise twist and the petty, driving relationship made These Burning Stars a compelling af read, but I don't know that the sequel On Vicious Worlds will be able to produce that investment and excitement again, especially without re-treading old ground.

And I absolutely love the Garlic series from Bree Paulsen, but I've never seen her write anything else. So I'm very hopeful this will be similarly charming and autumnal while being totally different in scope, setting, and coziness factor.

What reads are you most looking forward to next month?