If you’re a falling leaves and cozy nights kind of reader, it’s the season for your best reads. Fill your TBR (and your evenings) with books that are all about falling in (and sometimes out of) love. From Los Angeles to Paris and back and from modern-day to the Regency period, there’s plenty of drama in these pages.
Such Lovely Skin by Tatiana Schlote-Bonne
Everything feels safer and more anonymous online. At least, it does for Twitch streamer Viv. After the accidental death of her little sister, Viv returns to streaming, diving into a horror game that will boost her numbers and her payout.
In the game, an NPC asks Viv for a secret. Thinking that a creature that is only bits of code can’t harm her, she tells the NPC the truth: she caused the accident that killed her sister. The NPC wasn’t an NPC at all. It is a demonic mimic.
To defeat the mimic taking over life, Viv has to repair the damage her lying has done to her relationships. Her only ally is a former victim of her meanness and bullying, Ash. Will their newfound friendship be enough to save Viv’s reputation and her life?
If you like: Horror, sci-fi, video games, paranormal, mystery, thrillers
Aisle Nine by Ian X. Cho
Well, this is awkward. Jasper was already trying to navigate his nobody status when the portals to hell started opening up. Now, even more on his own than before, Jasper tries to get by working as a checkout clerk at the Here For You discount mart—which also happens to house a hell portal in aisle nine.
The only benefit of the dangerous workplace is that it lets Jasper spend time around his crush Kyle Kuan. Kyle is a junior member of the monster-fighting Vanguard. She also hates him.
When Jasper and Kyle share an apocalyptic vision, they become an unlikely team, trying to stop the demons, portals, and life’s less obvious monsters.
If you like: Romance, contemporary, coming of age, travel, Paris
Accidental Demons by Clare Edge
Bernadette Crowley is the youngest in a long line of witches. Normally, these witches are used to summoning demons, you know, the helpful kind that clean your room or run errands. All they have to do is prick their fingers and cast a spell, but for Ber who has diabetes, finger pricks aren’t just for spellcasting.
Every time she tests her blood sugar, a demon makes its way into the human dimension. These unchecked summonings are becoming a problem, but Ber and her older sister, Maeve, have a solution. They just need a blood-sugar-monitoring demon to keep the finger pricking to a minimum! Too bad nothing is every that simple, and danger for the entire coven is lurking right around the corner.
If you like: Magic, fantasy, urban fantasy, witches, paranormal, sisterhood
The Hysterical Girls of St. Bernadette’s by Hanna Alkaf
St. Bernadette’s is the boarding school. It’s reputation for churning out the best of the best stands out over everything else—except the screaming.
The school’s reputation (and the girls’ sanity) are at stake when one student’s class-interrupting scream turns into a schoolwide panic. After one day, 17 St. Bernadette’s girls are affected by the hysteria.
Khadijah is not one of the screaming girls, but watching her friends and her sister fall victim to it one by one is its own kind of trauma.
Rachel thinks chasing her dreams while living up to her mother’s lofty expectations is enough to keep her distracted from the screaming until she starts screaming herself.
Khadijah and Rachel team up to uncover what’s going on at St. Bernadette’s, uncovering the school’s dark history in the process. Can they save their classmates or are they in over their heads?
If you like: Dark academia, horror, thrillers, boarding school, long reads
Welcome to Fear City by Sarah Dvojack
It’s the summer of 1977 and New York City is glued to the news as a serial killer runs rampant through the city, but 17-year-old Sylvie Stroud has other problems.
Sylvie is dealing with a dark magic problem. She can see the past of any building she touches, and recently, she witnessed the memory of a teenage girl’s murder. She didn’t touch a building to see the memory, and soon the vision begins to replay on its own.
While Sylvie tries to investigate the murder, her own magic is drawing in something much darker. A parasitic magic is waking up, and it wants Sylvie. The more she digs into the murder, the more danger she, and everyone she loves, could be in.
If you like: Thriller, horror, serial killers, New York City, historical fiction,
