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t’s October! Not only are we in full fall mode – the leaves have changed, the colors are gorgeous, a crisp is in the air, Hocus Pocus is playing practically every other day. October is also full blown spooky season with Halloween at the end of the month. I have decided to dedicate all of the books I am reading this October to be spooky! Really get myself into the spirit. 

When the weather starts to cool down and the leaves begin to change, there’s nothing quite like curling up with a good book. Whether you’re turning your attention to spooky stories of witches and vampires or chilling thrillers, or just a suspenseful mystery that’ll keep you up all night because you just need to find out what’s going to happen next.

I asked last week for y’all’s reccommendations on your favorite spooky reads and there were so many! I rounded them up, also with some that I found that look like they would be good!

Spooky Reads To Curl Up With This October

The Silent Patient

Alicia seemingly has a perfect life, until one day her husband comes home, she shoots him, and then never speaks another word. Her refusal to speak makes her case notorious, and I promise, you won’t guess a single thing that happens—from beginning to end. Voted the best thriller of 2019, this one is worth the hype.

The Last Thing He Told Me

We all have stories we never tell. Before Owen Michaels disappears, he manages to smuggle a note to his beloved wife of one year: Protect her. Hannah quickly realizes her husband isn’t who he said he was. And that Bailey, his 16 year old daughter, just may hold the key to figuring out Owen’s true identity—and why he really disappeared.

Then She Was Gone

Ellie Mack was the perfect daughter at age fifteen. And then she was gone. Now, her mother Laurel Mack is trying to put her life back together. It’s been ten years since her daughter disappeared. When she meets an unexpectedly charming man in a café, and before she knows it, she is meeting his youngest, Poppy. Looking at Poppy is like looking at Ellie. The unanswered questions she’s tried so hard to stop thinking about, begin to haunt Laurel once again. Where did Ellie go? Did she really run away from home, as the police have long suspected, or was there another reason for her disappearance?

Mexican Gothic

After receiving a frantic letter from her newlywed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. Mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, she may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.

The Guest List

On an island off the coast of Ireland, guests gather to celebrate two people joining their lives together as one. The groom: handsome and charming, a rising television star. The bride: smart and ambitious, a magazine publisher. But perfection is for plans. the groomsmen begin the drinking game from their school days. The bridesmaid not-so-accidentally ruins her dress. The bride’s oldest (male) friend gives an uncomfortably caring toast. Then someone turns up dead.

The Hunting Wives

Sophie O’Neill left behind an envy-inspiring career and the stressful, competitive life of big-city Chicago to settle down with her husband and young son in a small Texas town. She meets Margot Banks, an alluring socialite who is part of an elite clique secretly known as the Hunting Wives. Sophie finds herself completely drawn to Margot and swept into her mysterious world of late-night target practice and dangerous partying. When the body of a teenage girl is discovered in the woods where the Hunting Wives meet, Sophie finds herself in the middle of a murder investigation and her life spiraling out of control.

The Woman In The Window

This book is about an agoraphobic woman living alone in New York who spies on her neighbors and witnesses abuse — and it keeps you guessing the entire time. P.S. didn’t even watch the movie because I heard it was a waste of time.

Sharp Objects

Of the Gillian Flynn books, “Gone Girl” by far got the most hype, but don’t discount her other novels. It follows a journalist who goes back to her hometown after a young girl is found murdered, but gets more tied into it than she assumed. If you want a fun little project, read this, and then watch the HBO series starring Amy Adams.

The 7 1/2 Deaths Of Evelyn Hardcastle

A party ends in tragedy when Evelyn Hardcastle is killed, but she doesn’t just die once. Aiden Bishop knows the rules. Evelyn Hardcastle will die every day until he can identify her killer and break the cycle. But every time the day begins again, Aiden wakes up in the body of a different guest at Blackheath Manor.

The Wife Upstairs

Meet Jane. Newly arrived to Birmingham, Alabama, Jane is a broke dog-walker in Thornfield Estates—a gated community full of McMansions, shiny SUVs, and bored housewives. With delicious suspense, incisive wit, and a fresh, feminist sensibility, this book flips the script on the timeless tale of forbidden romance, and a wife who just won’t stay buried. 

The Woman In Cabin 10

A Ruth Ware gem, this book follows a journalist who goes on a press trip on a luxury boat, where she witnesses a murder that has her questioning throughout the entire story. The worst part? She’s trapped on the boat.

Survive The Night

Charlie is moving home from college after she can’t move past her roommate’s murder. She hitches a ride from a fellow student—who she realizes might be her roommate’s murderer after she’s already in the car with him.

Rock Paper Scissors

Things have been wrong with Mr and Mrs Wright for a long time. When Adam and Amelia win a weekend away to Scotland, it might be just what their marriage needs. Every anniversary the couple exchange traditional gifts – paper, cotton, pottery, tin – and each year Adam’s wife writes him a letter that she never lets him read. Until now. Ten years of marriage. Ten years of secrets and an anniversary they will never forget.

In The Dark

A secluded mountain lodge. The perfect getaway. So remote no one will ever find you. 8 lucky guests have been brought together at the promise of a luxury vacation at a secluded wilderness spa. But nothing is what they were led to believe. As a fierce storm barrels down and all contact with the outside is cut off, the guests fear that it’s not a getaway. It’s a trap.

Not everything needs to be bone-chilling to be get you in the Halloween spirit…

The Ex Hex

Break out the candy corn! This quirky, steamy rom-com about a major post-breakup hex will put a powerful spell on you. Nine years ago, Vivienne Jones nursed her broken heart like any young witch would: vodka, weepy music, bubble baths…and a curse on the horrible boyfriend. Sure, Vivi knows she shouldn’t use her magic this way, but a broken heart can make you do some crazy things.

The Lost Apothecary

Forget healing salves or soothing tinctures. This apothecary specializes in one thing: helping women fight back. Rule #1: The poison must never be used to harm another woman. Rule #2: The names of the murderer and her victim must be recorded in the apothecary’s register. One cold February evening in 1791, at the back of a dark London alley in a hidden apothecary shop, Nella awaits her newest customer. Once a respected healer, Nella now uses her knowledge for a darker purpose—selling well-disguised poisons to desperate women who would kill to be free of the men in their lives.

Hocus Pocus & The All New Sequel

The all-new sequel that continues the story with the next generation of Salem teens. Twenty-five years later, Max and Allison’s seventeen-year-old daughter, Poppy, finds herself face-to-face with the Sanderson sisters in all their sinister glory. When Halloween celebrations don’t quite go as planned, it’s a race against time as Poppy and her friends fight to save her family and all of Salem from the witches’ latest death-defying scheme.

What are you reading this spooky season??

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