Welcome to The Best of Book Riot, our daily round-up of what’s on offer across our site, newsletters, podcasts, and social channels. Not everything is for everyone, but there is something for everyone.
October means it is officially fall and spooky season! And a new month always brings the book club’s pick announcements. I really love seeing what these book clubs have picked, especially since they are all so different from each other. They also allow readers to participate as little or as much as is best for them. All the book clubs are either virtual or have virtual components, and at least two also have in-person meetings if you like to chat IRL.
We’re getting at this fall thing from all angles. There are cozy books by BIPOC authors, dead boos in ghost romances, and a new book — The Complete Book of Origami: A Beginner’s Guide to the Most Popular Folded Paper Models by Shufunotomo — to help you learn a craft that I suspect will be great for when you’re listening to audiobooks.
Over the years, gothics have evolved past the sapphic subtext in novels like Rebecca to canonical queer main characters. They’ve also gotten a bit more diverse, though I’d like to see a lot more by authors of colour. October is the perfect time to enjoy a queer gothic novel, so light a candle, curl up under a blanket, and pick up one of these queer gothics.
Indigenous identities are, unfortunately, vastly underrepresented in traditional publishing. The good news is that this is (slowly) starting to change. The success of bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones has made a huge impact in creating space for Indigenous voices in horror, which has expanded into mysteries, thrillers, and other types of crime fiction and nonfiction. There’s still a lot of room to grow.
I’m not saying that all the witches in the novels on this list are feminist symbols. Many of them are (to varying degrees), but even for the witchy novels that aren’t explicitly invested in exploring female empowerment, it’s interesting to think about the ways witches can function as symbols of empowerment more broadly.
And also, it’s fall, so let’s read about some witches, y’all.
I like a witch romance where their powers are relevant to the story and have an impact on both the witch’s character and their eventual romantic relationship with whomever they fall in love with. As a fan of early 2000s paranormal, I tend to like a bit of plot too. The following delightful witchy romances are a mere sampling of my favorites, but I hope you have a fun time with them nonetheless.