must be the season (to read about) the witch AGAIN

if you do reels or TikTok at all that song will never leave you

My latest book, Playing the Witch Card is finding its place in the world (If you have not yet bought one for you and one for everyone else you know do so HERE). My book about a reluctant witch coping with her flaky but uber-confident steamy-romance writer mom and the spell said mom has put on her ex that must be kept from her magic-obsessed teen is having a great spooky season, probably because it’s The Chicken Sisters but make it witches with an “unexpectedly twisty ending”.

BUT YOU ALREADY HAVE THAT (or you should!) Thus it is time to discuss… OTHER WITCHY/FALL READS.

I have a #tbr of witchy books that’s growing daily (although the holiday books have just begun a similar pile, so I may have reached the end of witchy acquisitions). (BTW—none of these are affiliate links. They’re just links.)

JANE AUSTEN PEEPS: If I haven’t persuaded you to read The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch yet, you haven’t been listening. It’s Pride and Prejudice from the background—you can see all the usual P&P things happening but you’re with LYDIA and she has PROBLEMS and it’s amazing and I love it and it’s now out in paperback.

FanFic fans, Buffy fans, Twilight stans: grab Fang Fiction. Yes, she’s caught in the turns-out-it’s-real world of her fave vampire series but also turns out the writer of the series has it all wrong. Super fun!

I adored Such Sharp Teeth by Rachel Harrison. What’s it really like to turn into a werewolf? It sucks… and it bears a remarkable resemblance to being pregnant, and has some bad-ass feminist implications and turns out to be an incredibly thoughtful and also incredibly creepy read. Her latest is So Thirsty (think vampires) and her witchiest and maybe my fave is Cackle.

Alix Harrow’s Starling House (or go back for The Once and Future Witches). I’m absolutely in for this fantastic and fantastical story of a house that I suspect isn’t exactly haunted, its guardian and the—additional guardian? possible mate?—that the house seems to have marked as its own.

For all out pure solid witchy fun (and all the variously gendered iterations of human and not-quite-human romantic entanglement) your first stop should be Thistle Grove. Rise and Divine is the fifth in a series that begins with Payback’s a Witch, and I think you should grab it if you’ve done the first four or absolutely start at the beginning as these get witchier, more complex and more delightful with each successive book and although you don’t HAVE to start with #1 you won’t be sorry. Imagine a whole book that’s the most deliciously I-Want-to-Live-There parts of the Harry Potter series and then some.

If you loved Mistborn and haven’t read Shadow and Bone, do. Or vice-versa. And if you’re at all open to fantasy and would like to entirely forget where you are for a few hours, Shadow and Bone is for you. Got more time? Mistborn, friend.

For fans of Such Sharp Teeth or Mexican Gothic: The Witches of Bone Hill, a slightly lighter-hearted but equally creepy story of making a fragile peace with magic gone terribly awry with a nice little love story tucked in there just for fun.

For Taylor Jenkins Reid fans, Acts of Violet, about a magician who disappears during her final performance and whose magic just may not be entirely staged and the sister who both hates her and has never stopped looking for her. Honest side note: for me, this tried to hard to make the magical elements of the story “possible”—an authorial urge that I totally relate to—but I wholeheartedly enjoyed the story and I think you will to. (Plus, paperback! Or very library-friendly, as it’s not new this year and there’s probably no wait.)

Want Ninth House vibes? Ink Blood Sister Scribe, I read this last summer—cheating! Not October at all! but I loved it so much I can’t leave it off my witchy list—although these characters don’t identify as witches, but more as librarians and creators of some extremely magic spell books. One sister has the job of tending the library that killed her father, the other has been told never to return or tell her sister of her banishment. They want to know why, and so will you.

I passed an entertaining couple of hours with Witches Get Stuff Done, mostly because of the housefull of ghosts that has to be managed by this very surprised witch and heir and her very specific magic, and will probably read the sequel. Not gonna lie—it was 50% off when I grabbed it in a paperback book sweep at my local Barnes and Noble but there was a lot of stuff there that didn’t grab me—this did! And I was right, I liked it, it was a well-spent $8 or whatever.

Finally, one for my Princess Bride people out there: Assistant to the Villain. It’s an oddly modern and practical (and vicious and dangerous) fairy tale world, and villains need staff, because there is paperwork to track. Benefits, hiring and, well, not firing because the Villain doesn’t just fire you, of course. Far worse. But still there are details, and also an adorable romance, and ultimately—just like The Princess Bride—what seems like silly little dollop of whipped cream froth turns out to have much more heart. Warning: it ends on a next-book-coming cliff hanger, which made me very angry for about ten minutes and then excited for what’s to come. Because the sequel’s out now too—Apprentice to the Villain. V. Fun. There’s a third book coming but now that I know what I’m in for, it’s fine. I’m with you, trilogy, spreadges and all. (Sprayed edges—as in, they’re red and in the second book, purple. I think this makes it feel festive. I’m here for them.)

WHEW! That’s a lot of witchy books. Are you in or out on the whole witch thing?