Preparing for Spooky Season with Team BookCrushin

We here at BookCrushin are both big fans of reading with the seasons and Spooky Season happens to be our favorite! The multitude of genres and possibilities to read for #SpkySzn makes putting together list of recommendations even more fun. Today we each share some recs and our TBR as well as some of the movies and tv we are watching, what we are listening to, and how we are celebrating this spooky season!

Happy Autumn!

What We are Reading

Spooky Season has the biggest set of rec lists. We have consistently put together extensive lists each year. It’s almost like we love this season? Check out this year’s additions and some of our favs from years past below!

Christy’s Recs:

I feel like I’ve maxed out on recs from all the years past but here’s some additions since last spooky season!

• The Dead Romantics by Ashley Poston
• The Perfect Marriage by Jeneva Rose
• The Coldest Touch by Isabel Sterling
• Dead End Girls by Wendy Heard
• My Imaginary Mary by Jodi Meadows, Cynthia Hand, and Brodi Ashton
• Dark Room Etiquette by Robin Roe (bonus – Christy is holding a live with Robin on October 18th at 6pm MST)
• Stranger Things: The Tomb of Ybwen by Greg Pak

Christy’s TBR:

• Long Live the Pumpkin Queen by Shea Ernshawv (I think a buddy read with Kelly is in order)
• Big Bad by Lily Anderson – An alternative reality Buffy story!
• To Break a Covenant by Alison Ames – A carryover from last year. I’m halfway through and OBSESSED.
• Star Wars: Dark Legends by George Mann – You want the dark side? You get the dark side.
• Three Kisses, One Midnight by Roshani Chokshi, Evelyn Skye, and Sandhya Menon – Witchy anthology? I’m in.
• A Flicker in the Dark by Stacy Willingham – This was a rec from a friend!
• These Fleeting Shadows by Kate Alice Marshall – As long as I have one KAM book during spooky season, I’m happy.
• Ravenfall by Kalyn Josephson – I mean, have you seen the comps?

Kelly’s Recs:

• Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas – Paranormal, Queer, & Magic!
• Coven by Jennifer Dugan – Witches, Queer, & Magic graphic novel!
• City of Ghosts series by VE Schwab – Middle Grade, Paranormal series that’s really scary!
• The Witchlings by Claribel A. Ortega – Middle Grade, Friendship, & Magic!
• Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo – Adult, Dark Academia College, Southern Gothic, Curses & Cars!
• The Ex Hex by Erin Sterling – Adult, RomCom, Curses & Witches!

Kelly’s TBR:

• The Witch Hunt (The Witch Haven #2) by Sasha Peyton Smith – Witches, Magic, & a lush Paris setting! Releases October 11th!
• Long Live the Pumpkin Queen by Shea Ernshaw – Sally’s story & NYT #1 bestseller! Available Now!
• The Kiss Curse (The Ex Hex #2) by Erin Sterling – the sequel adult witchy romance! Available Now!
• Hide by Kiersten White – Abandoned amusement park, Paranormal Thriller! Available Now!
• Big Bad by Lily Anderson – All the Buffyverse villains…yes, please! September 27th!

Spooky Seasons Past Recs

• We started celebrating early this year with some recs from Pagestreet Books!
• 2021’s Spooky Season recs were full of queer picks (as usual).
• Why is middle grade so dang scary? 2018 had lots of great middle grade picks!
• We read so much spooky stuff in 2019 we had to break it down by sub genre. Check out our ghosts and ghouls, mysteries and thrillers, cults, secret societies, and covens, creatures, and myths, fables, and folklore picks!

What We are Watching

You’ve already seen us talk about Paper Girls – it is the perfect spooky season show! We are also catching up on the second season of Gretchen McNeil’s Get Even series, Boo Bitch, The Sandman, Christopher Pike’s The Midnight Club (yes, our teen years are back in fashion), Soman Chainani’s The School for Good and Evil, Henry Selick and Clay McLeod Chapman’s Wendell & Wild, Grady Hendrix’s My Best Friend’s Exorcism, and Wednesday. No surprise that most of these are book adaptations.

Of course, what is spooky season without some classic Disney? The Nightmare Before Christmas is a must watch and we will do a rewatch of Hocus Pocus before the sequel is out in late September. Christy has also been catching up on the Zombies and Descendents movies!

There’s always the 10th rewatch of Stranger Things. Just us? Ha.

What We are Listening to

Hopefully you’ve already found your Upside Down playlist so you don’t end up taken by Vecna. If you’re looking for additional some spooky season vibes, we have a playlist for you!

How We are Celebrating

Kelly

We usually watch a gaggle of movies and shows each year, like it’s a rule that we must watch Hocus Pocus, Rocky Horror Picture Show, Nightmare Before Christmas, and now we usually rewatch The Haunting of Hill House, and The Haunting of Bly Manor, not sure if we will rewatch Midnight Mass, but looking forward to The Midnight Club – guess we are Mike Flanagan Spooky Season fans!

My block is usually devoid of trick-or-treaters, but as per the rest of the year, you’ll catch me wearing all black and eating the candy we bought cause no one comes by!

Christy

I’ve already started my spooky season celebrations by heading to Disneyland for their Halloween party (twice! haha). Walt Disney World does Halloween too but not as big as Disneyland. Disneyland is the place to be for Halloween. The first night, I dressed as Minnie in her 2022 Halloween costume (the theme this year is “homemade costumes.”) and the second night I did a joint bound as Meg to Chris’ Herc and Andie’s Hades. I even got to meet Hercules dressed as Meg. He was very disturbed at the deal I made with Hades.

Of course, for actual Halloween we will be celebrating….at Disney World HAHA. We extended our trip by a day to hang out at Disney. Here’s a shocker: our costumes are NOT Disney related. We decided and bought them months ago, long before we extended the trip (which was only last week). The costumes are “normal” enough to wear them in the parks so catch us wearing a non-Disney costume in EPCOT. Usually we celebrate the weekend before but I will be in Vegas for the pop punk revival at When We Were Young fest.

Several years ago, I decided I wanted to decorate my house in a specific theme but had not been able to execute on it. This year, even though I am traveling 6 out of 8 weekends leading up to Halloween, I decided to go all in. I can’t WAIT to show you all. It already looks amazing and we’ve only begun!

The Witch Hunt (The Witch Haven, #2)

by Sasha Peyton Smith
on October 11, 2022
Goodreads

The lush and pulse-pounding sequel to the New York Times bestselling The Witch Haven follows Frances and her fellow witches to the streets of Paris where family secrets, lost loves, and dangerous magic await.
Months after the devastating battle between the Sons of St. Druon and the witches of Haxahaven, Frances has built a quiet, safe life for herself, teaching young witches and tending the garden within the walls of Haxahaven Academy. But one thing nags; her magic has begun to act strangely. When an opportunity to visit Paris arises, Frances jumps at the chance to go, longing for adventure and seeking answers about her own power.
Once she and her classmates Maxine and Lena reach the vibrant streets of France, Frances learns that the spell she used to speak to her dead brother has had terrible consequences—the veil between the living and the dead has been torn by her recklessness, and a group of magicians are using the rift for their own gain at a horrifying cost.
To right this wrong, and save lives and her own magical powers, Frances must hunt down answers in the parlors of Parisian secret societies, the halls of the Louvre, and the tunnels of the catacombs. Her only choice is to team up with the person she swore she’d never trust again, risking further betrayal and her own life in the process.