10 Books From my Shelf to Get You Into the Spooky Season

We meet again!

Guys, tomorrow is October 1st, which means that we are officially in spooky season. I know some people begin in August, and I personally started decorating at least a week ago if not longer. BUT now there's no denying it, the ghosts and ghouls are here, y'all. To celebrate, here are 10 books that I pulled from my shelf that can help get just about anyone into the season. Here we go :)

#1 - The Haunted by Danielle Vega. Anyone that knows anything about Vega, knows that she's great at weaving spooky tales. The Haunting follows Hendricks, her parents and her baby brother, who have re-located to a new town to get away from Hendricks's possessive and abusive ex. Rather than buying a brand-new, ready to live in home, her parents purchase Steele House, which Hendricks very quickly learns has a dark and awful past. With the help of her neighbor, who isn't exactly the boy-next-door type (much to the dismay of her new, popular friends) Hendricks starts to unweave the tale of what makes her new home go bump in the night. Which leads to...

#2 - The Unleashed, also by Danielle Vega. This is the sequel to The Haunted, and it picks up where The Haunted left off. Hendricks believes that she's defeated Steele House, though she lost much in the process. However, if she thought that she could leave all the ghouls behind and try and forget about it all, she was sorely mistaken. Though heavily shaken up, and with one temporarily out of the game, the popular crowd still wants Hendricks around, none so much as the most popular guy in town. While trying to find answers and/or closure from Steele House and the happenings there, Hendricks dives face-first into a new slue and ghosts and tragic backstories. This time, they might not all make it out.

#3 - There's Someone Inside Your House by Stephanie Perkins. Y'all, I got genuinely stoked when I saw that they have made this one into a Netflix film (coming to a screen near you SOON). Kind of like The Haunted, all Makani wanted was a fresh start and to leave her old life behind. However, she quickly learns that all of her troubles aren't so easy to outrun as her new fellow classmates begin to be picked off one-by-one in gruesome ways. Connecting with the outcast (yes, I'm sensing a pattern here) Makani realizes that she's going to have to confront her past if she wants the murders to end.

#4 - Final Girls by Riley Sager. OKAY, I was hugely excited for this book. I am a big, big fan of slasher films and thrillers and the term "final girls" is kind of embedded in my soul. Ten years after being the only survivor when a murdered attacked her and her friends, Quincy has worked hard to have a life again. Though she is often lumped into the Final Girls group in the media, she doesn't have much to do with any of them. Until one of them is found dead. Then, Sam, another Final Girl, shows up and turns Quincy's entire life upside down. Of course, the book climaxes when everything that she thought that she left in the past comes back to haunt her, and possibly finish her off.

#5 - Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart. I'm going to give a disclaimer right now. I know that We Were Liars is like, a SUPER popular book by E. Lockhart, but I really didn't like it. I decided to order this one because it sounded really interesting and I wanted to give the author another chance. I honestly can't explain much about this book that isn't going to instantly give it all away, but with a book that has chapters that go from the end to the beginning and characters that you know from the start that you're not supposed to be trusting, I guarantee you it is a wild ride of a mystery.

#6 - The House by Christina Lauren. This one definitely upped the creep factor for me. There is just something about old houses that seem to have a life and mind of their own that gets me. This book is through the eye of Delilah, who has returned home after many years at boarding school, finding herself smitten with Gavin Timothy. The issue with Gavin, though, is his house. It's a strange house that's in the middle of nowhere and though Gavin returns his feelings for Delilah, his house has a hold on him that is not going to easily let go. Gavin likes Delilah, but Gavin's house does not. The house has taken care of Gavin for years, but will he see the sinister intentions before it's too late for his beloved?

#7 - Even if We Break by Marieke Nijkamp. Five friends that aren't exactly friendly anymore decide to spend one last weekend together at a cabin in the woods. What could possibly go wrong, right? They are cosplaying a game that they used to love playing together but it soon becomes apparent that some of the rifts that have come between them may be too big to repair. As the night continues and the game turns more sinister, with members of the game disappearing and... appendages showing up disconnected from the body? It becomes tantamount for the group to band together one last time, put their lies and differences aside, and come out on the other side of the night alive.

#8 - Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo. Oh my gosh, who doesn't love Leigh? Her Grishaverse has enthralled so many that she was picked up for a show on Netflix, that I personally devoured and loved. Ninth House was credited as her first foray into the adult novel genre and though I wasn't expecting what came out of it, I found myself pulled in. Galaxy (Alex) Stern has had a really hard life, one that she doesn't expect to get much better, until her life unexpectedly turns around after a night full of death and tragedy. She is whisked into a life of magic, death and mayhem at Yale University, where she discovers that the history of the organizations at the campus are more sinister than ever believed before.

#9 - One Was Lost by Natalie D. Richards. I discovered Richards last year and I have been pleasantly pleased with her novels. She writes mysteries and thrillers very well and the atmospheres that she lays out are always very addicting. Against her better judgment, Sera joins her senior camping trip, thinking that with the supervision they would all be safe. Right? Well, if that were really the case, it wouldn't be much of a story, now would it? The group gets separated into two parts and Sera is not sure who she can trust. Clues start popping up that quickly show the groups that they are being stalked by someone following them through the woods. Sera doesn't have much choice but to trust in the ones around her, even though she has reason not to. With words penned on them, and Sera's being the only seemingly good one... is she responsible, or not?

#10 - Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas. This one is diverting from the stories that I have put on this list so far, but I thought that we needed a little supernatural FUN in this list. Oh how I enjoyed reading Cemetery Boys, which dives into lure, culture, ghosts and the LGBTQ+ community. Yadriel is transgender and a part of a family that is full of brujos and brujas that can summon ghosts, put them to rest and heal people. Yadriel wants to go through the ritual to become a brujo, though his family insists that it won't work because he will be recognized as a bruja. However, Yadriel proves them all wrong when he unwittingly summons the wrong ghost, who is classmate Julian Diaz. He's spellbinding, and hell-bent on finding out exactly what happened to him before he passes on. Yadriel decides to help Julian, and it's definitely not because he really wants to keep him around or anything. But how long can the two of them keep this up before Yadriel's family finds out or Julian takes a turn for the worst?

Check out my Goodreads (Traci Bishop) to see what I’m currently reading and to see a good chunk of the books I have already read. My Instagram can be found on the home page and I will share whenever a new post is up as well!

Until next time <3