Do you have any books you read in the fall? These three are my favorites that I have to read every year. I’m super late on this Blogtober post however here it goes!
The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit
I don’t know why these books feel like fall. Perhaps its because Bilbo and Frodo’s birthday are in the fall near mine. Maybe its the connection to nature that goes throughout all of the books even though they take place over the span of the year.
Amazon: Lord of the Rings and The HobbitAmazon: Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit
Ghosts
A love story to grief, family and The Day of the Dead. Catrina doesn’t want to think about the fact that her little sister Maya is sick. Even as her family is moving to the coast of Northern California because her little sister because the weather there helps her little sister’s cystic fibrosis.
She also isn’t excited about leaving her friends and going to a whole new town. But her sister and she soon meet a boy who lets them in on a town secret, their new town of Bahía de la Luna, has ghosts.
Maya longs to meet one but Catrina wants nothing to do with the idea. It makes her think too much about Maya’s own mortality.
But as the veil between the world of the living and the dead thins, Catrina must find a way to put aside her fears for her sisters’ sake and perhaps her own?
Small Spaces
A new favorite I just found this year. Ollie is reeling over losing someone in her family the year before, she wants to shut everyone out. She doesn’t even want to take part in things she used to love. They remind her too much of the person she lost. But soon she’ll find herself becoming part of a mystery after she finds a woman about to throw away a book by a river.
Ollie saves the book and starts reading it, forgetting her grief for a moment as she gets caught up in the story of a woman named Beth, two missing brothers and the mysterious ‘smiling man’.
Things get even weirder as Ollie goes on a class trip and discovers that the story in her book might be real. She finds the graves of the people she’s been reading about in the book. When the school bus she and her class are riding on breaks down, she wonders if the ‘smiling man’ might be real as well. Especially when her watch that has previously been broken starts a countdown to nightfall and flashes the word RUN.
Only Ollie and two of her classmates Coco and Brian decide to take the warning seriously, getting off the bus and heading into the woods, with a field of scarecrows watch them from the farm. The scarecrows aren’t what they seem, and neither is the farm, leaving Ollie, Coco, and Brian in for a night of terror as they try and solve the mystery of ‘the smiling man’ and Ollie’s book while making it out alive.
Love Sugar Magic: A Dash of Trouble
Another book focused on The Day of the Dead. Leonora Logroño’s family are bakers in fact they own the most popular bakery in Leonora’s small-town Rose Hill. The family makes cakes for all occasions but the biggest event is the annual Dia de Los Muertos festival.
Leo has dreamed every year of helping her family prepare for the festival, but she’s always told she’s too young. Leo’s curiosity is peaked when she notices something strange at the bakery and sneaks out of school to check on her family.
What she finds is surprising, her mother, aunt, and four older sisters are not just bakers: they’re brujas—witches of Mexican ancestry. They add their magic to everything they make.
Finding out she has magical powers make Leo more determined to join the family business than ever before. But she needs a little bit of practice before she lets her family know she knows the family secret.
So when her best friend Caroline has a problem that looks like it could be solved with magic, Leo can’t help herself from jumping in to assist her friend. After all, she figures it’s just one little spell, what could possibly go wrong?
The first in a series by Anna Meriano.
What are some of your favorite books for the season?