Fall Recommendations 2020 🍂🎃 Cozy, Sad, Spooky & Atmospheric stories

Hello fellow bookworms 🍂 It’s officially Fall!!! I’m especially excited about this, as it means at I get to share my recommendations for the season with you again 🥰 I love seasonal reading when it comes to Winter and Fall so I always pick out books that I personally associate with the season 💕 For the colder months this will usually be Fantasy books as I tend to reach for Contemporary books in the summer. Today’s recommendation post includes several genres and this time I separated my recommendations by four different moods that I associate with autumn: Atmospheric, Spooky/Creepy, Cozy, and Sad/Melancholic! 🍂 I thought this would be nice so you can pick the books according to what kind of book you’d most like to pick up!

Time for autumn recs ❤

 🍂 You Might Also Like 🎃

• Time for Fall Recommendations 🍂🎃 feat seasonal favorites ➽ 2019
• Things to Do in Fall (+ Recs) 🍂 ➽ 2018
• Books to read in Fall ➽ 2017

🍂 Atmospheric 🍂

Bring Me Their Hearts (Sara Wolf) ➽ The main character Zera was an absolutely delightful heroine! She is full of snark, determination, and boldness. I actually loved it that the heroine was the one who is ‘the monster’ and fighting to hold on to her humanity so she doesn’t become the person she used to, who enjoys killing others and getting her revenge. I loved also found the worldbuilding to be really interesting There are witches who possess great magical powers and can turn into animals. They are the ones who turn humans into Heartless by cutting out their hearts and keeping them by their side. The whole concept was really cool and unique 💕

Jackaby (William Ritter) ➽ If you’ve been here a while you know I ADORE this book!! It’s set in the 1890s in an American small town called New Fiddleham and involves an eccentric detective who is the one true seer and therefore takes on cases that are supernatural! His new assistant Abigail – who is the one telling the story – quickly gets caught up in his shenanigans and encounters all kinds of creatures that she didn’t think were possible, including a friendly house ghost and a human-turned-duck. I love the mysterious and ominous perspective of this book, it’s also right up my alley with all of the fantasy elements and amazing characters who I all love very much 💗

The Will and the Wilds (Charlie N. Holmberg) ➽ I was really into the world and atmosphere of this bool. The atmosphere is rather ominous and creepy, with the expansive woods that the main character Enna lives close to and the dangers that lurk within.  liked seeing her looking out for herself and her mentally ill father, fighting to stay afloat as they only had each other. Enna’s also very interested in knowing more about the Mystings – demons and creatures that sometimes roam the earth and are very dangerous – and how to protect herself against them. I loved seeing her aspirations to become a scholar and each chapter opens with a new bit of information about her world, which was really interesting to read 😊

👻 Spooky/Creepy 👻

A Blade So Black (L.L. McKinney) ➽  I adored  how A Blade so Black retold Alice in Wonderland. It’s a great, imaginative retelling in which Wonderland is like a whimsical parallel world to ours but also dark and dangerous as you would expect as it’s plagued by Nightmares – negative human emotions that turn into monsters. To face this threat several chosen humans get trained as Dreamwalkers to protect Wonderland! This book is a mix of sinister and ominous threats and how Alice balanced being a hero with everyday life. I liked Alice a lot, she was a fantastic heroine who genuinely cared for her loved ones and would do anything to save them from harm, including taking it up with Wonderland’s biggest terrors 🖤

Wilder Girls (Rory Power) ➽ Honestly one of the best things about this book is The  the atmosphere. The author was really good at making us feel immersed in Raxter Island and the tones of survival and misery that accompanied the sickness that was spreading. This definitely has huge horror elements as the so-called Tox has infected everyone on the island. All the girls that went to school there have developed mutations as a result, with many dying after several toxic flare-ups. The ominous, creepy atmosphere of the illness and the way the girls had hardened in order to survive definitely illustrated the story well. Getting a glimpse into their daily life at school, was very interesting, especially as there were many secrets lurking in the corner 👀

Seven Deadly Shadows (Alameda & Maetani) ➽ As much as I love High Fantasy, I’m all here for more stories where myths and magical creatures coexist among humans. Seven Deadly Shadows is set mainly in Kyoto, Japan, and draws inspiration from the Shinto Religion as well as Japanese Mythology to build its world. The world in Seven Deadly Shadows is divided into humans and yokai. Not all yokai are bad though because a lot of them do no harm to humans . Kira’s family has been tending one of the Shrines dedicated to the sun goddess and have the special ability to see through yokai glamour. I definitely liked all the legends and magic that was shown in the books, especially the shinigami, who are death gods that are the only chance for Kira to defeat the demon king Shutendoji who is rising from the shadows 😱

💗 Cozy 💗

Mooncakes (Xu & Walker) ➽ Mooncakes can be described in one word: heartwarming. Don’t get me wrong, the book deals with a few heavy topics such as recovering from losing a loved one and running away from abusive parents, but it was such a positive force as well. I flew through the graphic novel and would still consider it a great comfort read because there were so many loving dynamics in the story. First if all, the art style is aesthetic, atmospheric and very cute. I also loved the adorable romance, family relationships and great friendships that were represented in the story. Oh and it has got witches as well as shapeshifters, so that’s a cool paranormal twist 💜

The Tea Dragon Society (Katie O’Neill) ➽ This is such a wholesome graphic novel!! The characters are adorable, and I really liked the story behind the tea dragons. Taken together, the art, found family trope and adorable tea dragons make this graphic novel a delight to read. I found myself enjoying the different characters coming together: a blacksmith apprentice with goblin blood who wants to become a part of the forgotten Tea Dragon Society, the last two members of said society and a former priestess who suffers from amnesia. The story really has a diverse set of characters that manages to draw readers in and provides a comforting story 💕

Every Heart a Doorway (Seanan McGuire) ➽ This is part of a pretty well-known novella series, which despite this being short, felt like we got a really well-rounded story with amazing characters that immediately stole my heart. Despite not having much time with them I got a good idea about their personal journeys. The main character Nancy gets welcomed by a lot of the students, including the eccentric Sumi and Kade. All of them are accepting her being different and that alone makes their friendship so great: there’s a big understanding between all of them. Everyone qas ripped from the other worlds they got sucked into and called their homes, so that’s something that connects them 💗

💧 Sad/Melancholic 💧

How to Make Friends with the Dark (Kathleen Glasgow) ➽ I knew going into the book that it would break my heart, as its premise is honestly a horror scenario: losing your mother when you’re young. Unlike most families, Tiger never got to know her father and as her grandparents are dead, she’s suddenly all on her own, which is terrifying as she’s also mourning who she lost. Being thrown in foster care and coping with everything that’s going on is tough and it broke my heart how overwhelmed and numb Tiger was due to the sheer number of things happening to her all at once. The book explores the journey of losing someone you love and grieving for everything you have lost 💔

Salt to the Sea (Ruta Sepetys) ➽ Being about one of the biggest maritime  disasters in history, this book could be quite grim, especially as it’s set during world war two. The book was written in a very engaging way. Once I picked it up I couldn’t put it down again. There is definitely a lot of suspense as we follow the journey of people just trying to survive and get on a ship that brings them far away from the war. I was wholly invested in the characters and especially their relationship. So I can definitely get why so many people love Ruta Sepety’s stories, as she has a way of making you care about her characters and then also getting your heart broken in the end 😰

The Book Thief (Markus Zusak) ➽ Another story set in World War 2 that 100% made me cry. It’s almost impossible not to get emotional when it comes to this book, as the topics tackled are heavy. The main character Liesel had felt much grief in her short life and is confronted with the reality of war seeping into her little village. She develops a profound bound to so many people, her kind papa, the jew Max they are hiding and of course her best friend. There are so many heartbreaking things happeing and Death – our narrator – foreshadowing heavily did not make it easier to get closer and closer to the end. I knew it would be a hard ending, as one would expect from such a story, but it still hit me right in the feels 😭

 🍂 Photo Credit 🎃

• Picture in Header
• Atmospheric
• Spooky/Creepy
• Cozy
• Melancholic

Have you read any of the books on my list? What are your favorite books to read in the Fall? 🍂