Summerween is a phenomenon that seems to have taken the book community by storm this year. The traditional beach read is so last year – I think a lot of people begin to crave a touch of horror in the hot, sticky months. While not all of these recommendations are strictly horror – this is coming from a gal who reads A LOT of fantasy, so of course there’s some fantasy in there, as well as some gothic, woodsy reads, some thrillers about weird things happening at summer camps. The one thing they all have in common is that they’re perfect if you’re looking for a bit of spookiness in the sun.
- Spells for Forgetting by Adrienne Young
Murder mystery / Magical realism
Blurb: Emery Blackwood’s life changed forever the night her best friend was found dead and the love of her life, August Salt, was accused of murdering her. Years later, she is doing what her teenage self swore she never would: living a quiet existence on the misty, remote shores of Saoirse Island and running the family’s business, Blackwood’s Tea Shoppe Herbal Tonics & Tea Leaf Readings. But when the island, rooted in folklore and magic, begins to show signs of strange happenings, Emery knows that something is coming. The morning she wakes to find that every single tree on Saoirse has turned color in a single night, August returns for the first time in fourteen years and unearths the past that the town has tried desperately to forget.
August knows he is not welcome on Saoirse, not after the night everything changed. As a fire raged on at the Salt family orchard, Lily Morgan was found dead in the dark woods, shaking the bedrock of their tight-knit community and branding August a murderer. When he returns to bury his mother’s ashes, he must confront the people who turned their backs on him and face the one wound from his past that has never healed—Emery. But the town has more than one reason to want August gone, and the emergence of deep betrayals and hidden promises spanning generations threaten to reveal the truth behind Lily’s mysterious death once and for all.
Why It’s Perfect for Summerween? With a small town haunted by a murder that happened a decade ago, along with some very witchy vibes and maybe supernatural happenings, Spells for Forgetting is a PERFECT summerween read. It’ll give you that comforting, autumnal feel while still having enough intrigue and mystery to move the story along.
- Season of Fear by Emily Cooper
Gothic fantasy / Sapphic horror
Blurb: In the Bavarian village of Heulensee, women feed their terror to an ancient Saint of Fear. In return, it protects them from the monsters of the Hexenwald, the haunted forest on their doorstep. Born unfearing, Ilse Odenwald has felt like an outsider all her life. When the Saint discovers Ilse’s divergence, it levels a threat: she must find her fear, or the Saint will devour her sister, Dorothea—the only person who loves Ilse unconditionally.
Unwilling to lose Thea, Ilse enters the Hexenwald. She hopes that its horrors will finally unleash her fear and, in turn, save her sister. But during her quest Ilse inadvertently uncovers something far more sinister than the monsters that hunt her: a darkness within herself. As the forest closes in, Ilse’s hopes for a normal future begin to slip away, as well as the chance to save not just Thea, but all women in Heulensee.
Bewitching and timely, this gripping debut novel is a dark fairy tale about the fate of girls and women in a world grown accustomed to sacrificing them. Night of the Witch meets The Handmaid’s Tale in this queer Gothic horror debut set against the monstrous Bavarian forest of Hexenwald.
Why It’s Perfect for Summerween? There’s something very summerween about a sapphic romance between a girl and a literal creature of the forest. The themes of fear that this book deals with is also very fitting for a spooky read, as well as giving you that horror fix! Bonus points for beautiful writing that will make you feel as if you’re the one entering a haunted forest.
- The Maiden and Her Monster by Maddie Martinez
Dark fairytale / Sapphic horror
Blurb: The forest eats the girls who wander out after dark.
As the healer’s daughter, Malka has seen how the curse of the woods has plagued her village, but when the Ozmini Church comes to collect their tithes, they don’t listen to the warnings about a monster lurking in the trees. After a clergy girl wanders too close to the forest and Malka’s mother is accused of her murder, Malka strikes a bargain with a zealot Ozmini priest. If she brings him the monster, he will spare her mother from execution.
When she ventures into the blood-soaked woods, Malka finds a monster, though not the one she expects: an inscrutable, disgraced golem who agrees to implicate herself, but only after Malka helps her free the imprisoned rabbi who created her.
But a deal easily made is not easily kept. And as their bargain begins to unravel a much more sinister threat, protecting her people may force Malka to endanger the one person she left home to save—and face her growing feelings for the very creature she was taught to fear.
A gorgeous, atmospheric debut fantasy that reimagines the Jewish myth of golem in a tale rooted in history, folklore, and sapphic romance—perfect for fans of Katherine Arden, Ava Reid, Hannah Whitten, and Naomi Novik.
Why It’s Perfect for Summerween? I often think of this and Season of Fear in the same bracket – and they do share a lot of similarities. They both toe the line between fantasy and horror, with an abundance of gothic atmosphere. They both feature subplots of sapphic romance with creatures of the forest… which is weird that it happened twice, right?
- Eat The Ones You Love by Sarah Maria Griffin
Horror / Literary fiction
Blurb: A twisted, tangled story about workplace love-affairs, and plants with a taste for human flesh
During a grocery run to her local shopping center, Shell Pine sees a ‘HELP NEEDED’ sign in a flower shop window. She’s just left her fiancé, lost her job, and moved home to her parents’ house. She has to make a change and bring some good into her life, so she goes inside and takes a chance. Shell realizes right away that flowers are just the good thing she’s been looking for, as is Neve, the beautiful florist who wrote the sign asking for help. The thing is, Neve needs help more than Shell could possibly imagine.
An orchid growing out of sight in the heart of the mall is watching them closely. His name is Baby, and the beautiful florist belongs to him. He’s young, he’s hungry, and he’ll do just about anything to make sure he can keep growing big and strong. Nothing he eats – nobody he eats – can satisfy him, except the thing he most desires. Neve. He adores her and wants to consume her, and will stop at nothing to eat the one he loves.
This is a story about possession, and monstrosity, and working retail. It is about hunger and desire, and other terrible things that grow.
Why It’s Perfect for Summerween? This is my literary fiction offering. All of the plant descriptions in this book (of which there are a lot) definitely make me think of an arboretum or hothouse, combined with the horror of this book (again, there is a lot. Griffin doesn’t hold back on making the sentient plant very sinister…). So yeah… a sinister plant that ensnares humans and eats them – very summery, no?
- The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
Literary thriller
Blurb: Early morning, August 1975: a camp counselor discovers an empty bunk. Its occupant, Barbara Van Laar, has gone missing. Barbara isn’t just any thirteen-year-old: she’s the daughter of the family that owns the summer camp and employs most of the region’s residents. And this isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared. Barbara’s older brother similarly vanished fourteen years ago, never to be found.
As a panicked search begins, a thrilling drama unfolds. Chasing down the layered secrets of the Van Laar family and the blue-collar community working in its shadow, Moore’s multi-threaded story invites readers into a rich and gripping dynasty of secrets and second chances. It is Liz Moore’s most ambitious and wide-reaching novel yet.
Why It’s Perfect for Summerween? This is one that you’ll probably see on a lot of other summerween reading lists, and that’s because it’s almost as if Liz Moore wrote it for that purpose in mind. A summer camp in the Adirondacks, a missing girl and a family that has a lot to hide. It has a bigger scope than a lot of thrillers, and definitely leans more on the literary side – it’s slow paced, and takes its time with developing its characters, of which there is a wide cast.
- Starling House by Alix E Harrow
Gothic horror / Dark fantasy
Blurb: Eden, Kentucky, is just another dying, bad-luck town, known only for the legend of E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth-century author and illustrator who wrote The Underland–and disappeared. Before she vanished, Starling House appeared. But everyone agrees that it’s best to let the uncanny house―and its last lonely heir, Arthur Starling―go to rot.
Opal knows better than to mess with haunted houses or brooding men, but an unexpected job offer might be a chance to get her brother out of Eden. Too quickly, though, Starling House starts to feel dangerously like something she’s never had: a home.
As sinister forces converge on Starling House, Opal and Arthur are going to have to make a dire choice to dig up the buried secrets of the past and confront their own fears, or let Eden be taken over by literal nightmares. If Opal wants a home, she’ll have to fight for it.
A grim and gothic new tale from author Alix E. Harrow about a small town haunted by secrets that can’t stay buried and the sinister house that sits at the crossroads of it all.
Why It’s Perfect for Summerween? Small towns, haunted houses and lots of secrets – Starling House had every ingredient one would need to brew up the perfect spooky summer read in a witches’ cauldron.
- The Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas
Gothic horror / Historical
Blurb: As the daughter of a rancher in 1840s Mexico, Nena knows a thing or two about monsters—her home has long been threatened by tensions with Anglo settlers from the north. But something more sinister lurks near the ranch at night, something that drains men of their blood and leaves them for dead.
Something that once attacked Nena nine years ago.
Believing Nena dead, Néstor has been on the run from his grief ever since, moving from ranch to ranch working as a vaquero. But no amount of drink can dispel the night terrors of sharp teeth; no woman can erase his childhood sweetheart from his mind.
When the United States attacks Mexico in 1846, the two are brought abruptly together on the road to war: Nena as a curandera, a healer striving to prove her worth to her father so that he does not marry her off to a stranger, and Néstor as a member of the auxiliary cavalry of ranchers and vaqueros. But the shock of their reunion—and Nena’s rage at Néstor for seemingly abandoning her long ago—is quickly overshadowed by the appearance of a nightmare made flesh.
And unless Nena and Néstor work through their past and face the future together, neither will survive to see the dawn.
Why It’s Perfect for Summerween? I really could have chosen any book of Isabel Canas’s to recommend, as they’re all great. The Hacienda, her debut, follows a young woman who moves into her new husband’s estate in Mexico in the 19th century and quickly realises things are not as they seem. Her latest release, the Possession of Alba Diaz, is about the titular character fleeing her family’s silver mines due to a plague outbreak and becoming entangled with the occult. All of them are set in Mexico in the sweltering heat and, combined with their gothic horror, make them perfect spooky summer reads.
Those are all my summerween recommendations – whether you’re into celebrating summerween or are just looking for a bit of spookiness or horror. This is perhaps a more gothic / horror fantasy list of recommendations (with the occasional literary or thriller) than your typical summerween recommendations. What’s on your summerween tbr? Let me know in the comments, as well as if you celebrate summerween!
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