Gothic horror, Halloweeny book recommendations I want to read during autumn

I am not one to set TBRs because I never stick to them and I don’t like the pressure that comes with them. But. As it’s spooky season and the leaves are starting to turn to their oranges and browns, it makes me want to dive into some Halloween worthy reads. So here are the books I’d like to read… but probably won’t get round to! Consider this a TBR/recommendations post based purely on the blurbs of books.

Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier

This is gothic to the core, I adored the film of this book when I was a kid so it makes natrual sense that I should finally read the book this year! This follows our main character who meets a widowed man and is whisked off to his very large and very creepy home in the middle of nowhere. Here she is haunted by his dead wife, Rebecca. This sounds like such the perfect classic read for the spooky season!

In my head this is the kind of book that will be daunting to read but also leave me feeling satisfied to having a read a true gothic horror that does the genre justice.

 

In The Night Wood, Dale Bailey

This is a contemporary fantasy with a haunted house setting. The tag line on Goodreads for this book is: In this contemporary fantasy, the grieving biographer of a Victorian fantasist finds himself slipping inexorably into the supernatural world that consumed his subject. I’m not 100% sure on whether this is a ghost story, or just an eerie tale, but I am here for it. Plus it’s quite small, so theoretically would be a short read!

I bought this book on a whim and have been saving it for the autumn season, I mean look at that colour, when would be a more perfect time to read it?!

Marina, Carlos Ruiz Zafón

I have tried to summarise this one in my own words, but honestly I think the blurb is going to make more sense, so here’s the actual description of what this read is all about!

In May 1980, fifteen-year-old Oscar Drai suddenly vanishes from his boarding school in the old quarter of Barcelona. For seven days and nights no one knows his whereabouts. . . .
His story begins in the heart of old Barcelona, when he meets Marina and her father Germán Blau, a portrait painter. Marina takes Oscar to a cemetery to watch a macabre ritual that occurs on the fourth Sunday of each month. At 10 a.m. precisely a coach pulled by black horses appears. From it descends a woman dressed in black, her face shrouded, wearing gloves, holding a single rose. She walks over to a gravestone that bears no name, only the mysterious emblem of a black butterfly with open wings.
When Oscar and Marina decide to follow her they begin a journey that will take them to the heights of a forgotten, post-war Barcelona, a world of aristocrats and actresses, inventors and tycoons; and a dark secret that lies waiting in the mysterious labyrinth beneath the city streets.

 

Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Gothic. Mansions. Mystery. Did someone say the perfect Halloween/autumnal read?! Noemí receives a franticly written letter from her newley wed cousin who needs help urgently. so of course this book follows Noemí as she goes to this spooky house in the Mexican countryside to try and save her cousin. The setting in th is book has been described as both terrifying and seductive and I am here for it! This looks like the perfect young adult gothic novel to lure me into the spooky season. I want to know what waits in the house for Noemí and see how she deals with the dangers ahead of her!

So those are my somewhat spooky books. I know I probably won’t get to them all before the month is out, but a girl can dream!