Happy Halloween, everyone! Now that it’s October, it’s time to curl up with a good, creepy book to celebrate. As a Halloween-loving lesbian reader, I make a point of reading spooky books featuring queer female characters this time of year. If you’re looking for a great Halloween-vibes book to read this fall, look no further! Here are six spooky sapphic books to try:
I Am the Ghost in Your House by Mar Romasco-Moore
(Young Adult Fantasy)
While admittedly the least spooky book in this list, I Am the Ghost in Your House is currently my favorite. And honestly, it’s spooky for a different reason—it was scary how much I saw myself reflected in this book. I swear Romasco-Moore ripped some thoughts and fears right out of my head and wrote a book about them.
Pie is the ghost inside your house—well, not literally. Pie and her mom are invisible to everyone but each other. They make do by living inside the homes of rich people and stealing to survive, always careful not to touch someone or leave a footprint. Until the day Pie’s mother vanishes in front of her, despite the fact that they had always been able to see one another. Alone and afraid, Pie struggles to find her mother. But now that she’s on her own, Pie soon begins to break the rules she’s lived with all her life.
This book is a haunting tale of loneliness that will linger with you long after you turn the last page.
Hide by Kiersten White
(Adult Horror/Thriller)
I’ve been reading and loving Kiersten White’s books for years, but I was surprised to realize that this is her Adult debut! In my opinion, it could be an example of New Adult, as many of its characters are still relatively young.
Mack has lived her whole life alone, afraid, and consumed by guilt as a result of her tragic, violent past. With the offer of $50,000 in prize money, Mack and 13 others enter a large-scale hide-and-seek competition in an abandoned amusement park. Two people a day will get out until a winner remains—or so they’re told. Soon the group realizes that there are life and death stakes in this game, and something monstrous is seeking them. Mack and her competition will have to learn to trust and care for one another if they have any chance of making it out alive.
One of the main critiques of this book is that it has too many POVs, and it does have a lot, but I became exceedingly emotionally attached to a number of these characters. Read Hide for its lovable characters, unique setting, and White’s ever-wonderful writing style.
Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand
(Young Adult Horror/Fantasy)
On the island of Sawkill Rock, girls have a tendency to disappear. Children tell the rhyme of an evil being that snatches girls up: “Beware of the woods and the dark, dank deep. He’ll follow you home and won’t let you sleep.” New to the island, Marion gets drawn into the mystery, alongside Zoey, whose best friend is one of the missing girls. At the center of the disappearances seems to be Val and her intense, matriarchal family. Soon all three girls’ lives will entwine as they attempt to fight back against the evil in their island.
Sawkill Girls is a chilling, feminist horror featuring a dynamic trio. Author Claire Legrand is best known for her Furyborn trilogy, but this was the book that made me love her writing. They are vastly different books, so give this a try whether or not you’re into her most well-known work!
House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland
(Young Adult Horror/Fantasy)
When they were children, sisters Iris, Viv, and Grey went missing. They reappeared a month later, unharmed except for a small scar on their necks, with no memory of what happened. Ten years later, Iris is desperate to live a normal life, though her sisters embrace their lingering strangeness. When eldest sister Grey goes missing once again, Iris will have to dive even deeper into the oddness surrounding them in order to track her down.
House of Hollow is full of lush, horrifying imagery. Flowers grow from wounds and the air smells of decay. This book is an incredibly sensory experience. I highly recommend this dark fairy tale where nothing and no one are as they seem.
Wilder Girls by Rory Power
(Young Adult Horror)
Oh Wilder Girls, my first horror love. This was the first horror book I ever read and it’s still one of my favorite books ever.
In a private school on a wooded island, its all-girl student body and their teachers fight for survival against the infection spreading through their school and the infected animals in the woods. Even as the infection turns them monstrous and diminishing rations make survival even harder, best friends Hetty, Byatt, and Reese would do anything for one another. When Byatt goes missing, her friends will stop at nothing to get her back and uncover the root of the disease plaguing them.
This book is an intense body horror story. Yet through body horror, Wilder Girls tells a beautiful and awful love story, and it touches on the very real horrors of girlhood. As strange as this book is, I saw some of my own feelings and experiences in it. Though it was written before the pandemic, it has become even more relevant and terrifying through its depiction of contagion.
Burn Our Bodies Down by Rory Power
(Young Adult Horror)
Surprising absolutely no one, I also loved Rory Power’s 2nd book, another sapphic horror.
Margot has always had a strained relationship with her mother, but she’s all she has. Until Margot finds a clue that leads her to her grandmother, and she sets out to connect with the family her mother kept her from. But when Margot arrives, she finds a fire, a cornfield, and a dead girl with her face. Though she takes joy in her newfound family, something is very, very wrong, and Margot will need to find a way to fix the mistakes of her lineage.
In Burn Our Bodies Down, some of its greatest terrors are generational trauma, cycles of abuse, and mommy issues—not to mention the darkness in the heart of the cornfield. Atmospheric and devastating, this is truly one of the best books to read in the fall.
Bonus—a seventh spooky sapphic book: Where Darkness Blooms by Andrea Hannah
(Young Adult Horror/Mystery)
Release date: February 21, 2023
While most readers won’t be able to get their hands on this book until early next year, now is a great time to preorder this creepy sapphic mystery novel!
In the town of Bishop, women frequently go missing or turn up dead, but no one with any influence seems to care all that much. Delilah, Whitney, Jude, and Bo’s moms all went missing on the same night two years ago, and when a failed-memorial turns up a bloody knife, the girls become determined to solve the mystery of the missing women. The wind whispers secrets while the field of sunflowers sees all. The girls will each have to face their own demons to find the truth and save those they care about.
Chilling both for its supernatural horrors and the very real violence humans, too, are capable of, this story is bound to be a hit after its February release and in the fall seasons to come.
In compiling this list, I came to realize how many of these books feature missing girls, scary islands, scary plants, and scary mother-daughter relationships. I don’t have time to unpack all that, so read at your own risk! Happy Halloween!