Happy Halloween!: 8 Autumnal (But Not Scary) Halloween Reads

This collection of three fall romance stories set in Moonbright, Maine feels like the perfect read for any Gilmore Girls fan (all of the best episodes take place in autumn). Moonbright takes Halloween very seriously: there’s a major parade where everyone dresses up in the spirit of the season. Three romance stories take place at Bellaluna’s Bakeshop, which also purveys extremely Halloween-y sweet treats. This is a perfect book to read while sitting in a park on a breezy fall day, or inside during a rainy day.

The queen of cozy mysteries takes Hercule Poirot to Woodleigh Common to solve a Hallowe’en party murder and a longer series of mysterious disappearances and deaths that have taken place in Woodleigh Common over the years. At Rowena Drake’s Hallowe’en party, Joyce Reynolds proclaims she saw a murder take place years ago — and later that night, she turns up dead as well. Another party attendee, Ariadne Oliver, calls Poirot to investigate. He finds more mysteries than he initially expected.

Aster is from a family with intensely stratified gender roles: girls are witches and boys are shapeshifters. Aster is the one boy in the family who has yet to shapeshift. However, he’s caught doing witchcraft by a girl named Charlie and they make fast friends. As Aster keeps exploring his interest in witchcraft with help from Charlie, his family assumes he is just having trouble shapeshifting. When the boys in his community are under attack, Aster is the only one who can help with his non-conforming identity and perspective.

The black cat drew me in and the sweet story kept me reading. Moth is an eighth-grader with a witch obsession. In a major twist, Moth finds out that all the witch stories she’s obsessed with are real and her family is embroiled in all the historical witch drama of their small Massachusetts town. Her powers come fast and furious, and she makes friends with a talking cat and falls face-first into the world of witches.

Olive, Charlotte, and Darwin explore an otherworldly hotel and come across every sort of portal fantasy you could imagine. Grandma Lupé owns the hotel and the kids come to Mexico for the summer to visit. Each door takes them to a different fantasy or science fiction world, and the teens have to learn how to communicate and work together. Charlotte and Darwin are Olive’s adopted siblings, and they bond even more deeply through this magical experience.

Lora goes through that achingly common experience in middle school of feeling totally left behind. All her friends are getting into more grown up pursuits, while Lora wants to stay a child for as long as possible. The future scares her. When Lora meets a ghost girl named Alexa in her house, she has someone who will stay in childhood with her. As Alexa finds out more about her past, Lora begins to understand that she can’t stop growing up and she can face her fears. It’s full of beautiful autumnal art and it’s a great cross-generational read.