🍊By Vijaylakshmi

You’ve got We Fell in Love in October by girl in red and Season of the Witch by Lana Del Rey playing on repeat. You’re counting down the days until you can get your hands on Starbucks’ pumpkin spice flavours, and you’re seriously considering a re-watch of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban — because honestly, autumn just wouldn’t feel like autumn without a little Hogwarts magic.
And even if the leaves aren’t changing colour where you live, the evenings are getting colder, and all you want is a warm drink, a cosy blanket, and a book that makes the rest of the world disappear, you’ve come to the right place.
Here are the fall book recommendations that’ll make you want to romanticise every little moment of the season.

1. The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion by Beth Brower

Set in 1883 London, we follow Emma, who’s hoping for a fresh start — a life of independence, solitude and education, with a fortune of her own waiting for her when she turns one and twenty. But between eccentric relatives, high-society drama and the rather peculiar people around her, things don’t exactly go as planned. And then there’s the melancholic stranger renting a room in her house, who might just complicate her plans a little further.
Think old London, witty journal entries, charmingly chaotic social encounters and just a hint of romance. The author herself admits in the acknowledgements that there’s something appalling about reading someone else’s journal — but isn’t that precisely what makes it so much fun?

2. October, October by Katya Balen

It’s a tale of a little girl named October, born in October, who lives with her father in a forest, far away from the hustle and bustle of the city and the general chaos of society. Our girl is practically the incarnation of a wild forest fairy spirit — she loves books, wilderness and the little world she’s built with her father, while having an estranged mother somewhere beyond the woods. One day, she finds a tiny ball of snow-white fluff in the form of a baby owl and decides to make it her own, which immediately reminded me of Harry’s beloved Hedwig!
There’s a passage in the book that perfectly captures the magic of October’s little world:
“We can stretch our sounds so that they reach the very tops of our tallest trees and down to the secret-filled earth and so that they tangle in the brambles and skim across the pond because this world is ours and we are alone.
Just us.

A pocket of people in a pocket of a world that’s small as a marble. We are tiny and we are everything and we are wild.”
You can expect found family, misty woods, golden leaves, loads of character development and the kind of autumn magic that makes you want to curl up with a warm drink and get lost in the wilderness.

 
3. If It Makes You Happy by Julie Olivia

Imagine yourself walking into a bookstore looking for a Gilmore Girls-incarnate novel because you simply can’t get enough of Stars Hollow, Luke and Lorelai, and Rory. Well, this book should grace your cart quite literally, because we’re heading to a quaint little, fall-obsessed town called Copper Run, Vermont.
We follow Michelle, who’s freshly divorced and grieving the loss of her mother, as she leaves her city life behind to manage her mom’s beloved inn until her younger sister finishes her education. And oh, this town practically reeks of pumpkin spice lattes, cinnamon buns and abundant cosiness.
We’re greeted early on with Mazzy Star’s ‘Fade Into You’ playing in the background, a neighbour’s daughter, Emily, vibing to it, and a Luke-incarnate grumpy baker named Cliff gracing our heroine’s life right when she least expects it. He’s a single dad, a baker, and the man next door. Do I need to say anymore?
“And it hits me. I love this woman. I don’t know when it happened. It slipped over me so softly, like the changing of seasons.”
-Cliff
Expect small-town shenanigans, found family, ’90s nostalgia, a delicious slow-burn romance and enough autumn cosiness to make you want to pack your bags for Vermont.

4. Love in the Time of Serial Killers by Alicia Thompson

We follow Phoebe Walsh, who’s a PhD candidate, and now you might wonder what her dissertation topic could possibly be, because that’s the first question that pops into any student’s head. And guess what? It’s none other than true crime!
Phoebe wasn’t exactly on the best of terms with her rather neglectful father, and now, suddenly, he’s gone, leaving poor Phoebe behind to clear up his mess — including an ever-growing pile of deliveries from the many subscriptions he’d apparently signed up for. As if dealing with grief weren’t enough, she’s now got an entire house to sort out, too.
And then, on her very first day of moving in, she meets her mysterious yet helpfully handsome neighbour, Sam Dennings. Naturally, given her lifelong obsession with true crime, Phoebe grows rather suspicious of him. Is he simply a nice neighbour, or is there something sinister going on? Well, love is in the air, and our girl might just be a little too busy looking for red flags to notice it.
Phoebe’s also at that rather confusing stage of life where she’s messy, uncertain and trying to figure out what she’s supposed to do with herself, while it seems like everyone else has their lives sorted. Her brother, for instance, is already thinking of proposing to his high-school sweetheart, while she’s still trying to make sense of her own life. And honestly, isn’t that feeling a little too relatable?
“The truth was that I had been alone, for a while. But it had always been the way I liked it, where I called all the shots and I was responsible only to myself. It never felt lonely.
Now, suddenly it did.”

And there you have it — a little collection of books to make your autumn feel like a Taylor Swift song, a Gilmore Girls episode, or perhaps a particularly magical afternoon at Hogwarts. Now tell me, what are your favourite autumn reads? I’m always looking for another excuse to add books to my TBR.

🍁🍁