13 Witchy Reads for Halloween

Hello, Readers! Spooky Season is upon us. 🎃👻 Break out the pumpkin spice, snuggle up with your coziest throw, and settle in for the definitive list of YA Halloween Reads! Your TBR (to be read) shelf will thank you.

As I started making this list, it just got longer and longer. I mean who doesn't love reading about witches, ghosts, and vampires? So, I've split this into a multi-part Halloween Bookish Spooktacular. Is this name over-the-top? You betcha.

Week 1: Witches (you're here!)

Week 2: Ghosts

Week 3: Dark Fairy Tale Retellings

Week 4: Vampires (upcoming)

Week 5: Werewolves (upcoming)

Today, I want to talk witchy YA books! Here are some of my personal favorites and some fan favorites I found online. Let us know your favorites in the comments below!

Sea Witch by Sarah Henning

Wicked meets "The Little Mermaid" in the captivating origin story of the sea's most iconic villainess, perfect for fans of Heartless and Dorothy Must Die.

Everyone knows what happens in the end. A mermaid, a prince, a true love’s kiss. But before that young siren’s tale, there were three friends. One feared, one royal, and one already dead.

Ever since her best friend, Anna, drowned, Evie has been an outcast in her small fishing town. A freak. A curse. A witch.

A girl with an uncanny resemblance to Anna appears offshore and, though the girl denies it, Evie is convinced that her best friend actually survived. That her own magic wasn’t so powerless after all. And, as the two girls catch the eyes—and hearts—of two charming princes, Evie believes that she might finally have a chance at her own happily ever after.

But her new friend has secrets of her own. She can’t stay in Havnestad, or on two legs, unless Evie finds a way to help her. Now Evie will do anything to save her friend’s humanity, along with her prince’s heart—harnessing the power of her magic, her ocean, and her love until she discovers, too late, the truth of her bargain.

Read the story now.

How to Hang a Witch by Adriana Mather

It’s the Salem Witch Trials meets Mean Girls in this New York Times bestselling novel from one of the descendants of Cotton Mather, where the trials of high school start to feel like a modern-day witch hunt for a teen with all the wrong connections to Salem’s past.

Salem, Massachusetts, is the site of the infamous witch trials and the new home of Samantha Mather. Recently transplanted from New York City, Sam and her stepmother are not exactly welcomed with open arms. Sam is the descendant of Cotton Mather, one of the men responsible for those trials—and almost immediately, she becomes the enemy of a group of girls who call themselves the Descendants. And guess who their ancestors were?

If dealing with that weren’t enough, Sam also comes face to face with a real, live (well, technically dead) ghost. A handsome, angry ghost who wants Sam to stop touching his stuff. But soon Sam discovers she is at the center of a centuries-old curse affecting anyone with ties to the trials. Sam must come to terms with the ghost and find a way to work with the Descendants to stop a deadly cycle that has been going on since the first accused witch was hanged. If any town should have learned its lesson, it’s Salem. But history may be about to repeat itself.

Read the story now.

Matchmaker & the Coven by E.V. Everest

A matchmaking barista decides a mortal and a water nymph would be perfect together. What could go wrong?

A hundred realms converge in the Boundary. A place where magic and adventure flourish.

Teenage witch Mailey loves her job as a barista at the oldest coffeehouse in the Boundary. She serves every cup of coffee with a side of well-intentioned meddling. She just can't resist getting involved in her customer's personal lives!

When a water nymph is feeling down after a bad breakup, she is determined to set her up with her human classmate. Unfortunately, Mailey isn't the only one interested in this human. He's also attracted the attention of a nasty coven of witches.

All Mailey has to do is set up this unlikely couple and outsmart an entire coven. What could go wrong?

A YA Fantasy Novelette

Read the story now. Only $0.99!

Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson

All sorcerers are evil. Elisabeth has known that as long as she has known anything. Raised as a foundling in one of Austermeer’s Great Libraries, Elisabeth has grown up among the tools of sorcery—magical grimoires that whisper on shelves and rattle beneath iron chains. If provoked, they transform into grotesque monsters of ink and leather.

Then an act of sabotage releases the library’s most dangerous grimoire, and Elisabeth is implicated in the crime. With no one to turn to but her sworn enemy, the sorcerer Nathaniel Thorn, and his mysterious demonic servant, she finds herself entangled in a centuries-old conspiracy. Not only could the Great Libraries go up in flames, but the world along with them.

As her alliance with Nathaniel grows stronger, Elisabeth starts to question everything she’s been taught—about sorcerers, about the libraries she loves, even about herself. For Elisabeth has a power she has never guessed, and a future she could never have imagined.

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Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins

Three years ago, Sophie Mercer discovered that she is a witch. Her non-gifted mother has been supportive, consulting Sophie’s estranged father—a warlock—only when necessary. But when Sophie attracts too much human attention for a prom-night spell gone horribly wrong, it’s her dad who exiles her to “Hex Hall”, an isolated reform school for wayward Prodigium, a.k.a. witches, fairies, and shape-shifters.

By the end of her first day, Sophie has three new enemies, a futile crush on a warlock, a tagalong ghost, and a vampire roommate. Worse, Sophie soon learns that an unknown predator has been attacking students. As a series of blood-curdling mysteries converges, Sophie prepares for the biggest threat of all: an ancient secret society determined to destroy all Prodigium, especially her.

Read the story now.

These Witches Don't Burn by Isabel Sterling