It’s the season of scary stories, crunchy leaves and too-cute-to-be-true meet cutes. The inevitable gloom of fall quarter is beginning to hit the University of California, Riverside campus especially hard this season. There is no better escape than into a good book. Don’t let professors’ boring recommendations of a random Hemingway or Shakespere work scare you from finding that perfect book to make your fall quarter worth living through.
“Butcher and Blackbird” by Brynne Weaver
This is for all the romance readers that want to add a little kick to their typical fall romance reading list. Weaver’s debut novel follows two morally questionable characters who somehow fall in love after discovering a mutually … unique hobby. A disturbingly captivating fall read that will leave any romance reader wanting more.
“Vampire del Norte” by Isabel Cañas
Isabel Cañas blends folklore and horror into a harmonious mix that somehow makes the genre seem beautiful and terrifying at the same time. Cañas’s books are never to be taken at face value. Instead, they are meant to be peeled back layer by layer. Behind the gore and the fear Cañas’s writing induces, she shows readers that the true horror is the injustice of war and the cruelty of humanity.
“More Days at the Morisaki Bookshop” by Satoshi Yagisawa
There is something unexplainably comforting about Satoshi Yagisawa’s writing; it’s like a warm blanket wrapping around you on a cold fall evening. Yagisawa turns the mundane world into a unique celebration of life and differences. The characters in this book couldn’t be more different, but somehow he manages to make them all fit perfectly into each other’s life. This award-winning book reminds its readers that every person has a unique story to tell. Yagisawa uses a love of literature to illuminate a unique kind of understanding that can only be attributed to a love of humanity.
“Six of Crows” by Leigh Bardugoh
Leigh Bardugoh has mastered the art of two vital things that make a fantasy novel successful: world and character building. Bardugoh is masterful with her pen, or rather her keyboard when it comes to creating a world so similar yet so different from the reader’s reality. The fictional world of Ketterdam transports readers to an upside down version of Amsterdam.
Violence and crime run rapidly as some residents known as ‘Grisha’ hold unique abilities; however these abilities come as a detriment as many are sold into endentured servitude or are hunted by Fjerdans.
Bardugoh’s novel shines the most with its rambunctious main characters Kaz Brekker, Inej Ghafa, Nina Zenik, Matthias Helvar, Jesper Fahey and Wylan Van Eck, also known as the Crows. Bardugoh somehow manages to give each of her rather large cast of misfits time to fully develop and grow. The Crows never leave the reader feeling like they could have done more. Bardugoh, unlike most young adult fantasy writers, does not use her characters as plot devices to push forward one main hero. Instead, each character is their own fully fledged put person with unique experience and character traits.
Leigh Bardugoh is the author to put at the top of every reader’s fall reading list; with heist, slow-burn romance, found family and endless shenanigans. Readers may want to leave Ketterdam, but they’ll never want to leave the Crows.
“The Tenant” by Fredia Mcfadden
Everyone knows “The Housemaid,” but readers tend to overlook some of McFadden’s other works which are arguably better than the overhyped blockbuster. McFadden, the queen of popcorn thrillers, follows a basic formula: the main character is going through a midlife crisis or depressive episode, the main character meets a new person who is great, a new person turns out to be holding some big world altering secret, but wait … there’s a twist! The main character is actually the one hiding something, and everyone in the book is actually a terrible person.
“The Tenant” doesn’t stray far from McFadden’s predictable formula, but reading a McFadden book is like watching reality TV — you aren’t expecting much substance. “The Tenant” has a foot up on her other novels, as the main character is just so off the bat a terrible person, the reader is left needing to know what made him this way and if he will ever get what’s coming to him.
“Tuesdays with Morrie” by Mitch Albom
A heartfelt non-fiction about death and what it means to die. Albom masterfully shows the reader that death does not have to be a scary thing. This book will have readers re-evaluating their views on love, loss, grief and death. This is for the reader who needs a more existential read.
