Well… hi.
It’s been a minute since we’ve graced your inboxes.
If you’ve been wondering where My Sister’s TBR disappeared to in April, the answer is considerably less mysterious than most of the books on this list: life happened. We took what was supposed to be a little breathing room, then there were some life changes, schedules moved around, summer arrived, and somehow a few weeks turned into a few months.
It wasn’t really a planned hiatus, it was entirely just time getting away from us.
So, here we are. Finding our footing again, easing ourselves back into the routine, and hoping you haven’t completely forgotten about us!
Honestly, September feels like a pretty good time to come back. New beginnings are in the air. And! This is my favorite time of year because we start wanting books that feel a little cozier, a little moodier, a little stranger, or preferably some combination of all three.
To ease ourselves back into our little corner of the internet, we pulled together a stack of books that just feel right for the months ahead. Not all of them are technically “fall books,” and there are only so many pumpkin patches one reading list can reasonably sustain, but these are the books we’d happily spend a long, dark evening with!
🍂 If It Makes You Happy — Julie Olivia
We’re starting on the cozier side with If It Makes You Happy, which is basically a 90’s fall afternoon in paperback.
It’s a small-town romance with a slow burn, plenty of autumn atmosphere, and exactly the sort of warm, comforting energy we want when the season first starts changing. We love a complicated fantasy world and a good thriller as much as anyone, but there are nights when we simply do not need anyone murdered.
Sometimes two idiots falling in love while the leaves change is enough.
☕ The Pumpkin Spice Café — Laurie Gilmore
It’s called The Pumpkin Spice Café, we were never leaving this one off a ‘Ber Months list.
This is the book you reach for when you have 0 interest in being subtle about autumn. It has the small town, the café, the romance and enough cozy seasonal atmosphere that you may find yourself in your coziest sweater, with a pumpkin spice latte in hand before you even hit the midway point!
Is it perhaps the most obvious fall recommendation we could have chosen? Absolutely. Do we care? Not even a little.
Pumpkin spice season is brief. We intend to enjoy it!
🧙♀️ Legends & Lattes — Travis Baldree
There’s something immensely satisfying about a fantasy character deciding she’s had enough of risking her life and would actually just like to open a coffee shop.
Viv has spent years adventuring, fighting and generally doing the sort of things fantasy characters are expected to do. Then she retires, moves to a town where most people have never even heard of coffee, and decides to build something completely different for herself.
What follows is warm, charming and wonderfully low-stakes. There’s found family, friendship, romance, cinnamon rolls, coffee and enough magic to keep it firmly in fantasy territory, without the brain power that most fantasy asks of you.
It’s one of those books that makes you want to disappear into its world for a couple of hours and simply hang out there. (Or at least start a cozy DND campaign with your friends)
⚡ Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone — J.K. Rowling
For us, September and Harry Potter have been linked for so long that we don’t even really question it anymore.
Maybe it’s the back-to-school timing. Maybe it’s the Hogwarts Express, the castle, the Great Hall, or watching Harry discover Diagon Alley for the first time. Whatever it is, that first book still has a very specific early-fall feeling to it.
There’s also something nice about going back to the beginning of a series you already know and love. You know the characters, you know where everything is headed, and you can just settle in and enjoy being there again.
Even if (in hindsight) Hogwarts does seem to have a slightly concerning approach to child safety.
💙 Bluebird Gold — Devney Perry
As we move away from the soft, golden beginning of fall and into colder evenings, Bluebird Gold feels especially appropriate.
It has romance, mystery, family secrets and that big Montana setting that automatically makes everything feel a little colder and more rugged. There’s enough going on outside of the romance to keep you invested in the mystery, but you still get all the emotional payoff you want from a Devney Perry book. **chef’s kiss**
This is probably the recommendation for the person who wants romance but doesn’t necessarily want something fluffy. Give us chemistry, secrets and a little emotional turmoil and we’re perfectly happy. And Cmon, the main male character is based off Tom Selleck… Need I say more?
🌒 Me (Moth) — Amber McBride
Me (Moth) is very different from most of the other books on this list, but its atmosphere is exactly why it belongs here.
Written in verse, it follows Moth, who is trying to live with enormous grief, and Sani, a boy carrying pain of his own. Their story becomes this beautiful, strange exploration of loss, identity, ancestry, healing and connection.
You don’t tear through this one looking for the next twist, it’s very much the type of book that you slow down to read.
This feels like a late-evening book to us. The kind you read when the house is quiet and you’re actually willing to sit with a story for a while after you close it.
🗝️ Gallant — V.E. Schwab
Now we’re starting to edge into the creepier side of the season.
Gallant has an old family estate, locked doors, secrets, shadows, strange family history. V.E. Schwab is very good at making a setting feel like part of the story, and Gallant itself is the sort of place that immediately makes you curious even while every instinct is standing on end, telling you that perhaps curiosity is a terrible idea.
It’s eerie without being outright terrifying, which makes it a nice bridge between the cozy books of September and the horror we crave in October.
🌿 Wilder Girls — Rory Power
Wilder Girls is where we take an even stranger twist.
The students of the Raxter School for Girls have been quarantined after an illness known as the Tox begins changing their bodies and the world around them. They’re isolated, supplies are running low, and whatever is happening outside the school gates are seemingly getting worse.
This book has such an uncomfortable and eerie atmosphere, especially because the natural world itself starts feeling unpredictable and threatening. There’s this constant sense that something is wrong and nobody completely understands what they’re dealing with.
We did promise you this list wouldn’t be entirely pumpkin spice…
🩸 A Dowry of Blood — S.T. Gibson
If fall makes you want to read something lush, gothic and just a little dramatic, A Dowry of Blood is probably the book you’re looking for.
Inspired by Dracula’s brides, it’s written as a letter from Constanta to Dracula and looks back on their relationship… the love, obsession, manipulation and control that shaped her life with him.
It’s dark and romantic without pretending the romance is healthy, and the writing has this rich, almost decadent quality that suits the story perfectly.
This book will make you want to pour a big glass of wine, wear your most flowy robe, and haunt the halls of your house.
🌌 Dark Matter — Blake Crouch
Not every dark-weather book needs ghosts… Sometimes you just need Blake Crouch to send you into an existential crisis.
Dark Matter is one of those books we’re hesitant to say too much about because a big part of the fun is figuring out what the hell is going on as Jason does. The basic question at the heart of it is simple enough: what would your life look like if you had made different choices?
Unfortunately for Jason, that question becomes very literal very quickly.
It’s fast, strange, smart and ridiculously easy to binge.
🌊 The House Across the Lake — Riley Sager
Apparently no fall reading list of ours would be complete without Riley Sager showing up more than once (Spoiler?)…
In The House Across the Lake, recently widowed actress Casey Fletcher retreats to her family’s lake house and promptly becomes fascinated by the glamorous couple living across the water. Annnnd then she starts watching them.
As you can imagine, Casey makes several perfectly reasonable choices from that point forward.
We have a secluded lake, suspicious neighbours, secrets, missing people and a setting that becomes even more unsettling as the book goes on. It’s a very good “rain pouring outside and I’m not leaving this couch” thriller!
There is just something about dark water and a remote house that makes every bad decision feel even worse.
🔐 Never Lie — Freida McFadden
A newlywed couple gets trapped inside a remote house during a snowstorm and discovers a hidden room filled with recordings belonging to a psychiatrist who vanished years earlier.
Personally, we would like to believe that in this situation we would be sensible… like we would not listen to the tapes. or we would mind our business… we would wait for the storm to pass… Unfortunately, that would make for a very short thriller.
Never Lie is pure binge-reading material. The chapters are short, everybody seems to be hiding something, and it has that classic Freida charm. And by charm I mean plot twist, after twist, after twist…
🕯️ The Unknown — Riley Sager
And finally, our September Featured Read: The Unknown by Riley Sager.
This is the book sitting at the top of our own TBR this month, and the premise could not be more suited to the beginning of spooky season.
In 1926, five women disappeared from New Avalon, a remote island in Vermont that had been home to a community of spiritual mediums. One hundred years later, actress Marin Keane travels there with a film crew researching a movie about the disappearances.
Then people start disappearing again.
We’ll be reading The Unknown throughout September, so if it has been sitting on your TBR too, this is your invitation to pick it up with us!
It feels like a pretty fitting choice for our first Featured Read back: a creepy island, several missing women and Riley Sager making us suspicious of everybody.
We really know how to ease ourselves back into things… right?
🍁 We’re Back, and So Are the ‘Ber Months
If you stuck around through our accidental summer vacation, thank you. Truly.
And if you’re just finding us now, your timing is excellent, because we have several months of prime reading weather ahead of us.
So lets add a few more books to that overwhelming TBR!
What book immediately puts you in a fall mood? Are you reaching for cozy romance, fantasy, gothic horror, thrillers, or something completely different?
Don’t forget to fill us in on our Instagram.
We’ll be waiting to take notes!
