Spooky Reads 2025

At the start of 2025, one of the goals I set for myself was that I wanted to refresh my website and begin writing here again. I got the site freshened up, and then it just sort of sat there. Until now. As we are approaching the Spooky Season, it means that I am on the verge of beginning of Spooky Reads 2025 and I decided that it would be an ideal time to start writing. This will be a good way for me to better reflect on what I am reading and share various thoughts I may have about the books I read for Spooky Reads.

What is Spooky Reads 2025?

First off, Spooky Reads is not anything official. Back in 2018 for the last two weeks or so of October (based on my Goodreads history), I decided to binge read horror novels and then decided to do the same thing the following years. As with many holidays, the start of Spooky Reads has crept earlier and earlier, until I am now beginning around the end of August or the beginning of September. It is not anything official, rather just something fun that I do, but anyone is welcome to join me in a their own little personal horror reading fest.

What am I reading for Spooky Reads 2025?

Over the course of the year, I keep a list of horror novels that have been released or will be released in the year that I find interesting. This list keeps getting longer and longer (right now it’s around 60 books). So I will pick a number of titles from that list, look at some new releases that I may have missed, and also look back at older books. I tend to focus on novels. I will have a preliminary list below that will be open to adjustments as I read. This list is very ambitious and I will likely only get to a portion of it.

While I do try to be very open-minded in my approach to what I read for Spooky Reads, I do have certain preferences in the horror I enjoy. My absolute favorite is haunted houses, but I also really enjoy things like folk horror, haunted or cursed objects, and books where the monster ends up being unexpected. I also have a fondness for science fiction horror. I love anything dealing with witches – good, wicked, forces of nature, whatever it is I’ll read it. Finally, I adore horror short fiction. I will probably go into more detail in a post about an anthology why, but I really believe that horror works best as short fiction – both in text and short films.

The List

• Silk & Sinew: A Collection of Folk Horror from the Asian Diaspora edited by Kristy Park Kulski
• The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones
• Song of the Red Squire by C.W. Blackwell
• The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay
• My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna van Veen
• So Thirsty by Rachel Harrison
• Cunning Folk by Adam Nevill
• Spread Me by Sarah Gailey
• Exiles by Mason Coile
• We Are Always Tender With Our Dead by Eric LaRocca
• Never Whistle at Night edited by Shane Hawk & Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.
• Black River Orchard by Chuck Wendig

What’s Next?

Again, this is a very ambitious list. I know I will have at least one non-Spooky Reads book that I need to read in September. If I don’t manage to convince my book discussion group to read something spooky in October, then it will be two books. On the other hand, I could tear through these books really quickly and need to add some more, so we’ll see. I am planning to make a post for each of the books I read and I’ll link them in the list, so you’re welcome to revisit here and see my thoughts.

With that said, I say it is time to bring on the fall and everything spooky! Happy and creepy reading everyone!