This year, PADERBORN2READ—The English Book Club celebrates Halloween with curated reading recommendations for a fantastically spooky, yet perfectly cosy experience.
Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda
recommended by PADERBORN2READ member Hannah
Lydia is an aspiring artist, living away from her mother for the first time in her life and she can only eat blood. In Claire Kohda’s outstanding horror novel the main character has not only to overcome the struggles of coming of age and her mixed heritage but also being a vampire feeling drawn to human company. The book tackles topics of growing up, loneliness, heritage, and invulnerability adding vampirism to the mixture as well. This is especially your book if you like female rage mixed with incredible sadness and feeling lost and very graphic descriptions of eating dead … things.
Bonus recommendation if you are more in the mood for a movie and this is the vibe you’re searching for: Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person.
A Prayer for the Dying by Stewart O’Nan
recommended by PADERBORN2READ member Ronja
At first glance, this novel appears to be historical fiction—set in Friendship, Wisconsin, just after the Civil War, narrated through the eyes of the community’s sheriff, pastor, and undertaker Jacob Hansen. The atmosphere is somewhat languid, a bit bleak perhaps, but nothing out of the ordinary. And Jacob is a man of conscience and compassion, doing his best for his people.
… until the nightmare of a spreading disease creeps over the community, causing horrible deaths, breeding hysterical desperation. Who else will try to handle the escalating situation and properly bury the dead, if not Jacob? But how can one do right in the face of horror?
A Prayer for the Dying has been called a “sunlit Gothic”—set in what could be a summer in history, but as relentlessly bleak and disturbingly sinister as fiction can be. This novel will unsettle you and might leave a lasting impression; proceed with this information at your own discretion.
The Selcouth Books by Lucy Jane Wood
recommended by PADERBORN2READ member Hannah
If you’d like something cosy to read during the dark and eerie last days of October, I’d like to suggest the Selcouth books by Lucy Jane Wood. Rewitched being the first book in the series focusses on Belladonna who works in a bookstore and is at the brink of losing her magic before her 30th birthday. The second (Uncharmed) and third book (Disenchanted) can be read independently but have the same charm: (older in a sense of not newly adult) main characters with deep struggles, great friendships, mysteries, and a cat companion—and a little bit of romance as well (but no explicit scenes).
