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Every October, my TBR gets out of control. I’m not usually a horror reader, but that changes during Halloween month. Within these 31 days, I can’t get enough creepy queer reads. The problem with that is it means I collect queer horror to read all year, and suddenly I have 60 books checked out from the library and only a few weeks to read them all in!
October is also Dewey’s 24-Hour Readathon, which I’ve participated in twice a year, every year, for the past decade. It’s a day of snacking and reading with friends, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s my favourite day(s) of the year.
I have a lot more than 15 book on my TBR this month, but I thought I’d share a selection with you, in case you also want to lean into seasonal reading this Gay Christmas. I have an asexual haunted house romance, trans alien invasion horror, queer gothics, trans horror essays, a sapphic vampire murder mystery, and much more.
All Access members, read on for 15 of the queer Halloween-adjacent books on my TBR this month.
Easing into the season, I have a couple of haunted house romance novels on my list: Looking for Love in All the Haunted Places by Claire Kann (asexual F/M) and The Most Unusual Haunting of Edgar Lovejoy by Roan Parrish (transmasc NB/cis M). I also have the sapphic asexual monster romance/fantasy/horror Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell on my life.
Currently, I’m reading Lucky Day by Chuck Tingle, which is a very weird bisexual horror novel. I’m only a few chapters in, but I’m having a great time. Another one in the genre-blending category on my list is Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove, which is about a sentient spaceship trying to kill Dracula. It promises to be “the queer love child of pulp horror and classic sci-fi.” And another mash-up: The Midnight Shift by Seon-Ran Cheon, translated by Gene Png, which is a sapphic vampire murder mystery.
I have a million sapphic gothic books on my TBR this month, but let’s have House of Monstrous Women by Daphne Fama stand in for all of them. This one is set in a strange, shifting house in 1986 Philippines. Speaking of strange houses, there’s We Came to Welcome You by Vincent Tirado, a sapphic haunted house story—I can never resist those. And All the Hearts You Eat by Hailey Piper is a trans gothic horror novel I’ve been looking forward to since it came out last year.
I really enjoyed the Andrew Joseph White YA horror I’ve read, so I’m looking forward to—and dreading— his adult horror debut, You Weren’t Meant to Be Human, which has a trans main character and is about an alien invasion.