My favourite Witchy Books

October, the month of spooky reads. I don’t do well with horror and only read it when a book really interests me. But I have to be in the mood. So instead of talking about super scary reads, I want to highlight my favourite witchy books. All of the include witches, but none of them are scary enough to only read in day time.

Book of Shadows by Cate Tiernan

I’ll never stop talking about my love for the Wicca series by Cate Tiernan. I read the whole series every few years and I can still enjoy them as when I read it for the first time. It’s one of my feel good series, although the story itself isn’t necessarily feel good. Morgan is familiar and I feel for her. She also knows exactly what to say when I feel bad. Have you ever felt like a character from a book was like a mentor to you?

Summary
Something is happening to me that I don’t understand.

I see things, feel things in a new way. I can do things normal people can’t do. Powerful things. Magical things. It scares me.

I never chose to learn witchcraft. But I’m starting to wonder if witchcraft is choosing me.

The Witching Hour by Anne Rice

I was fourteen when I first read The Witching Hour by Anne Rice. My mother gave it to me as a birthday present since she knew I was fascinated by witches. She didn’t know that the plot was nothing a fourteen year old should read. The first book in the series cover the history of the Mayfair witches while also setting the stage for the next books. It’s a complex story spanning several generations, but it’ll pull you in from the start. Anne Rice knows how to create an interesting world, and it’s because of this book I want to visit New Orleans and see the old parts of the city.

Summary
On the veranda of a great New Orleans house, now faded, a mute and fragile woman sits rocking… and The Witching Hour begins.

It begins in our time with a rescue at sea. Rowan Mayfair, a beautiful woman, a brilliant practitioner of neurosurgery—aware that she has special powers but unaware that she comes from an ancient line of witches—finds the drowned body of a man off the coast of California and brings him to life. He is Michael Curry, who was born in New Orleans and orphaned in childhood by fire on Christmas Eve, who pulled himself up from poverty, and who now, in his brief interval of death, has acquired a sensory power that mystifies and frightens him.

As these two, fiercely drawn to each other, fall in love and—in passionate alliance—set out to solve the mystery of her past and his unwelcome gift, the novel moves backward and forward in time from today’s New Orleans and San Francisco to long-ago Amsterdam and a château in the France of Louis XIV. An intricate tale of evil unfolds—an evil unleashed in seventeenth-century Scotland, where the first “witch,” Suzanne of the Mayfair, conjures up the spirit she names Lasher… a creation that spells her own destruction and torments each of her descendants in turn.

Harry Potter by J. K. Rowling

Does this really need explaining? I think the Harry Potter books have been formative for many of my generation. We grew up with Harry Potter, becoming older, just as he did. There are tons of interesting witches, so it’s not hard to pick one you like.

Summary
Harry Potter’s life is miserable. His parents are dead and he’s stuck with his heartless relatives, who force him to live in a tiny closet under the stairs. But his fortune changes when he receives a letter that tells him the truth about himself: he’s a wizard. A mysterious visitor rescues him from his relatives and takes him to his new home, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

After a lifetime of bottling up his magical powers, Harry finally feels like a normal kid. But even within the Wizarding community, he is special. He is the boy who lived: the only person to have ever survived a killing curse inflicted by the evil Lord Voldemort, who launched a brutal takeover of the Wizarding world, only to vanish after failing to kill Harry.

Though Harry’s first year at Hogwarts is the best of his life, not everything is perfect. There is a dangerous secret object hidden within the castle walls, and Harry believes it’s his responsibility to prevent it from falling into evil hands. But doing so will bring him into contact with forces more terrifying than he ever could have imagined.

Full of sympathetic characters, wildly imaginative situations, and countless exciting details, the first installment in the series assembles an unforgettable magical world and sets the stage for many high-stakes adventures to come.

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl

This one stood out to me. It’s very much YA Paranormal Romance, but with a male lead this time. I hadn’t read many (if any) before. I bought my copy for two pounds in a second hand shop in Covent Garden.

I definitely think that the book is better than the movie. I bought the other three books in the series immediately after finishing Beautiful Creatures, but if I had seen the movie first, I might have passed on the series all together.

Summary
Lena Duchannes is unlike anyone the small Southern town of Gatlin has ever seen, and she’s struggling to conceal her power, and a curse that has haunted her family for generations. But even within the overgrown gardens, murky swamps and crumbling graveyards of the forgotten South, a secret cannot stay hidden forever.

Ethan Wate, who has been counting the months until he can escape from Gatlin, is haunted by dreams of a beautiful girl he has never met. When Lena moves into the town’s oldest and most infamous plantation, Ethan is inexplicably drawn to her and determined to uncover the connection between them.

In a town with no surprises, one secret could change everything.

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett

Good Omens was my introduction to both Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. I was sold. American Gods and The Colour of Magic were my next purchases for both, but I never got too invested in Discworld. My Neil Gaiman books could probably fill a whole shelf now. I absolutely loved Good Omens and the series was amazing. I’m actually rewatching it now. It’s not a book I recommend often because of the style. It’s very particular and I understand that not everyone will appreciate it as much as I did.

Summary
According to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (the world’s only completely accurate book of prophecies, written in 1655, before she exploded), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. Just before dinner.
So the armies of Good and Evil are amassing, Atlantis is rising, frogs are falling, tempers are flaring. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon—both of whom have lived amongst Earth’s mortals since The Beginning and have grown rather fond of the lifestyle—are not actually looking forward to the coming Rapture.

And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist . . .

What are you favourite witchy books? If you’ve done a post about it, leave a link in the comments and I’ll check it out!