The first stop on my fall romance roadmap would be To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han. It’s a cozy school romance, a feel-good novel that you would read underneath the color-changing leaves.
If you haven’t read To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, it follows Lara Jean—a high school junior—who, whenever she finds herself falling in love, writes a love letter. When she finds out those letters have been mysteriously sent, she scrambles to find a solution because one of the letters is addressed to her sister’s newly ex-boyfriend. In a heat-of-the-moment decision, she kisses another letter recipient, Peter. Realizing their interests are in line with each other’s—with Peter wanting to make his ex jealous and Lara Jean wanting her sister’s ex to think she isn’t in love with him—they decide to fake date.
As the semester progresses and the weeks seem to be jam-packed, it can be a bit crazy. The second stop would have to be the drama-packed romance, Be With Me by Jessica Cunsolo. I feel like the first month of fall flies by, and by the time October hits, I feel like so much has happened. That feeling is how this book comes across for me.
It’s a fast-paced drama about Siena, who, after being released from juvie, moves to King City with her sister and their estranged father. Not even having been in King City for a day, Siena finds herself in Jason Parker’s car as he’s speeding away from the police. Siena doesn’t want to be entangled with people like Jason; she doesn’t want any more dealings with the police. But when her sister seems to be spiraling, drinking, and hanging with the wrong crowd, Jason feels like the only person she can lean on. With a classmate missing and Siena in danger, Siena and Jason must decide what they are willing to risk, as it’s more than just love on the line. This is a spin-off series of Cunsolo’s With Me trilogy, and can be read as a standalone.
The spooky season isn’t all horror and blood. It can be spooky stories, ghosts, and the supernatural. The third stop is a supernatural romance: Freaking Romance, a webtoon graphic novel by Snailords.
Freaking Romance follows Zylith, who, after refusing to go to med school, gets thrown out by her father and ends up renting a supposedly haunted place. But when she starts to see glimpses of a man her age, Zelan, she starts to believe her place is indeed haunted, only to find out he’s from another dimension. He can’t see her, and she can’t touch him, but they still find themselves drawn to each other. Zylith questions whether she loves him as more than a friend, and if she does, can love cross dimensions? Is she willing to sacrifice it all for love?
I appreciate the fact that it feels like they’re ghosts, but they are actually in separate dimensions. Who knows, though; who says ghosts can’t be beings from another dimension?
As Halloween draws closer, imagination and creativity also rise. You can be anything you want to be for Halloween. A superheroine, a clown, a zombie, or even a pirate. The fourth and final stop on my fall romance roadmap is a pirate romantasy by Casandra James, Capitana.
In Capitana, Ximena Reale dreams of becoming a Cazador and hunting pirates on the open sea. But because her parents were Cazadores turned pirates, it makes her dream much harder to achieve. When whispers of an attack by the legendary pirate Gasparilla—thought to be dead—spread, Ximena sees it as her chance. Striking a deal with la academia, where, in return for capturing Gasparilla, she will earn her Cazador cloak, Ximena sets sail with one catch: she has to outperform her infuriating classmate Dante, whose motives are unclear to her. But the farther she gets from la academia, the more she questions the laws she’s sworn to uphold.
From haunted apartments and sailing across the sea to fake dating and showing up when it counts the most, these books represent the unspoken road markers of fall. This is just one map of one season, and if you’re looking for romance that gives fall vibes, then one or all of these books might be the detour you need on your map of fall reads.
Natalia Williams, Pine Reads Review Writer and Website Manager