The Genre’d Fall TBR: What We’ve Read + What We’re Reading Next
Murder, ghosts, romantasy, questionable people, sexy cowboys, and the books taking over our fall reading list.
There’s something about fall that makes us want to completely abandon any reasonable reading goals and build a TBR based exclusively on vibes.
A little murder. A little yearning. Maybe a ghost. Definitely some people making terrible decisions. And, obviously, a return trip to Prythian.
So consider this the official Genre’d Fall TBR. Part recommendations because we’ve already gotten to quite a few of these, part wish list because apparently we still believe we can read everything we want to read before winter.
Here’s what we’ve read, what we’re reading next, and what might be taking over the podcast very soon.
We’ve Read Them. You Should Too.
A Murder Most Camp by Nicolas DiDomizio
The vibe: Schitt’s Creek goes to summer camp and someone gets murdered.
This was Schitt’s Creek meets summer camp in the absolute best way possible.
Mikey is spoiled, dramatic, wildly unequipped for camp life, and suddenly finds himself in the middle of an actual murder mystery. It’s campy without sacrificing the mystery, genuinely funny, and exactly the kind of book where the character dynamics are just as much fun as trying to figure out what happened.
Basically, if Moira Rose dropped someone off at summer camp and accidentally wandered into a murder investigation, we would be somewhere in the vicinity.
Genre’d verdict: Put it on the list if you like your murder mysteries with a personality.
🎧 Listen next: We talked to author Nicoloas DiDomizio about A Real Paige Turner and his reading & writing journey.
A Real Paige Turner by Michelle Eileen
The vibe: Sexy cowboy romance + bookstore-owning FMC. Our dream?
Paige owns a bookstore. There are cowboys. There’s romance.
We really didn’t need much more convincing than that.
It’s small-town romance with all the things we want from small-town romance, plus the fact that our heroine gets to spend her days surrounded by books, which feels personally aspirational.
Genre’d verdict: Bookstore owner + cowboy. We rest our case.
🎧 Listen next: We talked to author Michelle Eileen about A Real Paige Turner and her reading & writing journey.
You’re the One That I Haunt by Katie Jung
The vibe: Gossip Girl meets My Best Friend’s Wedding, except there’s also a ghost.
This one somehow manages to give us romance, friendship, a deadly family curse, a very inconveniently attractive ghost, and one giant love letter to New York City.
But what really sold us was the NYC of it all.
It has that particular feeling of being young in New York, loving people you probably shouldn’t, knowing way too much about everyone else’s business, and believing there’s still a little magic hiding somewhere in the city.
Genre’d verdict: Come for the haunting. Stay for the yearning and New York nostalgia.
🎧 Listen next: We talked to author Katie Jung about You're the One That I Haunt and her reading & writing journey.
We Are All Guilty Here by Karin Slaughter
The vibe: The twists have twists.
We read a lot of thrillers, which means it takes quite a bit to actually surprise us.
This one did.
This is genuinely one of the twistiest thrillers we’ve read in a long time. Every time we thought we had our footing, Karin Slaughter basically said, “That’s cute,” and moved the floor again.
Genre’d verdict: Do not get comfortable. The twists have twists.
🎧 Listen next: We talked all about We Are All Guilty Here on Episode 8 of Genre’d.
Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel
The vibe: Existential crisis, but make it literary sci-fi.
Exit Party gave us two separate forms of anxiety at once.
First, it’s a terrifying look at what our country could become. Then it starts playing with alternate worlds, fractured timelines, and versions of the same people shaped by completely different circumstances.
Which raises a question we have not stopped thinking about:
Are there different versions of all of us?
How much of who we are comes down to the choices we make, and how much comes down to the world we happen to be dropped into?
Casual!
Genre’d verdict: Read it when you’re in the mood to finish a book and immediately need to discuss the nature of your own existence with someone.
The Book Witch by Meg Shaffer
The vibe: What if being able to physically climb inside your favorite book was an actual job?
This is basically catnip for anyone who has ever wanted to disappear into a book and simply live there for a while.
Rainy March is a third-generation Book Witch who can jump in and out of novels to fix stories when something goes wrong. There’s a magical umbrella, a feline familiar, fictional worlds, a missing grandfather, and one particularly inconvenient problem: she has fallen for a man who technically only exists inside a book.
So yes, this one understands its audience.
It’s cozy and magical, but more than anything, it feels like a love letter to being a reader and to that very specific feeling of wishing your favorite fictional world could be real.
Genre’d verdict: For everyone who has ever finished a book and been genuinely annoyed that they cannot move there.
Also seen on Genre’d: We paired this one with a London Fog for The Reading Ritual.
Rumors & Whiskey by Victoria Wilder
The vibe: Small-town romance, family secrets, revenge, whiskey, and a suspicious number of attractive people with complicated pasts.
The Crowne women live in Rumor, Tennessee, where everyone knows everyone else’s business, or at least thinks they do.
This is romance, but there’s also a dead body, a missing cop, family secrets, old trauma, revenge, and enough suspense happening around the love story to keep things interesting.
Basically, it understands that sometimes we want our romance with a little danger on the side.
Genre’d verdict: Come for the romance. Stay because apparently this entire town has something to hide.
🎧 Listen next: We talked all about Rumors & Whiskey on Episode 26 of Genre’d.
Last Night Was Killer by Mary Pauline Lowry
The vibe: Good Girls meets a murder mystery, with pole dancing.
Tilly Turner is a heartbroken single mom who signs up for a pole dancing class, has a very big night out, and wakes up the next morning with a hangover and a dead man in her trunk.
She also has absolutely no idea how he got there.
Honestly, we could probably stop the description right there.
This book is funny, ridiculous in exactly the right way, surprisingly heartfelt, and still gives you an actual mystery to solve underneath all the insanity.
Genre’d verdict: Murder, motherhood, pole dancing, questionable decisions. A completely normal Tuesday.
🎧 Listen next: We talked all about Last Night Was Killer on Episode 31 of Genre’d.
Girl Dinner by Olivie Blake
The vibe: Female ambition, wellness culture, an elite sorority, and absolutely nothing good happening behind closed doors.
If the phrase “sinister wellness trend” immediately gets your attention, welcome.
Girl Dinner follows sophomore Nina Kaur and professor Sloane Hartley as both become increasingly entangled with The House, an exclusive sorority whose members appear to have cracked the code on beauty, achievement, belonging, and having it all.
Which should obviously make everyone immediately suspicious.
It’s dark, satirical, uncomfortable, and interested in what happens when the endless pressure placed on women to be thinner, prettier, more successful, more desirable, and somehow completely effortless gets pushed somewhere much more sinister.
Genre’d verdict: Good girls deserve a treat. Maybe just ask a few questions about what’s in it first.
🎧 Listen next: Girl Dinner was Episode 11 of Genre’d.
And Now, the Actual Fall TBR
These are the books currently staring at us from the increasingly theoretical concept known as our “to be read” pile.
A Court of Splintered Harmony by Sarah J. Maas
The vibe: Do we seriously need to explain ourselves?
ACOTAR 6.
Obviously.
We have waited. We have theorized. We have developed opinions about fictional fae that are frankly none of our business.
When this book comes out, we will be unavailable.
Why it’s on the TBR: Prythian owns us and apparently we’re fine with that.
Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel by Lucy Foley
The vibe: Miss Marple. Swiss Alps. Luxury hotel. Blizzard. Murder.
Champagne? Check.
Furs? Check.
Old grudges? Check.
A hotel full of people who presumably all have something to hide?
We are listening.
This feels like the book equivalent of checking into an extremely expensive hotel, ordering a martini, putting on a cashmere sweater, and discovering that someone has been murdered three rooms down.
Why it’s on the TBR: This is basically engineered in a lab to be a fall Genre’d book.
Fruit Fly by Josh Silver
The vibe: Publishing drama, ambition, exploitation, and some deeply questionable choices.
A washed-up author desperate to become relevant again decides that the story of a vulnerable young gay man might be exactly what she needs to resurrect her career.
Which sounds like it is going to make us deeply uncomfortable.
Naturally, we’re interested.
It’s giving messy people, publishing drama, moral gray areas, and the kind of book where we suspect we’re going to spend quite a lot of time yelling, “WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?”
Why it’s on the TBR: We are almost guaranteed to have things to say.
Half City by Kate Golden
The vibe: Dark academia goes to romantasy school.
Welcome to Harker Academy for Deviant Defense, where apparently the appropriate school supply list begins with “keep your daggers sharp.”
Say less.
We needed more fantasy on this list, and an academy setting combined with danger, magic, and romantasy energy feels exactly right as the weather starts changing.
There is something about fall that makes us infinitely more willing to enroll in a fictional institution where the curriculum appears to include a significant possibility of death.
Why it’s on the TBR: Daggers. Academy. Fantasy. We know who we are.
Look Closer by David Ellis
The vibe: Everyone is lying and we would like to know why.
Unlike most of this list, Look Closer isn’t a new release.
But the TBR respects no publication calendar.
Simon and Vicky appear to be a normal, successful married couple.
They are not.
Throw in a murder, an affair, a $20 million trust fund, revenge, and enough deception to make it unclear who is actually conning whom.
We keep hearing some variation of: just read it and don’t look anything up.
Which, for thriller readers, is basically irresistible.
Why it’s on the TBR: We want a book to lie directly to our faces.
The Official Genre’d Fall Reading Forecast
So what have we learned?
Apparently this fall we’re looking for:
Murder. Ghosts. Sexy cowboys. Book witches. Questionable wellness practices. Whiskey. Pole dancing. Family secrets. Fantasy academies. Untrustworthy married couples. Existential dread. And at least one extended vacation in Prythian.
Sounds balanced.
We’ll keep adding to the list as fall goes on because we have never once encountered a reasonable stopping point when it comes to books.
What’s on your fall TBR? And more importantly, which book are we missing?
Read widely. Judge freely.
FAQs
What books are on the Genre’d fall TBR for 2026?
Our fall TBR includes a mix of thrillers, mysteries, romance, fantasy and literary fiction, including ACOTAR 6, Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel, Fruit Fly, Half City and Look Closer.
What are some good books to read in fall?
For fall, we tend to gravitate toward twisty mysteries, atmospheric fantasy, paranormal romance, cozy-but-weird reads and anything with a slightly darker edge.
What fall books has Genre’d already read and recommended?
Our recent reads include A Murder Most Camp, A Real Paige Turner, You’re the One That I Haunt, We Are All Guilty Here, Exit Party, The Book Witch, Rumors & Whiskey, Last Night Was Killer and Girl Dinner.
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