October 2025 Book Box Picks
🔮 October 2025 Featured Books
October brings us a spine-tingling selection of romance reads perfect for the spooky season!
🖤 Dark Romance Pick
Book Title: Ghost
Author: Kat Blackthorne
Spice Rating: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️ (4/5)
Why we picked it: We wanted a book that didn’t just nod at Halloween, but lived and breathed it. Ghost is like stepping into Halloweentown if it were dark, dangerous, and deliciously smutty. Imagine an entire month of masquerade balls, trick-or-treating, and parties where the shadows hold secrets of their own. The question isn’t just whether the residents are obsessed with their eerie little town… it’s whether they’re bound to it.
This pick is everything October should be... spooky, seductive, and impossible to put down
🧪 Fantasy Romance Pick
Book Title: Nocticadia
Author: Keri Lake
Spice Rating: 🌶️🌶️🌶️ (3/5)
Why we picked it: This book consumed us from the very first page. Nocticadia has everything we crave in a fall fantasy escape: slow-burn tension, forbidden desire, and a gothic mystery that lingers like fog over the sea. The story unravels in a dark academia setting, an isolated island cloaked in perpetual mist, where every corridor whispers secrets and danger feels as close as the shadows.
At its core is a romance you’re not supposed to root for, a student and her professor, yet the forbidden pull makes every stolen glance and near-touch feel electric. Add in the thriller-like pacing, the spice, and the beautifully haunting atmosphere, and you get a book that is as intoxicating as it is unforgettable.
We picked Nocticadia because it’s the kind of story you don’t just read, you inhabit. Dark, moody, and utterly addictive.
💖 Contemporary Romance Pick
Book Title: If It Makes You Happy
Author: Julie Olivia
Spice Rating: 🌶️🌶️ (2/5)
Why we picked it: Some books feel like a warm hug and this one wrapped us up so tight we didn’t want to let go. Set in the late 90s, If It Makes You Happy is packed with nostalgic throwbacks: the music, the technology (or lack of it), the simple joys of a small town autumn in 1997. It has that Hallmark fall vibe, but with just the right amount of slow-burn spice to keep you turning the pages.
The romance is irresistible: a single-dad golden retriever hero and a black-cat heroine who balance each other perfectly in a friends-to-lovers arc that feels both comforting and electric. It’s cozy, it’s romantic, and it’s everything we want in a fall contemporary.
We picked this book because it’s the perfect seasonal escape. A story that lets you live inside crisp autumn nights, small town charm, and the kind of love that sneaks up on you when you least expect it.
These books are featured in our October 2025 book box.