I know there is still about a month of summer left; however, I must admit I am someone who gets excited about the autumn season early. This year, my excitement started about two weeks ago when we had a bit of a cooler spell – it instantly awakened my longing for crisper mornings, cooler days, and spookier evenings.

With my bubbling fall excitement, I thought there would be no better time than now to share some books I think should be on everyone’s ‘2025 Fall Reading List’.

As always, all cover photos and descriptions are courtesy of StoryGraph.

Although there is no particular order to the organization of this list, these books all share a common theme of being incredibly introspective and reflective. In my personal reading experience with these books, I found myself thinking about the meaning of life and also the daily importance of connection to oneself and surrounding communities.

Blue Notes by Anne Cathrine Bomann

“How much grief is too much? How far should we go to avoid pain? From the author of the international bestselling novel Agatha comes a literary thriller about grief, love, science, and societal norms.

A Danish university research group is finishing its study of a new medicine, Callocain: the world’s first pill for grief. But psychology professor Thorsten Gjeldsted suspects that someone has manipulated the numbers to hide a disturbing side effect. When no one believes him, he teams up with two young students to investigate: Anna, who has recently experienced traumatic grief herself, and Shadi, whose statistical skills might prevent her from living a quiet life in the shadows. Together, these sleuthing academics try to discover what’s really happening before the drug is released to the entire population.

Blue Notes is brimming with ethical and existential ideas about the search for identity and one’s place in the world, while offering a highly original literary adventure that ultimately underscores the healing power of love.”

A Terrible Tide by Suzanne Meade

“November 18th, 1929. In her small village in Newfoundland, Celia is setting the table for her 13th birthday celebration when the house starts to shake. It’s an earthquake, rumbling under the Atlantic Ocean. A few hours later, the sea water disappears from the harbor, only to rush back in a wave almost 30 feet high, destroying nearly everything in its path. Buildings, boats, and winter supplies of fish and food are washed away, and Celia and her community are devastated. With their only phone line cut off and no safe route to get help, they are isolated and facing a long, cold, hungry winter.

Their house destroyed and village in ruins, Celia and her family must band together and share the work needed for the community to survive. Can Celia find the courage to help her injured loved ones? Will help arrive before it’s too late

Based on the true story of an earthquake that shook Newfoundland’s Burin Peninsula, A Terrible Tide tells the tale of this forgotten disaster from the point of view of a young girl whose life is turned upside down.”

Black Boys Like Me: Confrontations with Race, Identity, and Belonging by Matthew R. Morris

“Startlingly honest, bracing personal essays from a perceptive educator that bring us into the world of Black masculinity, hip-hop culture, and learning.

This is an examination of the parts that construct my Black character; from how public schooling shapes our ideas about ourselves to how hip-hop and sports are simultaneously the conduit for both Black abundance and Black boundaries. This book is a meditation on the influences that have shaped Black boys like me.

What does it mean to be a young Black man with an immigrant father and a white mother, teaching in a school system that historically has held an exclusionary definition of success?

In eight illuminating essays, Matthew R. Morris grapples with this question, and others related to identity and perception. After graduating high school in Scarborough, Morris spent four years in the U.S. on multiple football scholarships and, having spent that time in the States experiencing “the Mecca of hip hop and Black culture,” returned home with a newfound perspective.

Now an elementary school teacher himself in Toronto, Morris explores the tension between his consumption of Black culture as a child, his teenage performances of the ideas and values of the culture that often betrayed his identity, and the ways society and the people guiding him—his parents, coaches, and teachers—received those performances. What emerges is a painful journey toward transcending performance altogether, toward true knowledge of the self.

With the wide-reaching scope of Desmond Cole’s The Skin We’re In and the introspective snapshot of life in Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Black Boys Like Me is an unflinching debut that invites readers to create braver spaces and engage in crucial conversations around race and belonging.”

Imagining Imagining: Essays on Language, Identity and Infinity by Gary Barwin

“Award-winning author Gary Barwin has written poems, novels and books for children. He’s composed music, created multimedia art and performed around the world. Now he has turned his talented pen to essays. In Imagining Imagining: Essays on Language, Identity and Infinity Barwin thinks deeply about big ideas: story and identity; art and death; how we communicate and why we dream. From his childhood home in Ireland to his long-time home in Hamilton, Barwin shares the thoughts that keep him up at night (literally) and the ideas that keep him creating. Filled with witty asides, wise stories and a generosity of spirit that is unmistakable, these are essays that readers will turn to again and again.”

The Nature of Witches by Rachel Griffin

“From a stunning new voice in YA comes the fierce, romantic story about a world on the brink of destruction, the one witch who holds the power to save it, and the choice that could cost her everything she loves.

For centuries, witches have maintained the climate, their power from the sun peaking in the season of their birth. But now their control is faltering as the atmosphere becomes more erratic. All hope lies with Clara, an Everwitch whose rare magic is tied to every season.

In Autumn, Clara wants nothing to do with her power. It’s wild and volatile, and the price of her magic—losing the ones she loves—is too high, despite the need to control the increasingly dangerous weather.

In Winter, the world is on the precipice of disaster. Fires burn, storms rage, and Clara accepts that she’s the only one who can make a difference.

In Spring, she falls for Sang, the witch training her. As her magic grows, so do her feelings, until she’s terrified Sang will be the next one she loses.

In Summer, Clara must choose between her power and her happiness, her duty and the people she loves…before she loses Sang, her magic, and thrusts the world into chaos.”

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