Welcome to the 2025 Carterhaugh School Summer Reading Challenge!

Ready to stretch your brain, find amazing new-to-you authors, return to beloved favorites, and feel accomplished AF?

Let’s do it.

All are welcome to enjoy the challenge and read your hearts out.

HOWEVER. If you’d like a chance to win a fabulous prize (spoiler: it’s a box of books) and support our work, you can enter by:

1. Joining our Patreon at any paying level and
2. Commenting on each weekly designated challenge thread with what you’re reading

One lucky winner who comments on all 15 threads will win THE GRAND PRIZE – a care package shipped to your door full of folklore-y books, stickers, and some additional surprises! (Please note we can only ship to the US!)

As always, we have 15 challenge categories for you all.

Please note that that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to read 15 different books, though you certainly can! If you, say, read a Gothic retelling of Jane Eyre with a pink cover, crafty friend, you have checked off three categories in one fell swoop, and we salute you. 

We’ve kept the categories pretty broad so that you can choose books that speak to you. And if you’re one of those people who just wants to be given a list or a place to start, we’ve also included specific recommendations from us so that you’re never stumped!

Without further ado, behold our challenge categories!

A Book with a Pink Cover
This is on our list solely because we feel like it’s the kind of request that a fairy would make during a challenge like this, and we happen to be in our pink era. Find your pink-covered book while browsing your local library or book store or pick up one of these pink-clad books that we love: Saint Death’s Daughter by C.S.E. Cooney, Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston, The Pink Fairy Book by Andrew Lang, or Meaty by Samatha Irby.

A Book by a Debut Author Whose First Book Comes Out This Summer
As authors who will be debuting our first book (!!!!???!!!!!) next year, we wanted to do a solid for other new authors and also discover some new voices! Obviously, we haven’t read these ourselves yet, but we’re especially excited to check out Black Salt Queen by Samantha Bansil (a fantasy based on the history and mythology of the precolonial Philippines), The Phoenix Pencil Company by Allison King (a generational tale with a touch of magic), and Immortal Consequences by I. V. Marie (dark academia Hunger Games in purgatory?!)

A Book by An Author You’ve Already Read and Loved
The counterbalance to the previous entry and your excuse to dip back into the work of an author that you absolutely adored. We’re both going to read another book by Olivie Blake – maybe finally The Atlas Six! Or possibly Terry Pratchett (we’ve read maybe 10 of about 40!)

A Short Story
We both genuinely love a short story and a quick win. There are SO MANY lovely, wonderful, mind-blowing short stories out there, many of which can be read online for free. We’ll have more to say about our love of short stories in an upcoming post, but if you need a place to start, some of our favorites include “The Lily and the Horn” by Catherynne M. Valente, “Seasons of Glass and Iron” by Amal El-Mohtar, and “Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather” by Sarah Pinsker.

Something Gothic
Short story, novel, novella, anything Gothic goes. (If you need a refresher, the Gothic is dread glamor, ghosties haunting ruined manors, decaying grandeur, and the folkloric past returning to haunt the present, among other things.) We’re especially excited to read The Spirit Collection of Thorne Hall and to check out some other works by Christa Carmen who wrote the wonderfully Gothic The Daughters of Block Island.

A Twist on a Classic 
For this category, take on a reimagining of a classic work of literature, like Angel of Crows by Sarah Monette/ Katherine Addison or A Study in Scarlet Women by Sherry Thomas, which are both reimaginings of Sherlock Holmes short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Or Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, which reimagines Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. Or Tell the Wind and Fire by Sarah Rees Brennan, which retells A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.

The Classic It Was Based On
For we are comprehensive nerds here at Carterhaugh Enterprises. So if you read Tell the Wind and Fire, it’s time to dig out A Tale of Two Cities. If you read A Study in Scarlet Women, it’s time for “A Study in Scarlet.” YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO. 

Something Science Fiction 
Confession: we both used to read TONS of science fiction when we were children. Madeline L’Engle, Star Wars books, Animorphs, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, WE READ IT ALL. We don’t read it as much anymore, but there’s absolutely incredible sci-fi being written all the time. In particular, we recommend This is How You Lose the Time War, The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet (really any Becky Chambers will do), All Systems Red, and A Wrinkle in Time.

A Book About Witches
Lest we drift too far afield from our bread and butter, we invite you to read a book about witches. History, fantasy, memoir, folklore, graphic novel – the sky is the limit, as long as the sky is full of witches. We adore Making Witches: Newfoundland Traditions of Spells and Counterspells by Barbara Rieti (a straight-up folklore book), Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman (need we say more?), and The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna (cozy found family novel.)

A Memoir 
We usually read a handful or two of memoirs a year, and every time we do, we’re like “why don’t we read these more often?!” We love these glimpses into people’s lives and insights they share about their own experiences – and the ways they so often relate to us, too. A few that we’ve absolutely adored include Untamed by Glennon Doyle, The Age of Magical Overthinking by Amanda Montell, and Buy Yourself the F*cking Lilies by Tara Schuster.

A Tome
If the classic you picked was a nineteenth-century novel, there’s a good chance you already have this category covered! When we say “tome,” we mean a big, majestic book that could double as a doorstop, but for the sake of clarity, we’re going to say it’s a book over 400 pages. Will this be the year that we finally read Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell? The odds aren’t good when we could just read Gideon the Ninth again, but you never know! Other possibilities include The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow, Middlemarch by George Eliot, and The Secret History by Donna Tartt.

A Romp
We feel that the Romp is the spiritual opposite of the Tome, but of course there’s no reason one book couldn’t be both! For our purposes, a romp is something playful, swashbuckling, or adventurous. We’ve had our eyes on The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafil by S. A. Chakraborty for a while, but some other excellent options include Arabella of Mars by David D. Levine, Cotillion by Georgette Heyer, and Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones.

A Feminist Fairy-Tale Retelling
Another Carterhaugh Summer Reading Challenge staple. Recent feminist fairy-tale retellings that we’ve read and loved include Vassa in the Night by Sarah Porter, The Thorn Key by Jeana Jorgensen, and Thornhedge by T.K. Kingfisher. Old favorites include Cinderella Is Dead by Kalynn Bayron and The Girls of the Kingfisher Club by Genevieve Valentine. And if you need MOAR, we also have this blog post we wrote with a list of queer fairy-tale retellings for you to investigate.

Something Illustrated
Look, we appreciate a holistic aesthetic. (Also, our book is illustrated to within an inch of its life, which makes us SO HAPPY.) You can fulfill this category with a graphic novel or children’s book, but there are also many gorgeous books that just happen to have lovely illustrations. Some of our favorites include The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar, Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, and Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne.

Something Hopeful
We need hopeful things in our brains. Enough said. In particular, we recommend Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater, Weep, Woman, Weep by Maria DeBlassie (which we will be talking about LIVE in our book club in June with Maria herself – join our Patreon at $7+ for the month of June to join us!), or literally anything by Cat Sebastian (queer historical romance).

As always, we’re looking forward to expanding our already ridiculous TBR piles, too… so be sure to tell us all about the books you pick!

And if you want to win a massive, lovely book-themed care package, don’t forget to join any paying tier of our Patreon (though we recommend $7+ because that’s the BOOK CLUB TIER!) and comment on each weekly thread for a chance to win!

P.S. Here’s a bookmark-sized version of the list if you’d like to print it out and cross things off as you go!

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