When I first tried Scaredy Cat Bingo last year, I had fun but didn’t get a bingo. (I’m a very scattered, mood-based reader.) That changes this year though. Check out this bingo board!

I won, and I managed it before my goal of Halloween.🎃 Let’s talk about the books that helped me get there.

Succulents and Spells by Andi C. Buchanan

This book may have been part of my spooky season reading, but it was sweet rather than scary. The main character is Laurel, a witch who never found her magical talent and feels like her life is going nowhere. Everything changes when she meets Marigold, a scientist who’s made it her mission in life to study monsters.

The story has a nice balance of the real word and the supernatural, and I especially liked the New Zealand setting, which isn’t a place I visit often while reading. Despite coming from a family of witches and having magical powers, Laurel is super relatable, and her romance with Marigold is just lovely. Overall, this is a cozy, wholesome read.

Night Shift Witch by Cate Lawley

My second witchy read. Star, the witch-in-training main character of this book, needs a job and lands a position at a funeral home. Then the very first body she works with ends up being that of a murdered golem–not someone who should end up in a non-magical human funeral home. What follows is a fun mystery where the odd trio of Star, her human boss, and a member of magical law enforcement set out to find who murdered the golem.

In addition to the main stakes, there’s a nice subplot where Star has to figure out how to keep her boss’s memory from getting wiped by the magical government after she accidentally exposed him to the supernatural world. And there’s just a touch of romance. It was a short, easy read.

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And that’s all the Scaredy Cat Bingo posts for me this year. (Kind of appropriate that the cover of the last book I read has a cat on it, huh?) This reading challenge runs through December though, so if you want to participate, head over to Cats Luv Coffee Book Reviews to read the rules and get your own bingo board.