Hoopla’s September Reading Challenge: Reality, Enchanted: Magical Realism
This September, Hoopla’s Reading Challenge theme is Reality, Enchanted: Magical Realism, stories where the ordinary world tilts just slightly off its axis. No wands are required and no portals to other dimensions are necessary; the magic here shows up in coffee shops and library stacks, tucked into lives that look a lot like our own…until they don’t.
What sets magical realism apart?
Magical realism has always worked a little differently than straight fantasy.
Nobody in these stories stops to marvel at a talking devil or a wish-granting cup of coffee; the impossible just gets folded into the everyday, treated with the same shrug as a late bus or a broken umbrella. That matter-of-fact quality is what gives the genre its quiet power: because the magic is never really the point, the feelings underneath it get to take center stage instead.
This month’s picks lean fully into that tradition. A dying man bargains away pieces of the world for a few more days. A grieving librarian falls for a man who exists only on the page. A former child star gets a second chance at the life she thought she wanted, at a cost she didn’t expect. Even the more traditionally magical stories in the mix, the ones with spellbooks and secret societies, stay rooted in family and the pull to belong somewhere.
However you like to read, there’s an entry point here. The picks below span eBooks, audiobooks, and comics, so settle into whichever format suits you and let reality bend a little this month.
eBooks
Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs
Half-sisters Joanna and Esther have spent their lives guarding a family library of magical books, texts that can only be read—and rewritten—in blood. When their estranged father dies, the secrets he kept start to surface, pulling both sisters toward a danger neither can outrun alone.
The Time Hop Coffee Shop by Phaedra Patrick
Former child star Greta Perks stumbles onto a coffee shop that serves up more than a caffeine buzz. One sip and she’s transported back to the picture-perfect town from her old TV commercials, where the sun always shines and she’s young again. Perfection, it turns out, comes with a price.
How to Be Remembered by Michael Thompson
Tommy Llewellyn has an unusual affliction: once a year, everyone who knows him forgets he ever existed. When he falls in love, he sets out to finally break the pattern and prove that he’s worth remembering after all.
Audiobooks
If Cats Disappeared from the World by Genki Kawamura and read by Brian Nishii
A dying postman receives a visit from the Devil, who offers him one extra day of life for every ordinary thing he agrees to erase from existence, starting small and working his way toward something far more personal. Tender and quietly devastating in equal measure.
The Charmed Library by Jennifer Moorman and read by Kathleen McInerney
Assistant librarian Stella Parker can see the invisible words that swirl around people and objects. When she discovers her library lets storybook characters step into the real world for two weeks at a time, she falls for one: a WWII soldier straight out of her favorite novel, who’s due back on the page far too soon.
Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore and read by Brittany Pressley
Every New Year’s Eve, Oona Lockhart leaps into a different year of her own life, with no say in which one comes next. One year she’s 19, the next she might be 51. Piecing together a life out of sequence turns out to be its own kind of magic.
Comics
The Magic Order Vol. 1 by Mark Millar and illustrated by Olivier Coipel
Five families of magicians secretly protect the world from supernatural threats, at least until someone starts picking them off one by one. Magic meets the mob in this stylish, high-body-count series opener.
Zatanna: It’s Showtime! by Jamal Campbell
Stage magician and superhero Zatanna Zatara is gearing up for a new tour when a ghostly new adversary called the White Lady kidnaps her crew. What follows is a tour through ghostly curses and at least one magical sword.
Sabrina the Teenage Witch Vol. 1 by Kelly Thompson
Sabrina is adjusting to a new town and a new school, all while trying to keep her spellbook a secret from her mortal classmates in Greendale. Crushes and rivalries are hard enough without also hiding that you’re a witch.
Ready to see your everyday world through a slightly enchanted lens? Check out the full September Reading Challenge collection on Hoopla and borrow any of these titles with your library card, no waiting required!
*Titles may vary by library
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