The Witch Haven author Sasha Peyton Smith shares her favorite spooky literary crushes

Sasha Peyton Smith: Haunted Hotties, Spooky Crushes Through the Ages

In my debut novel, The Witch Haven, 17-year-old seamstress Frances Hallowell is whisked off to Haxahaven Academy, a school for witches disguised as a tuberculosis sanitarium after accidentally murdering her predatory boss. Once at school, Frances is plagued not only by the suspicion that the magical underworld of the city is responsible for the death of her brother four months prior, but also by a boy who can speak to her in her dreams, who promises to teach her all she’s been craving to learn about power.

What is it about a spooky crush? Did something collectively happen in all our brains in the 90s when Casper turned into a human boy, danced with Christina Ricci, and asked “can I keep you?” Just look at Timothee Chalamet’s cemented status as a heartthrob, there’s something about a boy with a haunted look in his eye who you want to wrap in a blanket and feed soup to.

I was a creepy, Neil Gaiman-obsessed kid, who grew into an emo teen, and am now an adult who collects porcelain hands, so I know a thing or two about being spooky.

I also grew up in a house with a little sister who talked to ghosts, but that’s a story for another day. It was probably some combination of Casper, The Darkling, and Megan Fox lighting her tongue on fire in Jennifer’s Body that made me want to write love interests who were less dream boy and more boy-that-haunts-your-dreams. There’s nothing interesting to me about perfection. I’d rather read about someone with bruises under their eyes and on their knuckles and a massive soft spot in their heart just for you.

This one’s for all the readers who want someone just a little bit tortured to feed a bowl of soup to. I humbly present some of my favorite spooky crushes.

Shadow and Bone, Leigh Bardugo

Can one even write a piece about spooky crushes and not include Leigh Bardugo’s The Darkling? Especially given the Ben Barnes fueled social media Darkling renaissance?

Now a hit Netflix series, Shadow and Bone follows orphaned mapmaker Alina Starkov who discovers she’s not as ordinary as she seems. Blessed with the power to create light, she is the only hope for destroying the terrifying darkness destroying her homeland. Taken to a palace to hone her skills, she becomes the protégé of The Darkling, a man with terrifying secrets and a jawline that could cut glass.

The “Go on then, make me your villain” scene is always playing on a loop in my brain.

For the Wolf, Hannah Whitten

Hannah Whitten’s stunning debut is a fresh retelling of Little Red Riding Hood. Set in woods so creepy you can feel them, For The Wolf is about Red, the only second daughter born in a century.

As a second daughter, she has a singular purpose: to be sacrificed to the wolf in the woods in hopes that he’ll return the world’s captured gods. Except the wolf isn’t a monster, he’s a man named Eammon, and the gods aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.

Combining tropes of arranged marriage and enemies to lovers, Red and Eammon’s chemistry jumps off the page. If you’ve ever had a crush on a lumberjack but wished he looked a little more tortured, Eammon is the fictional man for you.

One Last Stop, Casey McQuiston

Okay, Jane Su is less haunted metaphorically and more something of a literal ghost, but I’m still counting her.

One Last Stop is about August, a girl who moves to New York in search of something and finds a group of ragtag roommates, a job at a diner, and the hottest mass transit crush of all time. There’s more to Jane, the girl on the subway, than meets the eye and August, (after a series of hijinks, including a séance) figures out that Jane is displaced in time from the 1970s and has been riding the Q train for over 40 years. It’s up to amateur detective August to piece Jane’s life together and get her unstuck from time.

The only problem is, the more August learns about Jane, the less she wants to let her go. With a leather jacket, great taste in music, and a smile that lights up fireworks in your brain, Jane might be (kind of?) of ghost, but she’s also impossible not to fall in love with.

Within These Wicked Walls, Lauren Blackwood

This Ethiopian-inspired Jane Eyre retelling is (to quote Hillary Duff) what dreams are made of. When Andromeda, a debtra, is hired to cleanse the Rochester estate of the Evil Eye, she realizes she may be in over her head.

As the malevolent force in the house grows, Andromeda is torn between leaving to save herself, or staying in an attempt to save the magnanimous Magnus Rochester. Action-packed, full of tension, and woven through with beautiful prose, Lauren Blackwood’s debut novel is perfect for fans of The Haunting of Bly Manor. Mangus is a more than worthy successor to Edward Rochester, in the pantheon of creepy crushes and alluring men with terrible secrets.

(Within These Wicked Walls will hit shelves this Fall.)

A Lesson In Vengeance, Victoria Lee

Pitched as a lesbian, dark academia ghost story, A Lesson In Vengeance will want to make you meet your spooky crush in a drafty library.

After the devastating loss of her girlfriend, Felicity Morrow returns to The Dalloway School, a centuries-old boarding school, isolated in the Catskills. Drawn to the new student and writing prodigy Ellis Haley, Felicity begins to unravel the mystery of the Dalloway Five, rumored witches, who are said to be ghosts who haunt her very own dorm room.

As Ellis and Felicity uncover the darkness of Dalloway, they become more entangled with each other, too. Both spooky crushes in their own right, Felicity is forced to confront her own ghosts and Ellis is driven to extremes to produce art. We love girls with sharp teeth and murky motives!

The Witch Haven by Sasha Peyton Smith is available now.