It’s certainly my favourite time of year and I always try and embrace every autumnal activity there is and my diary is currently brimming with every Halloween event I could find.
It’s that time of year again where the leaves turn brown, the air feels lighter and cooler and the lamps around the house are turned on at 4pm. It’s certainly my favourite time of year and I always try and embrace every autumnal activity there is and my diary is currently brimming with every Halloween event I could find.
Now that I have Ottie, I feel like it’s my duty to bring her in on the Autumn hype.
Now that I have Ottie, I feel like it’s my duty to bring her in on the Autumn hype and celebrate this time of year with her so she loves it just as much as I do. Seeing the joy in her face when we’ve been picking conkers and pretty, crispy leaves has already been one of my favourite moments this month.
Here at Zoella HQ we also love this time of year and we want to make sure that logging onto the website makes you feel all warm and cosy over the coming weeks too! Some of the content you have to look forward to includes: A warming frumpet recipe to spice up your weekend brunch plus our favourite rainy day recipes we always turn to! If you’re thinking of getting your talons involved in the fun this month, we’ll be bringing you some of our favourite Halloween nail inspiration for the occasion.
We’ll be speaking with some chefs on how to perfect your homemade roast dinners and be the ultimate hostess this season
We’ll be speaking with some chefs on how to perfect your homemade roast dinners and be the ultimate hostess this season and also take you through some of our favourite advent calendars ahead of December. Speaking of Christmas (it’s certainly not too early over here), we’ll give you a round-up of our favourite UK Christmas events to pop in your diary.
For now, grab yourself a cup of something warm, sit back and enjoy everything we have to offer this time of year with our usual sprinkling of women’s health, self-pleasure and everything in between!
New York *Is* the Main Character: The Story Behind That Green Eyed Girl
My friendly taxi driver slapped his hand on the steering wheel and announced, ‘Lady, you’re lucky you got me. 28 years I’ve been driving this cab. Here’s what we’ll do…’
This article is a guest post written by Julie Owen Moylan
When I first came up with the idea for That Green Eyed Girl, I knew there was only one city that I wanted to set it in. A place so full of stories that my novel of complicated women trying to overcome their circumstances would fit quite beautifully. It also happened to be a city that I fell in love with from the moment I arrived.
The first time I went to New York, I was young and broke. Having scraped enough money together for the flight, I could only afford a dorm bunk at the local youth hostel to sleep in. I’d had a long travelling day and decided to splash out on a cab, partly for the thrill of driving in one of the yellow taxis I’d watched people hailing on the movie screen since I was a kid.
As we pulled away from the airport terminal, I noticed the taxi driver glancing in his rear-view mirror at me. Being a young woman travelling alone I was immediately on alert but eventually the driver spoke, ‘This your first time in New York?’ he said, while continuing to examine me via the rear-view mirror. ‘Yes,’ I replied somewhat nervously. He nodded, ‘You on your own?’ He chewed on his lip for a beat while I wondered what the correct answer might be in this situation. He seemed like an okay guy though so I explained that I was backpacking across the USA and New York was my first stop. My friendly taxi driver slapped his hand on the steering wheel and announced, ‘Lady, you’re lucky you got me. 28 years I’ve been driving this cab. Here’s what we’ll do…’
My taxi driver gave me a guided tour of New York driving me around and pointing out the sights or what used to be in that spot. Julie Owen Moylan
It’s a flat fare from JFK airport to anywhere in the city so it doesn’t matter which route you take or how long the journey. My taxi driver gave me a guided tour of New York driving me around and pointing out the sights or what used to be in that spot. He told me stories of growing up in the city and our tour culminated with him driving through Harlem and pulling up outside the famous Apollo theatre. As we sat there in the cab, he reeled off the names of legends who had played there as if he was sitting in one of those seats and watching them perform. It was the most magical welcome to any city that I’ve ever had and the beginning of a long passionate love affair with New York.
I have always been fascinated with the concept of time passing in cities. The idea of so many people gathered together, the history of those houses or apartments. So many stories of ordinary people walking those same streets and living in the same buildings. If only the walls could talk, I used to think and that sparked the idea for this book.
What if I told the story of one apartment over a twenty-year period?
One of the things I’ve noticed about the way we all talk about cities is that it depends what age you are. Some of the buildings we might think of as new or having only been there ‘five minutes’ are already old to younger people. In the city where I live, my grandmother used to give directions often using place names that were no longer there. I find myself looking at brand new buildings and remembering what was there before, the nightclub I used to dance the night away in, the cinema I spent every Saturday morning in as a child. I don’t see the anonymous office block or flats that have replaced those things, because cities are made up of our memories and in that way, we all live with different time periods surrounding us even though we all exist at the same time.
The city of 1975 was very different to the more glamorous 1950s and I wanted to convey both eras on the page.Julie Owen Moylan
The next stage of planning my novel was to choose which time periods I wanted to set the story in. I went for the 1970s and the 1950s because they felt like two completely different types of New York stories. The city of 1975 was very different to the more glamorous 1950s and I wanted to convey both eras on the page. I began with Ava who is almost sixteen at the start of the book and lives in the city that is falling apart. It’s dirty, crumbling, garbage strewn and on the verge of bankruptcy. Everything has an air of grimy reality about it. To reflect what’s going on in the city, I wrote a character who is young but weighed down by a family that’s falling apart. Poor Ava has very few adults to turn to and so she becomes obsessed with finding out what happened to the couple who lived in that same apartment twenty years earlier. To contrast that more dangerous and crumbling period in New York’s history, I imagined glamour, smoky jazz filled clubs, cocktail bars and the kind of life my characters, Dovie and Gillian, would have lived back in the 1950s, while trying to hide their secret life and love from everyone.
By setting the novel over a long hot summer I wanted New York to appear as an extra character in the book. I wanted readers to feel the unrelenting heat in a world with no air conditioning, to smell the garbage on the streets or sense how lonely people can be even when they are surrounded by millions of other people. I wanted readers to be able to step into the world of both 1970s and 1950s New York and to briefly inhabit other women’s lives.
Some of my favourite old movies start with the camera showing us all those New York buildings that are so familiar to us, and then the camera will zoom right in to one apartment, to one window, and we will know that this is just one story out of millions that could be told. That’s what I wanted for That Green Eyed Girl and so I began with young Ava standing at her kitchen window while outside on the streets, people going about their regular business. Our story begins…
Julie Owen Moylan
My love affair with this city has lasted over many years and multiple visits but I will always be grateful to that taxi driver for giving me a New York story I’ll never forget.
All the Thoughts & Feelings We Had Whilst Watching Hocus Pocus 2
Come sisters, we fly! Twenty nine years on, Hocus Pocus 2 has entered the chat and the Black Flame Candle is flickering once again, unleashing a new kind of chaos and terror on Salem.
Come sisters, we fly! Twenty nine years on, Hocus Pocus 2 has entered the chat and the Black Flame Candle is flickering once again, unleashing a new kind of chaos and terror on Salem.
In case you’re unfamiliar with the bona fide Halloween classic and the soul-sucking witches that defined the 90s + 00s (and our entire childhood), the first Hocus Pocus film follows the infamous Sanderson Sisters – three menacing hags who suck the life out of children to stay eternally young.
When curious youngster Max dismisses the story of the Sanderson sisters as ‘just a bunch of hocus pocus’ – high five to the writers for getting the title of the film into the scrip – he lights the Black Flame Candle and accidentally resurrects Winifred (Bette Midler) the buck-toothed, mop-riding, firefly from hell, Sarah (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Mary (Kathy Najimy).
With the help of a talking cat named Thackery Binx, Max, his sister Dani and their friend Allison, must steal the witches’ book of spells to stop them from sucking up the youth of Salem and becoming immortal.
Naturally, we’re wondering if the reboot will live up to the magic of the OG fan favourite but the proof’s in the toffee apple, witches…
Will Thackery Binx the sarcastic boy-turned-cat return to our screens? Will the musical numbers slap like I Put A Spell On You? And will SJP still have an appetite for spiders?
Here’s all the thoughts and feelings we had whilst watching the movie of the moment: Hocus Pocus 2.
Ok, the opening is strong and mini Winnie is a mood.
Rightly or wrongly, Billy Butercherson has our attention.
The Reverend is giving Snape.
This mass hysteria over a spider is like looking at my family in Salem cosplay.
Forming a calming circle as we speak to cope with the hell that was: the 3-week long retrograde.
Literally, never trust a crow in Disney.
Especially one with red dip dye wings.
*Looks up property prices in Salem*
And the population of spiders…
Waiting for the Samuel Skelton High School X Do Revenge spin-off.
A little commotion for Gilbert the Great’s OOTN!
Thackeray Binx?! Is that you?!
How dare they get a new cat (despite it making absolutely zero sense for cat boy Binx to make a comeback in HP2).
I would not be lighting that candle for love nor money. NOPE. The shape. The girth. It’s ominous.
The Come Little Children bop is back.
Personal highlight: The Sanderson witches running amok amok amok around Walgreens.
Winnie eating her face mask – we’ve all been there.
Glad to see they have the same leggy, ah-ah-ah walk. IYKYK.
So far, it’s way more cosy than the OG but that’s ok (if you’re 5).
It’s a bit short of row, row, row ya boat lads dangling in a cage, ya know?
I know it’s meant to be present-day Salem but kinda preferred it when they didn’t FaceTime or fly on Roombas-cum-broombas.
Gonna need Billy to drop his dry shampoo routine…
Wait, this song belongs to Cruella (an actual villain).
Mini Winnie is carrying this movie. We said what we said.
It feels like a spoof. Makes me SICK *Winnie voice*
And I know it’s not feminist to say it but WE MISS MAX.
100% here for the strong female leads though.
Mmm witch’s butter, wonder how much that will set you back in 2022.
PSA ‘Hello you withering hag’ will be my new WhatsApp greeting.
Forgive us but the adult laughs are as dry as Billy’s mouth.
Ok, joke’s over where are Max, Dani and Alison?
Sarah standing up to Winnie. We love to see it!
Yassss for Cassidy’s coven.
And shared SISTERHOOD.
The plot may be 6ft under but we’re still here sobbing all over ourselves.
Whose eye even is that? It’s weirdly pretty.
Get Winnie back to her unholy mischief mates already.
Low-key tearing up because Winnie is nothing without her sisters. Nothing.
When book cries, we cry with it.
They’re not gone, gone. Are they?
There’s gotta be a Broadway musical on the way at the very least…
Why else would they attempt to replicate the greatness that was the I Put A Spell on You, Madonna cone boobs ball from HP1. Iconic.
It’s a 5/10 but you know what, it still put a spell on our tear ducts.
Not ready for this ending and the redemption arc. Winnie does have a heart!
Mmm the inference is this: we need a Mother Witch prequel.
And they better not make us wait another 30 years for it.
Listen, HP2 is a cute sugary follow up but the Sanderson Sisters deserved more.
The reboot didn’t hold a Black Flame Candle to the OG but all that being said, it was a sparkly PG jaunt through Salem nonetheless and seeing the comedic trio back together again was worth the wait…
Hurricane Summer is a powerful coming-of-age story that deals with colourism, classism, young love, the father-daughter dynamic–and what it means to discover your own voice in the centre of complete destruction.
In this sweeping debut, Asha Bromfield takes readers to the heart of Jamaica, and into the soul of a girl coming to terms with her family, and herself, set against the backdrop of a hurricane.
Tilla has spent her entire life trying to make her father love her. But every six months, he leaves their family and returns to his true home: the island of Jamaica. When Tilla’s mother tells her she’ll be spending the summer on the island, Tilla dreads the idea of seeing him again, but longs to discover what life in Jamaica has always held for him. In an unexpected turn of events, Tilla is forced to face the storm that unravels in her own life as she learns about the dark secrets that lie beyond the veil of paradise – all in the midst of an impending hurricane.
Hurricane Summer is a powerful coming-of-age story that deals with colourism, classism, young love, the father-daughter dynamic–and what it means to discover your own voice in the centre of complete destruction.
Here’s what the team thought of our September Book Club pick!
Lareese’s Review
An emotional read that deals with death and the dangers of being a woman, Hurricane Summer certainly isn’t for the faint of heart, nor is it the feel-good read many of us gravitate towards at this time of year. Despite all its heaviness, the vivid writing and compelling themes make for a thought-provoking read. Though it took a while to hit its stride, I couldn’t help but want to know more about Tilla’s journey of self-discovery and the complex relationship with her father. A deeply affecting novel and a commendable debut, set to be a well-loved read for many. I’m excited to read more from this author!
Rating: 3.5/5 Would you recommend it? The perfect storm!
Danielle’s Review
It’s been a while since I’ve read a book that made me cry as much as Hurrican Summer, which isn’t something I expected to feel when I read the blurb for the book. It really is quite a heartbreaking journey and I wouldn’t pick it up if you’re afraid to “feel” which, lucky for me, I am not. This is a perfect novel for young women packed full of so many things I think they’d find relatable, like seeking the approval of their father, sexual shame, loneliness and isolation. A fantastic debut from Asha Bromfield!
Rating: 3.5/5 Would you recommend it? If you’re ready to cry!
Charlotte’s Review
Despite its gorgeous cover, Hurricane Summer isn’t one to be mistaken for a light, fun read. Beautifully powerful, HS explores the devastating emotions that come with parental neglect and the desperation of pining for the attention of someone that should inherently love and care for you. Let’s just say I cried- a lot.
Addressing issues such as privilege, racism, sexism, love and attachment, it covers so much ground without feeling like issues have been shoehorned in for the sake of the story.
We love reading a debut novel here at Zoella and I have to say this is one of the strongest I’ve ever delved into! Asha has a beautiful way of pulling you into her character’s universe and keeping you transfixed there. Asha’s description of the book as one that “explores the sexual and spiritual wounding that can happen when a girl moves out of her teenage years and into her womanhood” perfectly summed up the most powerful yet difficult-to-read aspects of the book, and in this sense is perhaps one to avoid if you have experienced sexual trauma or are sensitive to these issues.
Hurricane Summer is poignant in all the right ways, and I truly couldn’t put it down!
Rating: 4/5 Would you recommend it? Yes!
Lily’s Review
BRB…crying It took a bit before the story fell into place for me but once it did, I was all in. This book and story angle is an incredibly thought-provoking story and heart-jerking. As Tilla (our main character) has spent her entire life trying to gain the love of her father. However, he leaves their family every 6 months and returns to his true home, Jamaica.
Asha Bromfield takes us readers through to the heart of Jamaica, and into the soul of a girl coming to terms with her family and herself. To add even more, it is set against the backdrop of a hurricane!!
Rating: 3/5 Would you recommend: This book FEELS so much, as will you after this storyline!!
The Seasonal Scented Candles Every Autumn Lover Needs
The seasonal shift into autumn is here, and you know what that means? It's socially acceptable to have a pumpkin/cinnamon/pine scented candle lit from AM-PM, and no-one can tell you otherwise.
Alexa: Play ‘Tis The Damn Season by Taylor Swift.
The seasonal shift into autumn is here, and you know what that means? It’s socially acceptable to have a pumpkin/cinnamon/pine scented candle lit from AM-PM, and no-one can tell you otherwise.
Our Seasonal Affective Disorder may be preparing to defrost, but if there’s a small joy we can rely on to keep us going, consider it the flicker of a candle against a rainy window pane and an excessive amount of cream upon your evening hot chocolate. Bliss.
From Chai to Cedarwood, Bitter-Orange to Bergamot, the world of scented candles comes alive in the cooler months and your home is about to feel all the more welcoming for it!
POV: You’re An Autumn Person & Everyone Must Hear of It
Grab your remote and your sad girl autumn dressing gown, here’s 20 things to do in the season of spook, Taylor Swift’s new album and Hocus Pocus 2.
We’ve never met an autumn we didn’t like.
The cosy charm of October is simply unmatched, with Halloween, pumpkin patches and crisp mornings giving us all something to smile about. And by Jove are we due some serotonin after the September we’ve just had.
But hey, a whole year ago we were out on the BP forecourt, jostling with jerry cans and wondering if we were ever going to make it from pump 2 to pump 3. So, comparatively, things are looking… up?
Grab your remote and your sad girl autumn dressing gown, here’s 20 things to do in the season of spook, Taylor Swift’s new album and Hocus Pocus 2.
1. Get swept up in the hype of beauty advent calendar launches. Size *does* matter and The Sunday Times Style came to win.
2. Frantically cobble a fancy dress outfit together for Halloween, knowing full well you’ll end up going as an incredibly average cat again or Cruella de Vil at a push.
3. Accept *the hold* that cinnamon rolls have on you at this time of year and lean into it. You and Gail’s are thick as thieves.
4. Eat a roast dinner every Sunday until March.
5. Guzzle apple cider like it’s the elixir of youth.
6. Watch Hocus Pocus 2. The long-awaited sequel is finally here. Come sisters, we fly!
7. Live your best WhenHarry Met Sally life amongst the autumn foliage.
8. Tuck yourself in for Bake Off every Tuesday, snacks in tow.
9. Turn down any social event based on the parking situation alone. Self-love is going home if you have to parallel park.
10. Discover the spine-chilling tales of Fleet Street’s demon barber with a Sweeney Todd walking tour for two and uncover the truths about Mrs Lovett’s deliciously meaty pies.
11. Hibernate with one of these quintessentially autumn reads.
12. Look into buying an electric blanket or a 6ft hot water bottle. The heating will see no action this year. None at all.
13. Watch The Policeman for the plot. The plot being: Harry Styles. In cinemas October 21.
14. Get an air fryer. That’s it, that’s the tweet.
15. Countdown to the limited series The Santa Clauses based on TheSanta Clause film franchise. Bernard the know-it-all elf is back and all is right in the world. Energy price hikes, a new imported-cheese-hating PM and the cost of living crisis aside. Streaming on Disney+ November 16.
16. Crave banana bread for the first time since 2020. Hello darkness my old friend.
17 Wrestle with the urge to put the Christmas tree up. It’s a genre.
18. Find yourself getting excited for the John Lewis advert…
19. Listen to Taylor Swift’s new album ‘Midnights’ on repeat.
20. And enjoy thirteen beautiful sleepless nights whilst you’re at it.
