This weekly meme was was created by The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s theme a Halloween themed freebie, and I chose to go with books that creeped me out. This will include both books I’ve read recently and books that gave me nightmares as a child. They’re not necessary all horror books, they just all have something creepy in them.
These will be in no particular order.
1. HOUSE OF LEAVES (Mark Z. Danielewski)
This book is great. it can’t even be described, it has to be experienced, but it’s far from an easy read and it’s not for everyone so I wouldn’t recommend just jumping into it. I’m planning on doing a nostalgic book review on this one pretty soon so watch out for that. A lot about this book is really creepy, but the part that stands out to me the most is when Johnny describes the feeling of someone watching you from behind, coming closer and closer. My neck started prickling and I had to move to my bedroom where I could sit with my back against the wall, hahaha. I wish I could find the passage and show you but the book is way too long to be able to find it.
2. HORRORSTÖR (Grady Hendrix)
This book isn’t overwhelmingly scary, but there was one scene that really freaked me out that had to do with a woman inside a wall. Shudder. [my review]
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3. ANNA DRESSED IN BLOOD (Kendare blake)
This one isn’t really that scary either (at least not to me, but I still loved it), but I can’t deny that Anna paints a terrifying image and one part near the end made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Plus there’s quite a bit of gore, like limbs being ripped off.
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4. The Gone series (michael grant)
The entire premise is just creepy. If you ever watched The Tribe (let’s reveal our age everyone… Also raise your hand if you had a crush on Lex) as a kid or teen then it’s kind of like that. Every adult (and teenager over the age of 16) disappears and the kids are left to fend for themselves. There are also mutated animals and insects as a result of radiation and it’s horrific. There’s one part in book 2 that just… yikes. This series isn’t the best one out there but it’s highly addictive and I shamelessly love it. You should give it a try if you love dystopian survival stories.
5. LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (John ajvide lindqvist)
I read this many years ago and it is incredibly creepy. Even without the supernatural element this would have been an incredibly disturbing book. [my nostalgic book review, might be slightly spoilery]
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6. THE HAUNTED MASK & DON’T GO TO SLEEP! (r.l. stine)
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I read a lot of Goosebumps books as a pre-teen and most of them creeped me out, but The Haunted Mask made sure I didn’t wear large masks for years. No, I’m serious. Another one that scarred me for a long time was Don’t Go to Sleep! I don’t even remember what happened in it, but I just remember being very scared of our guest bedroom after reading it.
7. CARRIE (Stephen King)
I’m reading this right now and I’m only around 75 pages in, but it’s creepy. It’s not even Carrie herself who’s creepy, it’s her mother. What a monster.
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8. MORE THAN THIS (Patrick ness)
The situation in this one is really creepy in and by itself. A boy, seemingly all alone in the world, has to find a way to survive and figure out what’s going on. It’s chilling and so so good. If you haven’t read it you need to do it right now.
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9. GONE GIRL (gillian flynn)
There are so many twisted and horrifying elements in this book. I love Gillian Flynn’s brain. What creeped me out the most is probably the ending. What an awful situation to be stuck in.
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10. THE HUNGER GAMES (suzanne collins)
Children forced to kill each other on national television for entertainment is really really disturbing, right? Can’t deny that.
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I love scary books and horror! What’s the scariest book you’ve read? Got any recs?
Anette Reads 
Gone Girl! I’ve always wanted to read it! And I used to be so freaked out by Goosebump books when I was younger hahaha! My TTT.
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Gone Girl is great! I’d been spoiled a little bit before I read it but I still enjoyed it a lot.
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Yeah, I’ve watched the movie so the book will probably be predictable for me 😦
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I have a friend that watched the movie before he read the book and he still LOVED the book 😀 So you should go for it!
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Cool! I think I might give it a try 🙂
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Such a great list! More than this really is one of the weirdest books I’ve ever read, and I was so freaked out while reading it. Probably one of the reasons why it was so damn good! 🙂 It’s so funny, the Goosebumps series made me scared of silly things, too, when I read them, a while ago. I looked over my shoulder and under my bed before sleeping because of some of the stories, haha! 🙂
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Did you also read some of the Bone Chillers books? There’s one about mannequins in shopping malls and that one made me really wary of the damn things hahaha.
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OMG yes, I remember that!! Damn, that was one of the creepiest thing ever, haha!
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Haha, yes it was! I love that you read that one too, I haven’t come across many people that also read Bone Chillers 😀
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I haven’t, either, that’s so great 😀
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I never expected to read House of Leaves on a Halloween TBR. I understand your feelings though. Happy reading! https://ireadboooks.wordpress.com/2015/10/27/my-top-5-halloween-reading-recommendations/
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Haha why not, it’s so creepy at times! The pitch black halls in the house freaked me out. And the letter you had to decipher! I forgot to mention that in the post, but that gave me the serious creeps when I was deciphering.
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1,3, and 8 are on my TBR
2 was a fun book that I adored
4 I read but was not impressed with the first book, so I didn’t bother going on.
5 and 9 I just don’t have any interest in.
6 Who doesn’t like Goosebumps?!
7 Eh, the movie was creepy, but no desire to read the book.
10 was good!
My top scary book recs would be: Bird Box, The Girl with all the Gifts, and Beneath Claire’s House
My TTT
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I think I enjoyed the first book the most in the Gone series, so you probably wouldn’t have liked the rest of it then. It’s been a few years since I read them now though, so I’m not sure what I’d think today.
Goosebumps is amazing, everyone loves Goosebumps!
I haven’t seen any of the movie adaptations of Carrie, so I’m going into it knowing very little about it apart from the unattractive bullied girl with telekinesis powers. The batshit mom caught me off guard, I kind of dig it.
I haven’t read any of the ones you mentioned, but The Girl With All the Gifts is in my bookshelf so hopefully I’ll get to it soon! Thanks for commenting!
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Oh my Gods, Goosebumps gave me the creeps as a pre-teen but I was addicted to those books anyhow!
What do you think about Gone Girl? I quite enjoyed the movie and I’m thinking of getting the book too.
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I was addicted to them too, I always came home from the library with a pile of them, haha.
I absolutely loved Gone Girl, it was so interesting. I was a bit spoiled, but it was still great and really unsettling.
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Great book choices! I am dying to read Anna Dressed in Blood!
I put More Than This to the side, but I want to pick it up again and try to finish it.
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Anna is a great book! That is, as long as you go into it knowing it’s a paranormal romance and not really hardcore horror, haha. I found it really addictive, I read it in one setting.
I hope you get to finish More Than This!
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Loved the Goosebumps books when I was a kid used to think they were so freaky!
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They really were! I’d try to reread some of them if I didn’t know that would completely ruin the magic because I refuse to believe an adult would find them scary, haha.
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Oh me too, I don’t think I could ever re-read them I think a re-read would make them funny and that would spoil the magic of something that I used to love 🙂
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I’ve seen House of Leaves on a few lists, may have to check it out.
Great list.
My Halloween TTT: https://samwhitehousewriter.wordpress.com/2015/10/27/top-ten-tuesday-halloween-top-ten-fictional-fighters-of-evil/
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It’s a really strange book with a very particular writing style, I recommend you search for it in google images. It’s awesome. I’ve heard that every time you re-read it you get a different view of the story, depending on how you choose to read it.
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Interesting choices! I never pegged More than This as a scary book, but now that you mention it, it IS a scary situation. I’ve been wanting to read Horrorstor for a while now, but I’m not sure what it is. Is it just a novel in a different format or something?
Great list! x
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Yes, More Than This won’t keep you up at night or anything, but the situation is less than ideal!
Horrorstör is just a creepy story set in a knock-off IKEA store. It doesn’t really have a different format, but the chapter dividers have some drawings of furniture that gradually turn into torture devices as the story goes on. There are also some other things in the book that are there to make it seem like an actual catalogue.
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I have to re-read Hunger Games and Gone. They were very good!
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Yeah, they were! 😀
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I haven’t read any of the books you’ve listed in your post this week. Quite a few of them sound really good, so I’ll have to add them to me ever growing reading wishlist.
Here’s a link to my TTT post for the week: http://captivatedreader.blogspot.com/2015/10/top-ten-tuesday-10-literary-halloween.html
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I especially recommend you try More Than This, it’s such a great book! And if you haven’t read The Hunger Games you really need to 😀
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I tried reading House of Leaves three times and ended up giving up every single time. I just couldn’t get through it! Maybe if they made it into a movie… A few of these are still on my TBR though!
Here are my Top Ten!
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It’s definitely not for everyone so I completely get you! I loved it though, even if some of the footnotes were really tough to get through. I’m actually dying to reread it. It could make a pretty interesting movie, I think. It would be a mindfuck for sure.
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Great choices! I’ve been eyeing House of Leaves but it’s really a hit or miss for me in terms of the epistolary! Goosebumps was my everything as a kid. I spent most of my pocket money on collecting them even though I could barely speak English.
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House of Leaves can be a real challenge at times, but I recommend everyone to at least check it out, just the writing style alone is such an experience 😀
All the Goosebumps books are translated into Norwegian here, so it was no problem for me to grab them all read them, thank god 😀
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Horrorstor! Someone else has read it! It was actually really funny, too. But I think the part I was most frightned of was the being stuck in a coffin part, if I remember correctly. *Shudder.* The Hunger Games is pretty disturbing in that it has children kill each other. Yikes, it’s pretty sad. I read Gone but didn’t like it much… I’m not sure if I’ll continue with the series. As for some of the other books you mentioned, I would like to read Anna Dressed In Blood, Carrie, More Than This, and Gone Girl some day. Great list!
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Yes! I couldn’t resist Horrorstör when I saw it was a horror story set in “IKEA” hahaha. That sounded so brilliant. Yes, the coffin part was really freaky! Though I was more creeped out by the older lady who clawed at the walls until her fingers bled and then got dragged away :S
If you didn’t like Gone you probably wouldn’t like the rest of the series either, but who knows! I just thought it was really addicting, even though there is some ridiculousness later in the series.
You should definitely read all of those books 😀 Thanks for commenting!
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Eep. I haven’t read any of these (Hunger Games is on the soon-to-be-read list though). I have such low tolerance for anything scary, I don’t think I can handle anything else on your list!
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omg, you haven’t read The Hunger Games?? Chop chop!
I think you might be able to handle Anna Dressed In Blood. She is kind of freaky and violent, but she’s also the protagonist’s love interest so that takes away some of the really scary and makes it kind of endearing instead. And More Than This isn’t scary at all, not in that way. It’s just dealing with a frightening dystopian situation and what’s most scary about it is the isolation. REALLY recommend More Than This 😀
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Okay awesome! I will definitely pick up More Than This. The hardcover has always interested me – it’s so cool!
I’m hoping to marathon The Hunger Games and catch up on the movies before Mockingjay Part 2…but I don’t think it’ll happen. At least I own the books now! It’ll happy eventually 😀
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