Welcome to Spooky Reads Friday, where every Friday in the month of October, I will be giving you scary selection book recommendations that will make your weekend reading more fulfilling…and scary 🎃. Check out these haunting book recs…if you dare…
The Blonde Dies First by Joelle Wellington
Devon is always being left behind by her genius twin sister, Drew. At this point, it’s a fact of life. But Devon has one last plan before Drew leaves for college a whole year early–The Best Summer Ever. After committing to the bit a little too much, the twins and their chaotic circle of friends learn why you don’t ever mess with a Ouija board if you want to actually survive the Best Summer Ever, and soon find themselves being hunted down by…a demon?
But while there’s no mistaking the creeping, venomous figure is not from around here, their method doesn’t feel very demonic at all. In fact, it’s downright human–going after them in typical slasher movie kill order. And that means Devon, the blonde, is up first and her decade-long crush, Yaya, is the Final Girl who must kill or be killed to end the cycle.
Devon has never liked playing by anyone else’s rules though, not even a demon’s, and the longer this goes on, the more she feels Drew and Yaya slipping away from her even as she tries to help them all survive. Can they use their horror movie knowledge to flip the script and become the hunters instead of the hunted? Or will their best summer ever be their last? (Credit: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers)
I Was A Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones
1989, Lamesa, Texas. A small west Texas town driven by oil and cotton–and a place where everyone knows everyone else’s business. So it goes for Tolly Driver, a good kid with more potential than application, seventeen, and about to be cursed to kill for revenge. Here Stephen Graham Jones explores the Texas he grew up in, and shared sense of unfairness of being on the outside through the slasher horror Jones loves, but from the perspective of the killer, Tolly, writing his own autobiography. Find yourself rooting for a killer in this summer teen movie of a novel gone full blood-curdling tragic.
Someone In The Attic by Andrea Mara
You thought you were home alone.
Anya is enjoying a relaxing bath when she hears a noise coming from the ceiling. Through the open bathroom door, she sees the attic hatch swing down, and a masked figure drops to the floor. Thirty seconds later, Anya is dead.
You’re not afraid of being alone in the dark. You’re afraid you’re not alone.
Across town, Anya’s old school friend, Julia, sees an online video of a masked figure climbing out of an attic. She suddenly realizes why the footage is eerily familiar: it was filmed inside her own house in a luxury gated community, designed to keep intruders out.
And now your worst fears are coming true.
Why would a stranger target Julia? Unless of course, it’s not a stranger at all.
Do What Godmother Says by L.S. Stratton
Shanice Pierce knows better than to heed bad omens. But she has a hard time ignoring the signs when she finds herself newly single and out of a job on the same seemingly cursed day.
Then, while cleaning out her grandmother’s house, Shanice comes across a painting she hasn’t seen in years. Drawn to the haunting portrait in a way she can’t explain, Shanice accepts her grandmother’s offer to keep the family heirloom.
She soon uncovers the story of the artist, a Harlem Renaissance painter named Estelle Johnson. The young woman was taken under wing by the wealthy art patron Maude Bachmann–or “Godmother” as she insisted her artists call her–and vanished shortly after Bachmann’s brutal murder a century ago.
As Shanice digs deeper, a paranoia that’s haunted her for years returns. She becomes convinced she’s being stalked, and that the deaths happening around her are connected to the staggering offer she turned down for the painting.
But the truth hiding in plain sight is even more shocking–and deadly–than Shanice could possibly have imagined . . .(Credit: Union Square & Co.)
Kill Your Darlings by Ethan S. Parker, Griffin Sheridan and Bob Quinn
Narnia meets Hereditary in this compelling and emotional dark fantasy adventure.
Rose loves nothing more than to play pretend in a magical land of her own creation. To her, that world is as real as our own–from her fluffy friends to the terrible evil that lurks at the center of it all. In one night, the line between fantasy and reality will disappear, an ancient hunger will feed again, and Rose will be pulled into a gruesome saga that began centuries before her birth. (Credit: Image Comics)
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