Halloween is fast approaching and if you’re like me, then you’re probably at home reading and binge watching Strange Things for the second time instead of partying. Anyone? If not, these recommendations can be read anytime that you want! They are perfect for the cold winter evenings we are about to encounter as well.
1. The Coldest Girl in Coldtown by Holly Black 
This book’s title sounds horrifying enough! This novel is a story about vampires who live odd and crazy lives in a quarantined place called Coldtown. This place is not only horrifying but if anyone ventures in, vampire or not, they’re not coming back. So that’s exactly where our main protagonist ends up, smack bang in the middle of Coldtown, surrounded by vampires with no plan. This book was original and not like any other cliché vampire novel. I haven’t read anything like this ever since and it really has a dark creepy tone. Its perfect for a cold chilly evening
Goodreads blurb:
One morning, after a perfectly ordinary party, Tana wakes up surrounded by corpses. The only other survivors of this massacre are her exasperatingly endearing ex-boyfriend, infected and on the edge, and a mysterious boy burdened with a terrible secret. Shaken and determined, Tana enters a race against the clock to save the three of them the only way she knows how: by going straight to the wicked, opulent heart of Coldtown itself.
2. Warm bodies by Isaac Marion 
Following the supernatural theme, Warm Bodies is about zombies! Don’t be fooled though, this novel is nothing like an action packed Walking Dead type of zombie novel. Its quirky, original and nothing like you’ve ever read before. Firstly, its written from the point of view of the zombie called R. Yes, the zombie might not be the bad guy in this one? This book is short and you’ll probably read it in one sitting! It’s also beautifully written, the metaphors are a literature students dream.
Goodreads blurb:
R is having a no-life crisis—he is a zombie. He has no memories, no identity, and no pulse, but he is a little different from his fellow Dead. He may occasionally eat people, but he’d rather be riding abandoned airport escalators, listening to Sinatra in the cozy 747 he calls home, or collecting souvenirs from the ruins of civilization.
And then he meets a girl.
First as his captive, then his reluctant guest, Julie is a blast of living color in R’s gray landscape, and something inside him begins to bloom. He doesn’t want to eat this girl—although she looks delicious—he wants to protect her. But their unlikely bond will cause ripples they can’t imagine, and their hopeless world won’t change without a fight.
3. The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
The Bloody Chamber is a collection of Gothic short stories. Angela Carter re-writes fairy tales in a way you’ve never read them before. This collection isn’t for the faint hearted. Its twisted, dark, rich and taboo. It has feminist undertones but also has a million different ways to interpret the stories. the stories play on your expectations, wolves who crave naked women, bluebeard who decapitates his brides, it’s one hell of a read. perfect for Halloween. Like Margaret Atwood, her writing is evocative, brilliant, and vivid. The book sucks you into the dark depth of the creepy side of fairy tales.
4. Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories (The Tell Tale Heart and The Raven). 
Poe is a must on a spooky night like Halloween. His gothic tales have such a creepy and morbid tone to them. His stories are exhilarating and hard to put away. My favourite one would have to be The Tell-Tale Heart! If you have not read this, then you are missing out. I won’t say much about this because he is simply brilliant and you will have to read to believe me. So, read some Poe this month if you already haven’t.
Goodreads summary of poe:
The name Poe brings to mind images of murderers and madmen, premature burials, and mysterious women who return from the dead. His works have been in print since 1827 and include such literary classics as The Tell-Tale Heart, The Raven, and The Fall of the House of Usher. This versatile writer’s oeuvre includes short stories, poetry, a novel, a textbook, a book of scientific theory, and hundreds of essays and book reviews. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern detective story and an innovator in the science fiction genre, but he made his living as America’s first great literary critic and theoretician. Poe’s reputation today rests primarily on his tales of terror as well as on his haunting lyric poetry.
5. A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness
Now this book is one I haven’t read myself and so I can’t give a full recommendation. However, it sounds like the sort of thing that would be perfect this time of year. This tory is about an unflinching, darkly funny, and deeply moving story of a boy, his seriously ill mother, and an unexpected monstrous visitor. At seven minutes past midnight, thirteen-year-old Conor wakes to find a monster outside his bedroom window. But it isn’t the monster Conor’s been expecting – he’s been expecting the one from his nightmare, the nightmare he’s had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments. The monster in his backyard is different. It’s ancient. And wild. And it wants something from Conor. Something terrible and dangerous. It wants the truth. From the final idea of award-winning author Siobhan Dowd – whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it herself – Patrick Ness has spun a haunting and darkly funny novel of mischief, loss, and monsters both real and imagined.
Now you know which book I’ll be reading this week, leave a comment down below of any spooky reads that you think I should check out.
Until next time, Bye! X
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