Reading the 10 Best Horror Books of 2020

hello friends it's kayla welcome back to my channel i'm very excited about this video because if you followed me for a couple years you know that every november i block out the entire month to read the thriller nominees of the goodreads choice awards this year i wanted to switch it up and do horror for a lot of reasons i don't even need to get into it i'll give you the cliffs notes of it i know my thriller tastes really well it's pretty much my most read genre i'm really picky within it and i'm deep enough into it that i know everything that's going to end up on the list if i've wanted to read it already i probably have i don't think the winners are going to be surprising etc the reason i'm going for horror is i have been reading horror since i was like 10 years old but i still don't feel like i know my true taste in horror there's a lot of sub genres i feel like i read a good chunk of this genre every year but i still haven't figured out what i love what i hate if there are certain themes that i should be looking for more in the future i also think that this is a genre actually some people argue that horror isn't even a genre technically it's a feeling but if you'll allow for me to call it a genre for now i feel like it's a section of the book industry that isn't widely known i feel like if you don't read poetry you could still name off the top of your head like two to three poetry books that have come out in any given year if you don't read historical fiction you could probably name a couple titles some well-loved books but horror while there is a group of people who discuss it at length and it just depends on who you follow i just don't feel like it has the same like publicity or gets the same type of awards or gets talked about in the same way that at least i see a lot of genres discussed it's also a genre that tends to get really low average ratings i think that if you look at horror like it's a theme or a feeling that kind of explains it right there because there's probably a lot of horror books that people go into maybe expecting a specific genre or feeling and then they don't know or they weren't expecting what they got and since i tend to love unpopular and lowly averagely rated books i wanted to give it a go so today is october 22nd and i'm gonna take you through the entire next like four to six weeks as the goodreads awards go on they have not begun yet and i wanted to start this now because i actually thought it would be fun this time to predict the nominees so what happens in the goodreads awards is i don't think we even know the dates probably like halloween-ish time we'll get a list of 15 books that goodreads has selected that they think that will think was the best [ __ ] of the year they'll give us time to vote and then you can also write in votes and then there'll be 20 to choose from and then it gets knocked down to 10 and then there's a winner we already know what the winner's gonna be if stephen king is ever in a category he's probably gonna win so i actually have a stack of 15 titles that i think are gonna be the nominees i'm probably gonna be completely wrong but that's the fun of it and i'm gonna start reading these now i've already read a couple of them but i've been holding off on most of them at least the ones that are already on my tbr i've been waiting until this month so i could kind of vlog the experience with you so here are all of the books there there are some big oh god so to begin home before dark by riley saver part of me thinks this will be on the thriller list part of me thinks it'll be on the horror list you never really know i'm hoping lakewood by megan gettings is on the nominee list because i'm reading it this week i'm very excited to read it i'm guessing mexican gothic by sylvia moreno garcia is going to be on the list i have two books by stephen graham jones that i think might be on the list night of the mannequins and the only good indians i've already read this and loved this i'm reading this next week survivor song by paul tremblay even though it's getting terrible ratings i think it'll still probably end up on the list because apparently goodreads does not care they care about shelves not ratings this is the one i'm least confident in because i don't think i've seen many people talk about it but it's one of my most anticipated horrors of the year and that's the return by rachel harrison so i hope this is on the list my technical goal is always to read the top ten but if i read more than that then that's great then i have wonderland by zoe stage which again not good ratings hated her last book so we'll see how it goes this one i'm not confident in either because i think maybe this is a mystery but i've had so many people tell me the sundown motel by simone st james is something that i will enjoy i have the deep by alma katsu which i'm not confident in maybe he's more fantasy i don't really know and then this stack of four i'm the most confident in these will probably be like the top four by the end of this whole thing that's my bold claim uh the southern book club's guide to slaying vampires by grady hendricks devolution by max brooks mallory by josh mallorman which is the one i'm least excited about because i hate sequels and i love bird box and lastly the probable winner if it bleeds by stephen king so i'm gonna start reading i'll check in with you as i read these books and then we'll find out the initial 15 nominees in a couple weeks and we'll see what happens see in a sec so i just finished mexican gothic that was gonna be the first book i was coming on here to tell you all about when i saw that goodreads put up the awards it's like a week earlier than i expected which is cool because we can already know and already make a plan i'm sure there's gonna be multiple books that i've never heard of on this list or like didn't even occur to me to mention and let's click on horror and see what shows up plain bad okay i've heard about that a lot recently not enough that i thought it would be on this list but okay next up is the southern book club's guide to slaying vampires then the loop which i've never heard of the bright lands which the cover does look familiar no idea what it's about mallory as expected survivor song as expected the year of the witching i have heard of that but i didn't know it was horror uh the holo places i've seen people talk about that recently if it bleeds by stephen king lakewood by megan gettings yay one i will be reading this week the only good indians one i'm reading next week the holo ones i know who guillermo del toro is but i see this just goes to show how like not in the horror genre i even am i didn't even know he had anyway tender is the flesh i've heard of that had no idea it was horror devolution mexican gothic okay let's do a quick rundown i actually only told you 14 of my predictions not 15. so of the 14 i predicted eight of them were right they were on the list two of them were right but they're on other lists in four i was completely wrong and weren't on there but who knows maybe they'll be written in but i was right about eight and then seven that i didn't anticipate were on there some of them because i've never heard of them some of them because i didn't know they were horror one of them i didn't even know came out this year i feel like i've seen this cover a thousand times for the thousand years and a couple of them because i just didn't think they had enough readers to end up on those lists like a lot of these books came out in october actually the most interesting stat here is that prior to this video i hadn't like starting to film this i hadn't read any of the 15 in the first round not one so i better get going [Music] okay let's begin the discussions first up mexican gothic by sylvia moreno garcia and this is about a woman named noemi it's set in like 1950s mexico her cousin has reached out to her family and is looking for help um to be saved by her husband slash the house that she lives in and no emmy goes there and gets caught up in what's going on with her husband and the house this one's interesting because it's actually the most read of all of the good reads nominees in the horror category upon nomination it had 48 000 reviews and an average 3.7 the next most amount of readers have been southern book club and if it bleeds with 36 000 and 33 000 reviews respectively but this has a lower average rating than both of those two so i actually don't know which one's most likely to win i still think it's stephen king but talking about mexican gothic uh the horror like category that this fits into is gothic i'm so excited to see what all of them could be divided into and what like subgenre or whatever of horror i end up loving i'll pop up on the screen really quick like a bunch of horror that i have loved just so you have kind of a baseline of things that i have enjoyed and i don't know if they have anything in common so that's something we can discuss later but in talking about mexican gothic we're talking about all of the books throughout this video i want to mention like three things i want to give it a scary rating so out of five like how scary it was because i feel like if you're reading horror you're looking to be scared it doesn't happen for me very often of all the books that i showed you i think one of them genuinely like scared me like i was scared to turn the page i also want to give it if not scary a rating for being unsettled i think that's kind of the goal of horror is the writing is uncomfortable is gross is spooky and it's just like overall unsettling and then lastly just like intrigue or how interesting or how interested i actually was in the story because you can be spooky and scary and atmospheric as [ __ ] but if you don't have an interesting plot if you don't keep my attention if you don't say something with the book i don't know i might not love it and maybe i'll also give it a rating for weirdness or uniqueness so if you're looking for something outside the box and just overall strange i definitely want to be able to recommend certain books for that too so mexican gothic gets a two out of five for the scare factor but i also don't think it's intended to be a scary story it's a gothic novel gothic to me is more of an interesting pairing between like psychological and supernatural intrigue it also pairs interestingly like romance with terror and pleasure and death and just plays all of these things off of each other was this book unsettling yeah i'm giving it a 4 out of 5 for that it wasn't like grotesque or gratuitous but there were a couple moments that made me cringe made me feel gross this book had a lot of interesting commentary about eugenics and racism and misogyny and i liked a lot of what this book had to say i tend to enjoy books that have some sort of social commentary and this did a lot now as far as weirdness goes like okay if you're comparing this to a why a contemporary this gets a five star for weirdness but accepting the fact that horror naturally leans weird i would give this more like a two for weirdness i don't think it's totally outside of the box i've read this type of story before the reveals and the twists weren't the strangest thing i've experienced i hope one of those rankings helped you decide if you want to pick up this book and i'll continue to do that as i read more throughout the vlog [Music] okay let's talk book number two lakewood by making giddings overall i gave this four stars so follows a girl named lena whose grandmother has recently passed away to take care of her mother and to like handle the family debt that's been accrued she puts herself into these um experiments this medical research program it's supposed to help people like with memory and so she constantly gets asked all of these questions and put through this study so i think if we were to categorize this it would be under medical horror which i do think is a sub genre that i enjoy and will pick up more of especially in this context where it also was about like the documented and undocumented history of exploitation and the dehumanization of the black community and the focus is on lena being taken advantage of because of her race and her socioeconomic status so there is that like larger intrigue and conversation that i appreciate out of my books as far as our scale i would definitely give it 5-4 interest i was very interested in the medical aspect as well as like how lena herself is being preyed upon for the scary factor this one's hard because it's conceptually scary this is a scary situation and how lena continues to get more and more confused of what's happening and us as a reader gets more and more into this haze obviously the concept in its realism and historical context is scary in itself but this is why i split up scary and unsettling because this i would say is unsettling absolutely probably four out of five stars but for the people who specifically avoid horror because they think it'll be too scary i wouldn't say this book relies on that building of tension and the jump scares that you might expect from a horror movie overall i enjoyed this more because it was interesting and thought provoking as opposed to the scary graphic nature of it i think it was a little too repetitive to have that scary tension um and also like the choice of switching from first person to third person maybe distanced me a little bit there were letters in this book that lena was writing and i think that it actually would have been even more interesting and scary if we were only learning about the situation via the letters because there's always that sense of like how much do we really know how much is she holding back is she reliable i don't really know where to put my rankings because like i hope i'm gonna read some five stars so right now i'm gonna put mexican gothic and lakewood a little bit above it these can obviously move around but once in a while i wanna update you on my progress next up my book club pick of the month is the only good indians by stephen graham jones and i think that this might be the scary thing that i'm after so i'm going to read it next [Music] okay we're taking this handheld vlog time i have some updates for you one i'm about to go get my hair done which is why it's straight i feel like it's easier to anyway it's not going to look like drastically different or anything but my split ends are out of control next update i got a new phone it's the google pixel 5. it's very exciting what else is new i grabbed a panini from starbucks so i can eat this i still have like an hour until my appointment and while i wait and eat i'm gonna read the only good indians this is a lot shorter than i realized it's only 300 pages and i'm already like halfway through and i'm loving it the first stephen graham jones i read i gave four stars the next one i gave five stars they were both really short stories and this one has the same like vibe and i do think it's gonna be pretty high on the scary scale which i'm just so pleased by it says it's a tale of revenge cultural identity and the cost of breaking from tradition it follows four american indian men after a disturbing event from their youth puts them in a desperate struggle for their lives tracked by an entity bent on retribution these childhood friends are helpless as the culture and traditions they left behind catch up to them in a violent vengeful way this entity is freaking me out the way that it presents itself and the descriptions and how it appears is just like making me really even in the middle of the day broad daylight is making me a little on edge so i'm very happy about that and i'll check in with you again maybe i'll finish this today hi i oh my god almost just fell i don't have a reading update but i have a hair update and i have a book shopping update i wasn't planning on picking up any more of the top 15 until we got like to the top 10. but then indigo posted that they have like 20 off right now it's a canadian bookstore and i already get 10 off the entire store because i'm a whatever member so it was like a four day sale that you could get 30 off the entire site including pre-orders and oh so i did pick up the rest of the top 15 even though i feel like the ones that i am actually really excited about i'm trying not to get too excited about them because i don't think they're going to make it to the top 10. so close to getting them all we have library books we have ones i already had and then we have these ones i just grabbed from the bookstore this one's bigger than expected this is smaller than expected so it all balances out i just sat down to film a clip for a different book and i realized that i never talked about the only good indians so to you no time has passed but for me it's been a minute i think i wanted to save my full thoughts for the live show i'm doing with monet and brody hopefully next week i need to plan that out still for the little book club but instead of just like holding some things to myself i just gave you nothing so i don't normally want or care to be connected to characters when i read a book but i loved the character descriptions uh in this book i tried to listen to the audiobook and i was finding it very um confusing like who we were following it took me a minute to realize we were following like a multiple different characters and then the perspective would change and i wasn't sure what was going on so it's not that i wouldn't recommend the audiobook i actually really loved the narrator i just needed to pay more attention nothing against the audiobook but then i started really enjoying reading it with my eyeballs so i just finished it that way this takes place after an elk hunt um that these men were not allowed to do and now they're being followed by the elkhead woman i want this to be a movie elkhead woman could be like the next like horror movie villain creature it is super slow and character driven it is like a slasher and i think it's scary but there's so much slow stuff in between the scary parts that for me that made it even scarier and even more interesting and i don't know if everybody's gonna be into it i initially gave this four stars but now i'm trying to think back of what it could have done to get a five and i'm not totally sure i need to really think out my thoughts for the live show so definitely come hang out for that scary afford the moments that were scary were scary let's give a three for unsettling because i was freaked out and i was scared and i can't decipher those feelings from each other right now weirdness uh the writing is a little weird which is so fun so i'm gonna give it like a three for weirdness and intrigue hell yeah five stars i feel weird giving out these high ratings and then not giving books like five stars like for mexican gothic i feel like it looks strange but i gave it such high ratings but then only gave it three stars and i hope it makes sense to you that like those emojis are not dictating my final rating of like enjoyment because like you would think if i'm giving this five emojis for intrigue like that means it should be a five-star book the four things i'm talking about are not like what makes the book for me i really hope that makes sense it's late i just feel like the look into intergenerational trauma is always something that i really enjoy um the importance of in books and i loved all of the commentary um on like heritage and respecting um where you came from but also challenging the things that people expect from you i feel like i could have loved this even more if it was a short story if it was one of the steven graham jones 100 page experiences as much as i loved the characters and everything like there were scenes that dragged it had a lot of emotional depth that only this length of a novel could accomplish anyway [Music] okay i've started in on if it bleeds i've read the first story of four i sectioned it out so you can see the first story is pretty short then there's an even shorter one than the super long one which is the title story and then the fourth one i've heard that the fourth one references the other three which does intrigue me to read the first three even though this big one could have been a book on its own and is directly related to the mr mercedes trilogy which i don't love and the outsider which i don't love so i was initially planning on just skimming through that story because i can't imagine myself truly enjoying it since we're following all of the characters we followed from other books but i'll give it a go the first story was called mr harrigan's phone and i think i'm giving it a four star it was pretty solid it's about a kid and an older man and their friendship the man dies and it has to do with his phone and in true stephen king fashion the phone connecting to something otherworldly that's pretty good so now i'm going to read the second story called life of chuck i'll let you know what i think okay i just finished story number two i have nothing really to say about it i didn't really enjoy it i feel like i could have if it was a full novel because what it was doing was interesting but then it was over before i could really grasp what was going on so i did it mostly as predicted i skimmed through the third story and what i read i really didn't like so it's making it hard to rate the whole thing as a whole because the whole thing as a whole caleb it's very late uh rapt the last story in here five stars so it was like four stars two stars two stars five stars i think that rounds out to like exactly three and a quarter out of five but is that fair because i already didn't enjoy miss mercedes and the outsider i mean like obviously my writing is fair because it's my rating and like it literally doesn't matter but if i had enjoyed those stories would i have enjoyed what if it bleeds does and i don't i still know the answer oh the last story is about an author of course i feel like every book of his that i read that is about a writer i always end up loving as far as scary no maybe like a one unsettling maybe a two especially rat the last one just the vibes were immaculate weirdness and intrigue i think if i had never read a stephen king before both of those ratings would be higher but since this really didn't step outside the box in any way as far as the 30 plus books that i've read from him in my life i would give weirdness like objectively a two um and intrigue it's hard to be really pulled in by a short story as much as i love anthologies and everything's eventual which was kind of slightly referenced in here for a second which was fun and the bizarre of bad dreams oh and what's the other one the night shift those are like five stars some of my favorite short story collections ever as much as i can love a short story i do go into it knowing that it's not going to last very long and not being that invested in much of anything except the experience so i gotta say intrigue's like a one okay on to the next [Music] let's talk about survivor song i haven't been great at vlogging and i think i actually have to edit this video slightly out of order for it to make sense so if you notice some things are weird that's why anyway i was sent an early copy of this which i'm very appreciative of i didn't get to it before its publication date for a couple of reasons everybody who has similar reading taste to me was hating this book it's rare that i get sent a book and i don't read it when i'm supposed to but i'm kind of glad that i didn't because i would have been a part of the negative press for it which is like never fun i don't want to deter anybody from ever picking up a book because we all have such different tastes i unfortunately gave this a two star so as far as the ranking it goes well i don't even know where i'm going to be putting them on the chart because i hope i haven't read my favorite book at this point and then survivor song not that i hope it's the lowest but i hope i don't read anything i like less than this my history of paul tremblay obsessed with the camera at the end of the world and not very many people liked it on the flip side a head full of ghosts everybody loves and it didn't really work for me and then i dnf'd that devil rock whatever that one's called so i was ready for this one to be like the defining book but i already knew and assumed that zombie books really weren't for me i was initially interested in just reading more from the author it wasn't necessarily the story that i was super intrigued by we're following two characters one is a pregnant woman and her friend who's a doctor and most of the book is really just like about their friendship it is them surviving during this like zombie uh rabies animals pandemic thing it's definitely weird reading a book that's about curfews and quarantine and people wearing masks and like people potentially with the virus getting like kicked out of public spaces i feel like this keeps happening to me in this genre the first 50 pages will really capture my attention i love the setup of a horror book and then once the action actually starts and if i don't find it scary unsettling or intriguing like i i just like so it was interesting that it took place over such a short time period it makes it really fast paced but it was really like a road trip story which i don't always love or a travelogue or scary like yeah the idea of zombies in a pandemic is scary but i didn't feel i didn't feel that way about it i also didn't find it unsettling like there wasn't the type of language that makes things like feel creepy and then weirdness i don't know not really it didn't do anything weird and i wasn't intrigued by anything i don't know um if there was anything that was really interesting that the book discussed i'm sure with all of these books like there are so many themes and so many overarching ideas and concepts and like reflections of real life like if i care to sit down and write an essay about each of these books i'm sure there are things to discuss but just like as a two-minute chat with you no this didn't do anything for me sorry side note i am just getting ready for bed i put on my pajamas and taking off my makeup um i forgot to tell you in the last couple days that i haven't seen you i read the first 75 pages of the return and the first like 30 pages of wonderland and i hate them both like hate them hate them i was excited about wonderland because my issue with baby teeth was that it didn't get weird enough and maybe one day i'll try wonderland again but the return all i know is i hope neither of these show up in the right ins it's not good basically the entire synopsis happens in like the first 10 pages and just the way that the author or the narrator of the book is discussing her friends and women is just like not i don't like it and now i understand why everyone was like why are you reading their return i don't know but i'm worried about it i'm trying not to get in a reading slump like if i'm being honest okay the semi-finalists just got announced my new phone apparently has a screen recorder built into it so hopefully this works okay so the good news is i haven't like wasted my time or anything yet because there isn't anything missing from this category we've just added five write-ins everything's the same oh ring shout okay i know this cover i didn't know it was horror it makes sense that it's horror what is that world departed the cascadia series but i've definitely never heard of it before zombie apocalypse okay secret santa a horror for the holidays i hate that the ghost tree people going missing in a sleepy town that seems more up my alley than some other ones and lastly houndings of hell a coc spin-off novella 24 ratings i'm really underestimating the interest in the goodreads awards less than 24 write-ins can get you into okay okay so now we have uh a top 20. anyway this hasn't really changed my reading plans because i don't think any or many of those ones are gonna make it to the next round so i'm just gonna keep my reading as is so i've basically read the five books that i knew the most about going in or the ones that were already on my tbr and i thought i would check in like every five books because my prediction is that i'll end up getting to 15 out of the top 20. that might be a little too ambitious like i'm fine with reading the top 10 but i wanted to talk about the next five that i'm planning to read because i don't actually know anything about them and usually in this video when i've done it before i've read the synopsis way earlier on and i'm just realizing that i don't know anything about these books besides like this one's about vampires i know this is a sequel to bird box but like what's actually happening in it the only book of the top 15 that i am not able to get my hands on is the loop what was available at my local bookstore my local library and that i already own there's one book that has eluded me and that's the loop i also really hate the cover i don't hate it like aesthetically but it just doesn't scream horror to me and it isn't like grabbing my attention in the way that some of these other books are but i did find the audio book in my local library so first let's learn about the loop it looks like a superhero story it says stranger things meets world war z in this heart racing conspiracy thriller conspiracy thriller i don't think i've ever read a conspiracy thriller a lonely young woman teams up with a group of fellow outcasts to survive the night in a town overcome by a science experiment gone wrong okay superhero vibes turner falls is a small tourist town nestled in the hills of western oregon the kind of town you escaped to for vacation when an inexplicable outbreak rapidly developed this idyllic town idyllic town becomes the epicenter of an epidemic of violence as the teenage children of several executives from the local biotech firm become ill and aggressively murderous all right i'm into it it has terrible ratings next up i have the southern book club's guide to slaying vampires which i assume is about a book club biting vampires but i have never read the synopsis i also haven't read from grady hendrix though i have many books on my tbr it's so funny because every time i talk about any of these books on youtube instagram anywhere there's always a slew of comments that are like i hated that book it's one of my least favorites of the entire year no matter which book i'm talking about so patricia campbell's life has never felt smaller her husband's a workaholic her teenage kids have their own lives her senile mother-in-law needs constant care and she's always a step behind on her endless to-do list the only thing keeping her sane is her book club a close-knit group of charleston women united by their love of true crime bringing the neighbor's handsome nephew james harris into her life james is well traveled and well read and he makes patricia feel like she hasn't felt in years but when children on the other side of town go missing their deaths written off by local police patricia has reason to believe james harris is more of a bundy than a brad pitt i'm really looking forward to this one because i can't say that i dislike or like vampire stories i haven't read enough of them i feel like at some point in my life i read the first book in the vampire diaries or the vampire academy but i can't remember which i didn't read twilight with everybody in high school but i've read a couple books recently like not horror totally unrelated but that have a little vampire element i'm talking a little and now everyone's been telling me to pick up some real vampire books next up devolution by max brooks i have read world war z i think i actually might have dnf'd world war z years and years and years ago and i just saw the word bigfoot on the back which okay makes sense maybe i knew that i'm not sure so this is like monster horror creature horror as the ashen chaos from mount rainier's eruption swirled and finally settled the story of the green loop massacre has passed unnoticed unexamined until now the journals of resident k holland recovered from the town's bloody wreckage capture a tale two harrowing and too earth-shattering in its implications to be forgotten it's interesting how many horror books revolve around women have women as the main characters oh there's a little map so it is like solely entries if what kate john saw in those days is real then we must accept the impossible we must accept that the creature known as bigfoot walks among us and like none other you've read before well i've never read a sasquatch story before so okay great next up we have mallory it's about a woman named mallory if you don't know me and you haven't been here for years i don't think anybody understands like why i don't like sequels so i'm not gonna try to explain it i just i love my books to just be one thing and they're over with like i don't watch tv series i can't get invested in a series of films i just want to watch one thing consume one thing read one thing and have that be it so i was never interested in this sequel but i'm fine reading it like no matter how much i love the original thing bird box is one of my favorite books i digress 12 years after mallory and her children wrote oh this is going to spoil bird box skip this part i'll put a big spoiler word on the screen 12 years after mallory and her children rode up to the river to safety a blindfold is still the only thing that stands between sanity and madness one glimpse of the creatures that stop the world will drive a person to unspeakable violence there remains no explanation no solution all mallory can do is survive and impart her fierce will to do so to her children blah blah blah blah blah but then comes what feels like impossible news and with it the first time mallory has allowed herself to hope someone very dear to her someone she believed dead may be alive no okay so this is why i don't like sequels okay i love the ambiguous nature of bird box i do not seek an explanation in fact the ending of bird box was even a little too explainy for me so the fact that they claim to have caught and experimented on the creatures like i don't want to know about that so i'm hopeful that this doesn't like go into like too much of that and it's more just on mallory's survival because i love a survivor story lastly i have the brightlands by john fram and i could not tell you anything anything about this maybe it's about aliens this kind of gives me science vibes but like isn't this like baseball like a outdoor football oh josh mallorman author of bird buck said it's absolutely enthralling we'll see ah it's football the town of bentley holds two things dear it's football and it's secrets but when star quarterback dylan whitley goes missing an unremitting fear grips this remote corner of texas joel whitley was shamed out of conservative bentley 10 years ago and while he's finally made a life for himself as a gay man in new york his younger brother's disappearance soon brings him back to the place he thought he'd escaped for good but no one is quite prepared to face the darkness it's began to haunt their nightmares whispering about a place long thought to be nothing but an urban legend an empty night a flicker of light on the horizon the brightlands interesting i have to say like i'm kind of bummed how long all of these books are not because i want to get through them faster or because i care about like the number of books i've read but i love short horror yet everything on this list is like four to five hundred pages oh well i'm actually doing a video today where instagram controls my life and i'm putting up a poll if i should read mallory or the southern book club's guide to slaying vampires so i will let you know what they have chosen and what i'll be reading today oh the southern book club's guide for slaying vampires what a mess of an opinion i have let me tell you the journey that i went on with this book the first third i was really hooked i loved the intro in general like the author's note he's talking about his mom and how she was a housewife and how he didn't take her seriously and now he realizes all the things she was really dealing with and he says as a parent you endure the pain so your children don't have to which is like a theme in the book i wanted to pit dracula against my mom as you'll see it's not a fair fight from there like the first start of this i loved like i really really loved it at one point i started to listen to the audiobook and i really enjoyed the audiobook i read it that way for probably like 100 pages and then i started to get super bored so i switched back to the audiobook and i continued to not be that interested and then the ending i was really captivated by i may be the unpopular opinion here but i did think this book was scary i would give it a four on the scary scale which is i think the highest i've given out so far there were some scenes that had me genuinely on edge like nervous there was this one scene in the house because we're following like this main character and the supposed vampire and we don't really know what's going on we kind of know what's going on but like this sense of foreboding was real what i'm seeing is people taking issue with representation and how the book treated like the female characters and the black characters we are in the south in the 80s and 90s and i don't think it had a lot of social commentary in general maybe it would have been even more interesting if it did if it leaned into certain things or it contradicted itself in certain ways i don't know some critiques that i could give this book like flat characterization i feel like some of these things were really intentional see it's messy my feelings are so messy for the unsettling factor it's a two um there were see now i'm unsettling versus weird i guess actually for unsettling like a two and for weird it's a one because it's like a classic kind of story it does take a different take the modern day vampire is a little bit different besides the focus being on like a housewife and her talking about how nobody respects her and people constantly gaslighting her and like well that was a it was really repetitive people not believing her her husband not believing her friends not believing her that this guy's a vampire i don't know that this book had too much to say or that i was much interested in what was going on outside of the vampire storyline because the vampire storyline was the bulk of the book so i don't know i want to respect my initial gut reaction of a four but i'm gonna drop it to more like a 3.5 [Music] okay so today the lighting's a little nuts i am reading mallory by josh mallerman and i'm not enjoying it i am 170 pages in so exactly halfway and part of me wants to dnf it but since this is a challenge i'm gonna power on through so what bird box i liked because i love an apocalyptic setting i love survival stories i love the idea of not knowing what's going on so basically people are dying and getting violent in bird box and it's believed that like when you see this thing then you die but nobody knows for sure or like can confirm it because if you saw the thing then you die and i just thought it was an interesting concept it was really fun i think i gave it four stars though i still consider it one of my favorite horror books i've never reread it and i didn't love the movie so that's my experience with bird box it's essentially the same kind of story like she still doesn't know a lot she still goes everywhere blindfolded to make sure she doesn't see the thing and she's traveling to different places and surviving but there's definitely less tension this time for me because instead of escaping from something it is a similar story but it's more like running to something which is just a little less interesting and feels more like a road trip book also being inside mallory's head is truly exhausting which is funny because i do think we're actually really similar people and i think the way that she goes about things and she parents we have a lot in common and maybe that's why i don't like to it's just like a lot i'm not having fun but i'm gonna finish it today i know if i don't finish it today i won't finish it all you're now balancing on my bed so i'm gonna try to stay as still as possible because otherwise i'm gonna make you dizzy malory i have to say i need to give josh mallorman a little more credit because he wrote bird box so like obviously i need to trust him with his own ideas because no it didn't completely ruin anything and it didn't ruin bird box for me though i still really need to reread it for people who are disappointed and felt like the first book didn't give enough of a conclusion i think this book is for them i get it it wraps up nicely i think a lot of people will feel really good about it for me bird box was perfect so this was just not it with that said i'm still giving it around a three if i'm being really specific 2.75 probably the concept is still really interesting but the book was boring as [ __ ] i just feel like going into it knowing how the first book left off and already assuming that this is just gonna be the neat conclusion we didn't get the first time like that removes a lot of the tension as far as scariness i'll give it a two unsettling definitely nothing compared to the first one um intrigue like it's still such an interesting concept the idea of this creature that is so like incomprehensible to people that when you see it like your mind you just like you lose it you lose it all i think there was one really interesting moment in here overall this book has too much introspection and exposition for my taste maybe not even for my taste but my taste with this story in particular because i do love a psychological aspect and also the creature stuff didn't get ruined like i thought maybe it would the vibes were really similar between bird box and mallory it's just this one was far less interesting but the one scene where mallory has like a complete breakdown and starts like screaming at things that's such a well written scene that honestly that's the whole reason it got bumped from like a 2.25 to a 2.75 [Music] this is the only reason i like the goodreads choice awards is it makes me read things that weren't already on my radar and things that i wouldn't necessarily expect because today i started the loop and i'm loving it i got to drive to and from work today alone so i got a couple hours into the audiobook i'm in part two now and it's super fun it's my over-the-top weird vibe and i'm really enjoying it i understand why it's in the horror category because i don't know where else you'd really categorize this but it's not scary horror it is strange and it's bloody it's more like the troop as far as the spectrum of like not well gore to like scary well maybe you consider gore scary but like gross descriptions as opposed to tense moments it's more over here i do wish that there was more like mixed media in it actually the troop had that too right where occasionally in the book there's like some articles the book actually opened with a podcast which was really cool but it was only like i'm listening to the audiobooks i don't know but it was like two pages worth maybe and every part starts with something new and different like news that's so cool i wish there was more lucy is a very interesting character i'm enjoying the audiobook narration um she is a character from peru i don't want to say anything that's going to piss anybody off because i know that talking about horror as opposed to thrillers i am inviting a different audience and i want to be careful of like pissing someone off or coming across wrong so i'll just say that if you are somebody who um is bothered by older men writing about like sexually explicit scenes with teenage girls if you don't prefer to pick up books by white authors writing about people of color their main characters that is an aspect of this book i'm not putting any opinions forward i obviously can't speak on any representation i just wanted to let you know that's an aspect of the book there was one scene near the beginning uh with a cave that i'm just obsessed with i haven't seen you in a couple days i finished the loop and i really didn't like it it's hard to remember but i think i was loving it when i checked in with you like there were some things i didn't enjoy reading about but the intrigue was and the tension was high enough for me to get over it i also have to say i have not seen this many dnfs scrolling through goodreads in like years which is funny because i feel like the first third of the book for me was good but everyone's like dnf to 30 40 60 couldn't make myself push through it and i'm not glad that i did push myself through it because it just didn't go anywhere interesting like yeah the action took off in the rest of the book but i didn't like it like i didn't like any of it i do think that if i read the same genre for too long of a time it starts to get clouded not the plots not anything like that everything is distinguishable from each other but i think that one book is influencing my opinion of the next because the loop was not that good but i think coming off of the book right before that and reading them all so close together is kind of screwing up my perspective i started two books and i don't like either of them i got like 50 pages into the brightlands and i gave up on it and i started devolution and i don't like it i tried a couple more pages of brightlands and now like i don't know what to do scary i guess like conceptually sure pandemic stuff scary honestly after that one scene that i was so shook by i was not frightened so i would give it a one for scary unsettling it just depends what unsettles you so if when reading the troop for you the gore factor is what made it unsettling then this would also be unsettling lesser i would say like a two and a half intrigue um no as action-packed as it was i was so bored so now i was not interested i was not intrigued i liked that the author was like self-aware of the microaggressions and things that he was writing but then a lot of times it wasn't fully acknowledged by characters it was more like internalized and it just didn't become a grander thing which is fine because if i was intentionally picking up a book knowing that it was about racism and adoption and prejudice i would prefer to read it from an own voices author and like the solving of what was happening and why all the kids were attacking each other like i wasn't that intrigued weirdness pretty weird like a three so that's that not a good review but also because i've read other things since i've talked to you and the loop is quickly leaving my brain let's hope it's not in the top 10 because i don't want to have to talk about it again today we get the next information for the final round the top 10 which i actually feel okay about because instead of pushing myself to read these like let me see if they're actually in the top 10 and then i can better curate what i'm actually gonna read for the last two weeks i'm gonna take a couple days off of reading before i get into what i still need to read so we've got plain bad heroines the year of the witching two things i've read yet if it bleeds malory devolution mexican gothic tenders the flesh the hollow places the slime book clubs guide and the only good indians okay so many weeks have passed and i have read 50 of my goal that doesn't sound right but it is okay so i'm passing on brightlands i'm passing on the hollow ones oh i guess that's it that's the only ones left i haven't read that i won't be reading i really messed this whole thing up i will push myself through this maybe it gets good maybe i just need a break and that's actually good news because i bought all of these you know so it's kind of cool that all four of the books that i just bought for this challenge are in the top ten and you know what i would bet if i went through all of the other top 10 of the goodreads choice awards this is the most diverse top 10. like we've got black authors white authors indigenous author mexican canadian author uh tandra's the flesh is a translated work she's originally from buenos aires i'm assuming this is very gay you know what i still barely know what these four are about so let's learn i'm just kidding my battery's gonna die i'm gonna read this first and then come back to you with the final four oh my god what a mess so i did end up plowing through devolution and it's weird because there are so many things that i enjoyed about this but i think it just confirmed the fact that generally speaking i don't enjoy creature horror because the setup is super interesting i'm actually glad that i took a break and i think that allowed me to enjoy it more i tried to listen to the audiobook and the narrator i'm sure this is how the main character is supposed to be perceived as like over enthusiastic and joyful but like i could not get on board with the narration style even though i know the audiobook has a full cast and i would probably still recommend it to the average person so her name is kate and her and her husband go to stay in this how is it described okay it's not described as anything but it's like this off the grid super environmentally friendly futuristic type of place it feels kind of like a cult and i love that setting and i love that setup uh i think for intrigue i would give this pretty high like a four maybe even a five because i'm interested in the conversation around like green living and more interested in like the commentary that authors offer if they're going to go against it which some characters did or if they're going to explore it and like how it can change the world and how everybody should try to live this certain lifestyle also i love mixed media in general so books that revolve around interviews and diary entries i really enjoyed all of that i enjoyed the footnotes in here i like a mix of perspectives and narrators i also love a survival setting in general this felt kind of post-apocalyptic some of my favorite books of all time are like into the forest by jean heglund and moon of the crested snow by webkeshik rice the idea that the power goes out and like people just have to survive even like the martian by andy weir when a book is focused around having to grow food and what to do when you don't have electricity love survival books so this had so many great elements and a third of the book like we're not even talking really about sasquatch and these creatures these beasts so i was into it i don't know what happened the first time i read this but i definitely needed a break and i was really enjoying it and then once we get to the actual action of the book and the creatures and creating weapons and like trying to trap and catch things it's just completely lost me which i feel like is the opposite from what i see of other people's reviews most people seem to not like the boring character commune type stuff but they're here for the sasquatch stuff which makes sense because you would probably pick this up because you traditionally like bigfoot stories for the scare factor and the unsettling factor i would give both like one star this type of story doesn't scare me with that said it is like gory and it doesn't shy away from characters going through it as far as weirdness goes i don't really know because this story has been done before it's based on like myths and legends and folklore does it do anything different does it explore the sasquatch evolution in a different way sure but is it truly weird i don't think so overall i think i'm giving it a 2.5 there's infighting and there's blaming each other for stuff and there's community coming together and helping each other and that does exist throughout the entire book but it's more focused on the creatures obviously and that's just not what i'm looking for in a horror so i'm glad that i know that even better now [Music] okay i've been putting off updating you for a couple days and doing my laundry for a couple days don't look because by the time i get home from work the sun is completely down and i was like oh we'll wait until i have some decent lighting that's not gonna happen so i've been listening to the audiobook of plain bad heroines for a couple days just like a little bit here and there i am probably barely like a hundred pages in maybe that's a total guess um and it's not it's not not what i expected because i didn't know what like i haven't read the synopsis but i definitely wasn't expecting what it is um it's got like a real fame element to it which is historically something i don't like in books so i thought i would read the synopsis of the last four with you because i still haven't done that this is by the author of the miseducation of cameron post and the last time i read a horror this thick was also by an author who like hadn't written a book for like 10 to 20 years and who originally wrote like a why a coming of age and then the next thing they wrote was like an 800 page horror stephen chabotsky and i didn't like perks of being a wallflower or imaginary friend and i also didn't like the miseducation of cameron post i also liked both of the movies though didn't like either the books but i liked the movies so i have no reason to think i'm gonna dislike this but i just feel like the trajectory we're on anyway this book kicks off in 1902. i didn't know it was about that way so it's called the brook haunts school for girls and we're following two girls flo and clara they're obsessed with each other and with a daring young writer named mary mclean the author of a scandalous best-selling memoir to show their devotion to mary the girls establish their own private club and call it the plain bad heroine society they meet in secret blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and then a century later there's an author named merritt emmons who publishes a breakout book celebrating the queer feminist history surrounding the school for girls and then it's getting an adaptation and we're following like the actresses involved in it but as brook haunts opens its gates once again and our three modern heroines arrive on set to begin filming past and present become grimly entangled okay so i guess we'd categorize this into gothic horror and then this little one is tender as the flesh i don't know what this is about at all at all i've seen it everywhere but i've never actually read what it's about oh wait i just saw the word dystopian i was not expecting that the international sensation about a dystopian world in which humans are being processed for food and society is divided into predators and prey okay working at the local processing plant marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans though no one calls them that anymore his wife has left him his father sinking into dementia there was an infectious virus that made all animal meat poisonous to humans now they're eating human meat one day he's given a gift a live specimen of the finest quality oh god okay interesting next up the year of the witching i'm sure it's about which is a young woman living in a rigid puritanical society discovers dark powers within herself in this stunning feminist fantasy debut fantasy horror fantasy who knows in the lands of bethel where the prophet's word is law emmanuel moore's very existence is blasphemy her mother's union with an outsider of a different race cast her once proud family into disgrace something something something a mishap lures her into the forbidden dark wood surrounding where the first prophet once chased and killed four powerful witches their spirits are still lurking there and they bestow a gift on emmanuel and lastly we have the hollow places by t kingfisher newly divorced and living back at home in rural north carolina cara is helping out her ailing eccentric uncle earl at his house which doubles as a tourist hot spot the glory to god museum of natural wonders curiosities and taxidermy while cara is closing up one night she discovers a mysterious hole in the drywall along one of the museum's overstuffed hallways as they explore the apparently limitless depths of this bizarre and frightening new world a hub containing portals to alternate realities and bear witness to its cryptic warnings i love portal fantasy interesting okay i'm actually the most intrigued by this and then weirdly this and i am intrigued by this i don't really know where it's going and then the year of the witching i don't know if i would have picked up any of these on my own so this is exciting okay it took me to the halfway point to be like fully immersed and invested in the story it's really slow but i think gothic books inherently are but right at the halfway point there's some intrigue and it's not a total shift of vibe or writing or anything it's almost like the book has caught up with itself if i had to read the first half of a book which like why would you it'd be like a three star i think the audiobook is fine it's not really anything um outside of the box or special and i wouldn't say it's better listening to it as opposed to reading it this way so i'm going to complete the book this evening it's a lofty goal it's a lofty goal oh this lighting is a little bit aggressive i have an hour to sit in my car and wait for liam to be out of what he's doing so i'm gonna sit here and read tender as the flesh because i completed plain bad heroines and i wish that i had a more like strong opinion so many books because i'm starting to feel like while four stars is a good rating like giving out three and four stars to so many of these books just is not the most interesting of conversation but this was a three star it's definitely a slower book which i think is what you expect when you pick it up to begin with i feel like the people who are already super interested in this already go into it with the right expectations and the second half is more interesting and feels more like a traditional spooky horror book i really enjoyed the bee references that was the most unsettling part for me was like how just like uncomfortable that was so overall i would only give it like a two to a three for that part and then scary it's like a one but the intent isn't to be scary so whenever i'm giving out these ratings it's not like a diss to the book like i don't expect every book to get five emojis in every category nor should it nor is it trying to i'm very much not interested in the conversations around acting and production and um fame in general and there is a good portion of that in here i was intrigued by the conversation surrounding queerness and identity and discrimination and um you know the history of certain like relationships and there's basically a story inside a story inside a story but it doesn't get confusing there have been other books that have done that and i didn't enjoy it for this one i did enjoy all of the different things that there were to read the footnotes the story the memoir of the current day activities the weirdness factor is definitely something that i look for and i that's pretty low i do still think that this type of book works for me but i've now given both of the gothic novels have there only been two i feel like there have been two that you could definitively call gothic they've both been three stars so we're nearing the end of this challenge and i still don't know if i've come to a conclusion with my taste [Music] what i can tell you about this because i i'm 25 pages in it's pretty short i'll probably get through it just sitting here for this hour this one is super uncomfy and unsettling so i'm already giving it five stars for that because the discussions right in the first 20-something pages about working in a factory that is so reminiscent of like an actual factory farm and how pigs and cows are treated it's like that which i already find unsettling and i would already find the descriptions of something that i don't want to hear about um so reading it with humans involved is uh i don't like it and it's definitely not being vague or ambiguous in any way it is overtly disgusting and horrifying what this character is going through we'll see where the sun is at on my face in an hour when i come back oh that's not what you want hold on okay that's not much better my goodness i was like oh it'll be nice to film out of the house because there'll actually be some light whatever this is gonna be a quick clip because this was absolutely nauseating um yeah the five for unsettling is definitely confirmed scariness i i don't know like a one weirdness in the middle um intrigue i don't know like was i interested in the world building was i interested in the characters i feel like it was a little too short to be conducive to that i guess the ultimate horror is the horror of reality and the things that human beings are willing to do to each other i don't think i've ever read a book about like cannibalism especially not done in this type of way i wonder if any more of augustina bastarika's books have been translated because i know she's written a few and i would definitely be interested in reading more i don't know my rating this is one of those books that like ah did i enjoy it no but did it accomplish what it's set out to do yeah i've heard some people call this boring and i think that's very interesting the characters are not necessarily fleshed out the world building is not bro you know it's such a short book i think it pulls you in i think it makes you uncomfortable and then you're out of there but i think that's what makes it especially uncomfortable and interesting is how everything is a little bit dull and that this horrifying thing is normalized and it's just like a casual story [Music] okay i don't know what's happening with this new shirt i just bought or my hair but i ultimately landed on four stars for tender is the flesh this was the most visceral reading experience i've had so far this year and will not this year this month and will stick in my mind for a long time i also today finished the holo places by t kingfisher this was not what i expected because it's more fun and quirky which kind of makes sense given the setting we're at this like museum there's taxidermy animals everywhere and portal fantasy is like inherently weird i wouldn't i feel like for so many of these books i've probably said like this doesn't feel so much like horror this one definitely didn't it felt like fantasy and obviously like different genres and themes can be combined but at no point was i especially unsettled which is interesting because scrolling through the goodreads a lot of people say like this was so spooky this really freaked me out so what i would say is if you traditionally read fantasy and you want to get into darker fantasy and fantasy that has a little bit of a spooky element check this out you might find it horrifying but if you traditionally read horror that has terrified you in the past i don't think that this will do that but before i go any further and you start to think that i'm [ __ ] on this book i gave it five stars i gave it five stars of course i gave it five stars being the least horror of anything that i've read this month so here's the current chart oh gosh which side what is it on i hope it was on this side the hollow places unless i'm forgetting something is now at the top and i'm sure we'll remain at the top because well maybe not but i only have one book to go and tomorrow i think is the last voting day i don't know time is confusing publishers wiki who publishers weekly called this chilling stephen graham jones said horror creepy dread so maybe it is just me but it was more like imagine i can't think of any characters that these two main characters cara and simon reminded me of so i don't want to say like oh imagine lorelei and michelle from gilmore girls going to a portal but it did give me gilmore girl vibes the quirky small town vibes the humor we're kind of just following characters going up with their lives like kara is recently divorced and she has to figure out like where she wants to live and what she wants to do with her life and there's a lot of contemplation throughout this book a lot of internal monologue but then weird unexplained things which is my favorite if you're looking for a fast read like this is a traditional you know 330 page book i got through this so quickly fast-paced fun not necessarily scary maybe two a two unsettling no there were some like suspenseful scenes for sure that had me on edge in a jump scare kind of way but like vaguely i was interested in what was happening and like all of the weird stuff going on but there wasn't really any topics or discussions that make me like want to recommend this to a specific audience for weirdness before uh super weird and at no point do you know where the book is going which is always fun couldn't guess the ending i wasn't even predicting what was going on i was just enjoying it because it's supposed to be weird i had a lot of fun reading this which is funny because i often don't consider myself somebody who loves books that try to pair scares with humor or like intensity with humor like if i want to read a funny book like i want it to just be funny and there were a couple books this month uh i can't think of which ones but i remember playing bad heroines a lot of people said was funny there was one other one and like i just don't have a sense of humor but this one was clearly fun and funny and it was a good time i feel like for a very specific type of reader because if you don't like when your books try to be funny i don't know this could rub people the wrong way on to the last book the year of the witching [Music] so i am obsessed with the year of the witching i had to stop at chapter 16 144 pages in because it was getting too good and i don't know if this is just me but when a book is too good i have to stop i have to take a break i have to remove myself i cannot like when a book is so good i don't want to just finish it i would prefer to take more like three to four days to read this but i have to place my vote voting ends very soon so i'm gonna finish this this morning and i'll just check in with you every like maybe 50 pages i'm fine being a basic [ __ ] and telling you that if a fantasy doesn't involve a relationship in some way i'm not as interested in it i'm thinking more about the few high fantasies i've read in my life this is more paranormal fantasy but still like i needed a relationship to root for and i think i have it i have feelings um emmanuel is a character i love so much and we just got to the point that it talks about the synopsis where um well she's there are some dark wood things involved and there's a boy who is helping her i definitely don't think it's going to turn into like a focus on the relationship or like this boy saving her or anything like that because we exist in a world where there's this prophet who has many wives and young women are chosen and their sacrifices and it's all about serving and i like that the book doesn't kick off with a character who's automatically rejecting like the religion and the community i think that's slowly happening throughout the book the realization of what's really going on and how she will come to challenge the beliefs i think that's the trajectory that we're on and i'm totally here for it so i'll check in with you in a second okay so like exactly 50 pages later we have a twist a reveal and it's incredible um i don't know if i already saw this but i'm gonna have to check after i finish this book um but i don't feel like this is a standalone just the way that it's written and being exactly at the halfway point now it feels like the kickoff to a series it doesn't feel like a standalone fantasy that's just the vibe that i'm getting and i don't know how i feel about it yet but i still love everything going on this is not a scary book but what emmanuel is going through is terrifying for her okay so side note erin uh the busybee book club i saw that she just announced the first couple months of picks for 2021 and the year of the witching is one of the picks so i would highly recommend you guys participate so you can read this because i'm dying this will mean nothing to you until you read it but um page 236 it's a lot i know i'm checking in with you way too much and i should have done this for other books but not many other books that i've read this month have inspired this type of passion for me i'm going to read you a short quote uh that i don't think spoils the book but if you truly don't want to know anything you can skip over this if you really don't want to know anything i just feel like this embodies exactly what i thought this book was going to be saying all along true evil emmanuel realized now wore the skin of good men it uttered prayers not curses it feigned mercy where there was only malice it studied scriptures only to spit out lies okay i don't actually want to go any further it's just the idea that like these men in power ones who everybody is told to like look up to and who's given all of this responsibility and who everybody just believes their entire lives like they're the ones who are causing destruction not the women who are being accused of being witches or being crazy or whatever else and i just love it i can already tell you intrigue gives it a five unsettling is probably a two not scary not particularly weird okay this was without a doubt five stars i cannot believe i finished the vlog with my two favorite books of the entire video i don't actually know which one i would rate higher or which one i'm gonna vote for oh my gosh i have some things to think about i will say like i've said i feel like a million times in a million videos that fantasy i don't read a ton of it which books don't read a ton i just want to put that out there um because scrolling through goodreads most of my friends didn't give that one a very high rating and i'm wondering if like compared to other books like it maybe it's not that great but for me it was perfect perfect and there is a sequel it's called something about a coven i also don't read sequels very often but i will be reading it i will say i feel like it's a predictable kind of story not in the little bits and pieces but the overarching theme and where the story is going like it's been done before the synopsis itself reading the last chunk of it that i don't think i did before she learns the grim truths about the church and its history realizes the true threat of the darkness and starts to understand if bethel is to change it must begin with her and oh my god i loved it [Music] okay i took a second to reflect actually a couple hours filmed a different video did some stuff i now am separated enough from my initial joy that i can look at the list more objectively it's not objective it's still subjective i also have come full circle and uh horror is not a genre it's a feeling i get it i wanted to kind of talk about what my favorite horror books have in common and what i've learned from this whole experience and the number one thing i realized is that um some of my favorite books that i call horror are actually considered dark comedy or dark fantasy i know everyone's gonna have an opinion about something but i did find this one like chart that i'm not telling you this is like the end-all be-all of the horror genre and this has to do more with movies but i think this is an interesting way to categorize things there's gore there's psychological there's killer stuff monsters of zombie stuff paranormal stuff when it comes to films i much prefer the more realistic horror i like slashers i like psychological and i think that's kind of similar with my taste in books but this month i didn't read enough realistic stuff anyway to say i definitively enjoy more realistic slasher type horror though i do think that that's true i think my favorite themes within horror are paranormal body horror dark fantasy insular um settings and post-apocalyptic or just apocalyptic stuff and i like the idea of curses and witchcraft and the occult when especially when it's not like somebody looking at a spell book and like writing down spells and like performing spells and like practicing witchcraft but the more spooky like curse vibes that's for me to wrap up what i read my goal was to read the top 10 and i absolutely did that my longer form goal was to read the top 15 and i read 13 of the top 15. the only two i didn't get into which i actually regret the brightlands because looking at goodreads now i see a lot of my friends have absolutely loved this so if you are angry at me that i didn't complete this i too am angry and i will be writing that wrong i promise as far as the hollow ones i feel like i barely discussed this nothing about it really appealed to me so i'm glad i didn't have to read it so just focusing on the top 10 the other ones that didn't make it to the final discussion here are liquid by megan giddings which i loved but understand why i didn't make the top ten and survivor song which like no and also the loop which again i understand why didn't make it in there i i concur here we've got the top ten my favorite and the one that i am going to vote for right now is the year of the witching it's funny because my two favorites of the top 10 are the books i would least likely be to recommend broadly if somebody i didn't know was just asking what horror from 2020 would you recommend i read i would be most likely to recommend these ones i think they have the most mass appeal while these ones i feel like are for a more specific audience because if we're talking about the rankings i gave out these are two of the lowest that i gave in those traditionally horror categories i loved both of these books equally but this one is definitely more memorable and i think has more longevity as a classic occult story i'm just going to put my final ranking right here and you can compare it to the final ranking that's gonna come out in a couple days my opinion verse the opinion of the masses and my prediction for what's gonna win our top five in no particular order i believe will look like this as far as readership goes as far as average rating and passion i also want to slide devolution in here as far as average rating the top one is stephen king it's very rare that if stephen king is in a category he doesn't win however i think there's an opportunity to see something else win because it's a short story collection and i can't think of the last time he was up for one of those and i don't know if it'll get the votes honestly i feel like a lot of people just vote for him even if they haven't read the book as far as readership the most amount of readers have read mexican gothic followed by the southern book club's guide to slaying vampires as far as passion these two have pretty passionate readers i've seen this recommended and talked about a ton this year and the thing about sequels is the people who are already reading a sequel are already in a position to want to vote for it to win because you already have such a passion for a book if you did read the sequel also it might get votes just in general if somebody hasn't read a ton of things or liked a ton of things in the horror category this year they might just vote for mallory because they loved birdbox so much even if they haven't read it yet even though the readership for this is actually pretty low and would be near the bottom if we ranked the top 10 just as far as like readers the amount of people that are capable of placing a vote i don't have an official guess for what's gonna win this has had a wide variety of readers this year i'll probably rethink this like a hundred times over the next couple days while i'm editing this video but i think this is my ranking anyway if you have read any or all of the books in the top 10 let me know your thoughts down below or even the top 20. i would love to know what you loved what you hated what you plan to read what you'll never pick up sound off down below i would love to discuss with you and let me know if you were surprised by any of my feelings about books like you thought i was going to love something or hate something and then it went the other direction thank you very much for watching i will put a playlist of the reading the thrillers down below in case you want to see other years make sure you subscribe if you're new here and i will see you in a couple days bye

Channel: BooksandLala

Views: 207,897

Keywords: books, booktube, bookish, booksandlala, obbsandlala

Id: E1dHdIcf6pE

Length: 90min 5sec (5405 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 04 2020