SO MANY Horror & Thriller Book Recommendations!!!

hello everyone my name is rachel welcome back to my channel so as promised in my autumnal reads slash recommendations video i'll of course link that up in the cards above i am going to do a separate video today all about my favorite thriller and horror novels now i haven't read a ton of straight up horror novels which is why i'm just going to lump them into this thriller recommendation video and hopefully in 2021 i'll be able to do a video dedicated to strictly horror novels but for now i thought it would be fun to just lump them together with my favorite thrillers so i thought i would start off with the thrillers and then progressively get into the scarier books as we go along so the first one i want to talk about is the only why a thriller on this list and that is sadie by courtney summers i actually re-read this yesterday and i'm so so glad that i did because the first time that i read this back in 2018 i gave it four stars i did really enjoy it but i didn't appreciate it as much as i probably would have and i think that's mainly because i talked about this in my october tbr video so you guys may already know this but when i listened to the audiobook for this for the first time i definitely missed some things because i was like cleaning my bedroom and driving to and from work um so i definitely zoned out at some point and that's not because of the quality of the book that's just my brain so this time around i fully understood what was going on and that definitely made my reading experience all the more enjoyable i think that this is one of the best y-a thrillers out there the build-up of suspense is just immaculate in my opinion the basic premise is that we have sadie and we've got two povs actually we have sadie in the past and then we have this man west mcrae who is the host of a true crime podcast in the present day essentially is trying to search for her younger sister's killer and then wes mcrae is trying to connect the dots of what happened to sadie because now sadie is missing and yeah this is just a phenomenal phenomenal thriller you have to listen to the audiobook even if you follow along with the physical book you need to access the audiobook because it is a full cast of narrators and you can just tell the production of it is simply top-notch a thriller i quickly want to mention is when no one is watching by alyssa cole now i did personally give this three stars but this is one of those books that the more time i've spent away from it the more i've realized exactly how genius it really is and i do think that alyssa cole has a gift for writing thrillers so this one is essentially about gentrification definitely has get out vibes we have our main character sydney i think she's living in this neighborhood in brooklyn and she's noticing that all of her black neighbors are mysteriously disappearing and white people are moving into the neighborhood and businesses around the neighborhood are also changing into more white centered businesses like yoga studios and i don't know organic food marts and what i thought was really really well done was how alyssa cole tackled gentrification she also talks about the history of brooklyn and just a lot of other historical aspects because sydney is kind of an amateur historian she's trying to put together her own walking tour of their neighborhood so i thought that that was really well done and even though i thought the pacing was too slow at times there are some truly scary things going on in this book so i wholeheartedly recommend this especially if you loved get out next we have some gothic thrillers that i really enjoyed so two of them i actually featured in a video that i did last october where i reviewed three popular thrillers of 2019 so i'll link that video up in the cards above and those two thrillers are the turn of the key by ruth ware and lock every door by riley sager so we have our main character rowan i'm pretty sure this book is based off of the turn of the screw the classic novel and she ends up moving to this really smart house i think in the scottish highlands to watch over the house and be a nanny for the three kids that this couple had but the parents end up leaving her alone with the kids in the house and really weird things start happening i adored the open-ended ending of this one i love when thrillers have those kind of endings and then the other book that i want to talk about that's also in that thriller review video is lock every door by riley sager again another fantastic gothic thriller this one centers on our main character she ends up moving to this very mysterious apartment building called the bartholomew which is in the upper east side of new york city and she is house-sitting for i think the penthouse apartment there or something it's like a really luxurious apartment and again weird things start happening this book also gives me get out vibes i did think the build-up of suspense was a little slow which is why i didn't personally give it five stars but i still wholeheartedly recommend it it's really creepy and then another gothic thriller by riley sager that i want to talk about is home before dark this is his most recent release that came out this year and this one centers on our main character maggie when she was a child her and her parents lived in this really creepy mansion and they ended up moving out in the dead of night because some really scary things were happening there and so then her father ended up writing this non-fiction book called house of horrors about their experience in the house and so this book has two different povs we have maggie in the present as she is now moving back into this creepy mansion after her father has passed away and then we also get excerpts from the house of horrors book and i loved getting those two different povs it definitely added to the eeriness and the creepiness of this house and of the story in general i personally gave this four stars because the plot twist to me wasn't all that shocking but maybe to you it would be next earlier i want to mention is little secrets by jennifer hillier this is a story about a woman whose young child gets kidnapped at the very beginning of the book so if that's something that might be triggering for you maybe avoid this but i really loved this i ended up giving it five stars i just loved the way that the author developed the three major characters and i think we get at least two povs maybe three and it was just really interesting to see how these characters interacted with each other and also how their lives were very separate from one another and how these characters played into the mystery of what happened to this child where did this child go you know the next one that i want to mention is jane doe i cannot remember the author i think it's victoria helen stone i mean obviously i'll have a picture up here but this is the perfect thriller if you just want a good revenge story we have our main character jane she decides to literally change everything about her appearance and her personality to worm her way into this man's life that she is trying to get revenge against and it is just so juicy and so much tea so much drama i loved the ending of this i thought it was just so satisfying i just loved being in jane's mind the entire book and i also adored the narrator for the audiobook so if you want to go that route i wholeheartedly recommend that the next thriller i want to talk about is verity by colleen hoover this one is kind of polarizing i know a lot of people hated this book and i can understand why um first of all this is colleen hoover's only thriller and this is the only book by her that i have read i don't really have a full knowledge of her writing style yet because she usually writes very emotional and angsty romances but this is definitely not that yes there is a romance involved but it is a thriller it is a mystery novel so we have our main character low and she's definitely a struggling author but she gets this mysterious offer to write some books in a series for this really famous author that is now very sick very ill she doesn't have the ability to write the novels herself anymore so they're just gonna have low and write them and publish them under this other author's name but of course she's gonna get compensated for it and so she ends up actually moving into the house where this author and her husband and their child lives and man this is such a psychological thriller definitely definitely messes with your mind throughout um i will say huge trigger warning if you are someone that has unfortunately suffered a miscarriage or if you find that kind of topic triggering definitely avoid this book because at some points even i found it hard to read i don't want to get too in-depth about it but yeah just know that going into it i personally love the way that this book turned out i know a lot of people didn't but i think that it is a book that's worth trying because it really messed with my mind except we have the one by john mars this is kind of a sci-fi thriller about this dating app that uses your dna to get you literally the perfect match the perfect soulmate for you and so we're following i think five completely different povs one of them is a serial killer so that's interesting um there were just so many plot twists throughout this novel i swear that at the end of every chapter there was a plot twist and i literally was just gasping because i was listening to the audiobook i remember i was driving to and from work while i was listening to this audiobook and i was just gasping so much while listening to this it's it's just a really great book then we have no exit by taylor adams and oh man this book brings the suspense from page one i was on the edge of my seat and wow so this is about our main character darby and she ends up getting trapped at this rest stop because there is a snowstorm she's trying to drive home i think and there is this van parked right next to her at the rest stop and she sees that there is a little girl in a cage in this van and so now she's trying to figure out how the hell is she gonna save this girl from the van and oh man there are genuinely some very scary parts of this book and it takes place in like 12 hours i think in one night and i made the mistake of listening to this audiobook while i was driving at night i can vividly remember driving around at night to and from opera rehearsal and it was very foggy outside and i was listening to this book and i was just genuinely scared like gripping my steering wheel ugh so good so scary highly recommend i quickly wanted to mention a romantic suspense novel that i really enjoyed that's white out by adriana anders i think that's the author and this one god i feel like i've been reading so many books lately about viruses so this one takes place in antarctica specifically at a scientific research facility we have our two main characters the heroine i think is a cook for the scientists that live there and then our hero is a scientist i think before the book started he discovers this long dead virus just in the ice in antarctica but then these bad guys show up and they want the virus for themselves to use as a bio weapon and so essentially our hero and heroine end up going on the run literally just like trudging through antarctica to get to another research facility so that they can just get away from the bad guys and man this book definitely had a lot of suspense and the romance was pretty good too but for me my favorite part definitely was the suspense next up we have a very popular thriller that i'm sure a lot of you have heard of this is the woman in the window by aj finn we have anna she lives in new york city i believe and she has agoraphobia she does not want to go outside for any reason whatsoever and she likes to spy on her neighbors i think she has a camera that she takes pictures with and things like that and she ends up seeing something that she shouldn't have seen and the plot goes on from there i will say this book is like 450 pages it's a very slow burn but i was completely intrigued the entire time i know some people didn't love this and i can understand why but personally it really worked for me i am really looking forward to seeing what aj finn comes out with next because i think that this was their debut novel and the last thriller i want to talk about before getting into the horror novels is of course gone girl by gillian flynn i personally think that this book was truly a game changer in the thriller genre there's that iconic monologue that the main character has i feel like towards the middle of the book that everybody loves and for good reason it's in the movie as well um but this book of course there are some differences between the book and the movie i would definitely recommend checking out both if you haven't definitely keeps you on the edge of your seat and i have read a couple of other gillian flynn's books but gone girl by far is her best work so now we're gonna talk about horror novels i've really been getting into these lately especially in october i've been reading so many horror novels um but the first one i want to talk about is actually a graphic novel and that is through the woods by emily carroll i talked about this book in detail in a video i did last year where i reviewed five popular graphic novels i'll of course link that up in the cards above if you want to hear more in detail thought this was phenomenal i think there's like five short stories condensed into one book and the art style just went so well with the stories ugh i loved the bright colors but it was so creepy and downright scary at some points it's just phenomenal it now makes me want to check out more horror graphic novels because that's how much i loved it so again if you want to hear more thoughts definitely check out that other video that i mentioned the next horror novel i will talk about also incorporates sci-fi and that is into the drowning deep by mira grant also i recommend the audiobook for this one it was so so well done so this book takes place in the near future and there was a voyage called the itar goddess they were going to the mariana trench to film a mockumentary about sirens or mermaids whatever you want to call them and the ship was lost at sea and no one survived that voyage so now i think seven years later they are now sending another voyage to the mariana trench to figure out what actually happened are there sirens out there what is going on and wow this book was so good i love sci-fi thrillers now like i just need more of them in my life if you guys have recommendations please leave them in the comments down below oh it was so just downright scary at some point also in case you didn't know mara grant is a pen name that shannon mcguire uses all right next i want to talk about gemina this is book two in the illuminae files trilogy by jay kristoff and amy kaufman like i said this is book two i highly recommend reading book one which is illuminae first because you kind of need that context going into this one i'm recommending this one specifically because out of the three books this one definitely turns horror again there's a virus that gets out um essentially all these people are on a couple of different spaceships um they're trying to escape this evil corporation that is just trying to take them out and on one of the spaceships in particular this virus gets out and it turns people into just bloodthirsty monsters it's crazy it's scary but i loved it so much also in case you don't know a lot about this series jesus is told in a multimedia format you know we've got like im chats and different like images and things like that i love this series so much gemina might be my favorite of the three and that might be because of the horror aspect also this is a y a sci-fi series highly highly recommend listening to the audiobook and following along with the physical book at the same time i think that you will have the best reading experience ever going that route and of course i can't talk about horror novels without mentioning the southern book club's guide to slang vampires by grady hendricks i've talked about this book a lot on my channel recently specifically i recommend checking out my quarterly favorites video that i did for the months of july through september of course that will be linked up in the cards above this was one of my top five favorite books that i read during those months and the idea behind this was that grady hendrix wanted to pit his own mother who was a very typical southern housewife against dracula against a vampire so it's just absolutely phenomenal there is body horror going on in this book um so just be aware of that before going into it and last but not least i wanted to quickly mention five books that i discussed in detail in my last video which was my weekly wrap up for october 1st through the 10th so definitely check out that video if you want in-depth discussions about all of these books but the first one is i am legend by richard mathson this is an amazing classic sci-fi horror novel the ending definitely gave me twilight zone vibe so if you're into that show definitely check out this book and then as far as the physical books that i have with me the first one is bird box by josh malerman highly highly recommend reading this book even if you've already watched the netflix movie they are two very different types of media i think the book is superior in some ways because you get to really be in the main character's mind and it's just ugh so so good the build up of suspense was everything could not give this less than five stars next we have bunny by mona awad this is by far the weirdest book that i'm going to talk about in this video the only reason why i'm even mentioning this is because there are some horror aspects going on in this book but at the same time i wouldn't say that it's necessarily scary it's just very weird and bizarre so if mean girls meets heather's meets dark academia meets kind of magic appeals to you definitely check out this book but just be warned that this is definitely not for everyone then we have the troop by nick cutter this is yet another book about a virus outbreak specifically there is this parasite that is essentially a very extreme tapeworm that ends up taking over this island where this boy scout troop and their scout master are staying for the weekend i think out of all the books that i'm mentioning in this video this book definitely has the most gore and the most body horror but i was still able to stomach it so i don't think it's too too bad but just be warned that there is animal torture going on in this book because one of the characters likes to abuse animals so i just recommend skimming through those passages because they're not really necessary to the plot um and then last but certainly not least is mexican gothic by sylvia moreno garcia talk about gothic horror at its finest this is a phenomenal book it does have a pretty slow burn a slow buildup of suspense but i think it is just wholeheartedly worth it by the time you get to that point of no return so to say and the one thing i'll say about this book is that i will never look at mushrooms the same again so if you want to know what i'm talking about definitely read this book so that's going to be it for this video i had so much fun talking about all these books i hope that you guys got some great recommendations from this definitely leave a comment down below if you want to discuss any of these books or if you want to give me your horror recommendations i would definitely love some horror graphic novel recommendations as well as sci-fi horror recommendations so definitely definitely leave those down in the comments below if you have any i would also love it if you would like this video and subscribe and i thank you in advance if you do and with that being said i'll see you guys in the next video bye

Channel: RachelReadsandSings

Views: 733

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: horror, thriller, books, recommendations, halloween, spooky season, scary, creepy

Id: zc6eu-KjUGw

Length: 19min 26sec (1166 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 16 2020