Top 5 (spooky worlds) Tuesday

This will probably feature some books that I’ve already featured in previous Tuesday posts but nevertheless, I’m here to talk about them again! Hopefully, if you haven’t picked them up, this will get you to pick them up!

Remember to check out Meeghan @ Meeghan Reads and go see which spooky worlds she loves.

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The Taking of Jake Livingston by Ryan Douglass (GR/SG) – Get Out meets Danielle Vega in this YA horror where survival is not a guarantee.

Jake Livingston is one of the only Black kids at St. Clair Prep, one of the others being his infinitely more popular older brother. It’s hard enough fitting in but to make matters worse and definitely more complicated, Jake can see the dead. In fact he sees the dead around him all the time. Most are harmless. Stuck in their death loops as they relive their deaths over and over again, they don’t interact often with people. But then Jake meets Sawyer. A troubled teen who shot and killed six kids at a local high school last year before taking his own life. Now a powerful, vengeful ghost, he has plans for his afterlife–plans that include Jake. Suddenly, everything Jake knows about ghosts and the rules to life itself go out the window as Sawyer begins haunting him and bodies turn up in his neighborhood. High school soon becomes a survival game–one Jake is not sure he’s going to win. 

I have finished the book now and absolutely loved it. However, I would be totally scared of living like Jake and seeing the world how he sees it – with ghosts and, how he calls it, Deadworld, all around.

I think it would probably look like ParaNorman? When Norman walks to school and you see all the ghosts around (that only he can see) – that’s how I imagine Jake seeing Deadworld.

I would totally scared, because the ghosts, and especially the main one we see in this book; can definitely be scary. I would be scared of probably most of the ghosts in here because they can become dangerous. And also as much as I love watching horror movies, I’m not wanting to live in one.

Here There Are Monsters by Amelinda Bérubé (GR/SG) – The Blair Witch Project meets Imaginary Girls in this story of codependent sisterhood, the struggle to claim one’s own space, and the power of secrets

Sixteen-year-old Skye is done playing the knight in shining armor for her insufferable younger sister, Deirdre. Moving across the country seems like the perfect chance to start over.

In their isolated new neighborhood, Skye manages to fit in, but Deirdre withdraws from everyone, becoming fixated on the swampy woods behind their house and building monstrous sculptures out of sticks and bones.
Then Deirdre disappears.
And when something awful comes scratching at Skye’s window in the middle of the night, claiming she’s the only one who can save Deirdre, Skye knows she will stop at nothing to bring her sister home.

Most definitely the spooky thing in this book is skeletal monsters. It sounds confusing but that’s basically what they are. As in animal skull on top of cloaks and just gliding – or that’s at least how I pictured them while reading. And that isn’t scary to you, I don’t know what is. A large part of book is the idea of something after you, always watching you; is something definitely unsettling.

The Petrified Flesh by Cornelia Funke (GR/SG) – Jacob has uncovered the doorway to another world, hidden behind a mirror. It is a place of dark magic and enchanted objects, scheming dwarves and fearsome ogres, fairies born from water and men born from stone.

Here, he hunts for treasure and seeks adventure in the company of Fox – a beautiful, shape­shifting girl, who guides and guards him.

But now Jacob’s younger brother has followed him into the mirrored world, and all that was freedom has turned to fear. Because a deadly curse has been spoken; and Jacob must risk his life to reverse it, before his brother is turned to stone forever…
Revised and updated by Cornelia Funke, The Petrified Flesh is the first book in the thrilling Reckless series. 

I’m still reading this morning but I definitely know I’d never want to step foot in this world. It sounds so creepy and scary and I love reading about it but I don’t want to go into it. There’s a lot of illusions to other known fairy tales or fables: a snuffbox which immediately made me think of The Tinder box by Hans Christian Andersen, one of my favourite tales. The main character, Jacob mentions him having to find the Princess’s golden ball which features in the Princess and the Frog.

But as fun as it may sound to be among all those different fairy tales that have been points here and there that made me just go ‘no way will you get me there.’

House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland (GR/SG) – Seventeen-year-old Iris Hollow has always been strange. Something happened to her and her two older sisters when they were children, something they can’t quite remember but that left each of them with an identical half-moon scar at the base of their throats.

Iris has spent most of her teenage years trying to avoid the weirdness that sticks to her like tar. But when her eldest sister, Grey, goes missing under suspicious circumstances, Iris learns just how weird her life can get: horned men start shadowing her, a corpse falls out of her sister’s ceiling, and ugly, impossible memories start to twist their way to the forefront of her mind.

As Iris retraces Grey’s last known footsteps and follows the increasingly bizarre trail of breadcrumbs she left behind, it becomes apparent that the only way to save her sister is to decipher the mystery of what happened to them as children.

The closer Iris gets to the truth, the closer she comes to understanding that the answer is dark and dangerous – and that Grey has been keeping a terrible secret from her for years.

This is a good month for this book 😂 As much as I loved reading about the Hollow sisters, I would be very unsettled going to school with them or talking to them 😆. There’s a lot of things in this book I would not want to see.

Locke and Key by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez (Arist) (GR/SG) – Locke & Key tells of Keyhouse, an unlikely New England mansion, with fantastic doors that transform all who dare to walk through them. Home to a hate-filled and relentless creature that will not rest until it forces open the most terrible door of them all…

So I’ve only watched the TV series (plan to read the graphic novels!) but I would love to live here! Finding the keys in the Locke manor, finding what they’re used for – all sounds very cool.

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There you have it! Even though I do love reading these types of books, sometimes I realise I would be absolutely scared and wanting to cling to everyone 😂

What are some spooky worlds you’d either want to walk around in or would absolutely avoid? Come chat with me!