It's time for this week's Top Five Wednesday! This has been created by gingerreadslainey and it also has a Goodreads group. I am hoping to do these posts (or other weekly Wednesday posts) more often as long as I am interested in the current prompt! This week's prompt I am talking about five of the creepiest book settings I have read.
Bird Box by Josh Malerman
In this dystopian society there is an unknown dangerous creature that forces you to do horrible acts of violence if it can look into your eyes. So when the characters are outside of their houses they have to be blindfolded. Because we are put in the points of view of the characters, we don't get a shot of the bigger picture but instead we are just as confused as the characters are. It's really creepy and one of the scariest books I think I have ever read.
Synopsis:
Something is out there, something terrifying that must not be seen. One glimpse of it, and a person is driven to deadly violence. No one knows what it is or where it came from.
Five years after it began, a handful of scattered survivors remains, including Malorie and her two young children. Living in an abandoned house near the river, she has dreamed of fleeing to a place where they might be safe. Now that the boy and girl are four, it's time to go, but the journey ahead will be terrifying: twenty miles downriver in a rowboat--blindfolded--with nothing to rely on but her wits and the children’s trained ears. One wrong choice and they will die. Something is following them all the while, but is it man, animal, or monster?
Interweaving past and present, Bird Box is a snapshot of a world unraveled that will have you racing to the final page.
NOS4A2 by Joe Hill
Other than Bird House, this is the scariest book I have read. It's absolutely terrifying. I don't think I can explain it better than the synopsis, so I of course will put that underneath. There is a land called Christmasland which honestly gives me the creeps. This whole book gave me the creeps.
Synopsis:
Victoria McQueen has a secret gift for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photograph, answers to unanswerable questions. On her Raleigh Tuff Burner bike, she makes her way to a rickety covered bridge that, within moments, takes her wherever she needs to go, whether it’s across Massachusetts or across the country.
Charles Talent Manx has a way with children. He likes to take them for rides in his 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith with the NOS4A2 vanity plate. With his old car, he can slip right out of the everyday world, and onto the hidden roads that transport them to an astonishing – and terrifying – playground of amusements he calls “Christmasland.”
Then, one day, Vic goes looking for trouble—and finds Manx. That was a lifetime ago. Now Vic, the only kid to ever escape Manx’s unmitigated evil, is all grown up and desperate to forget. But Charlie Manx never stopped thinking about Victoria McQueen. He’s on the road again and he’s picked up a new passenger: Vic’s own son.
You by Caroline Kepnes
Honestly, I don't want to give too much away with the plot. However, this entire book had my hair sticking up and I felt creeped out the majority of the time. The thing that is really creepy about this read is the fact that it isn't that outlandish. It is completely probable and has happened before. I honestly think that is what makes this book even creepier.
Synopsis:
There is only one Guinevere Beck in New York City. She has a public Facebook account and Tweets incessantly, telling Joe everything he needs to know: she is simply Beck to her friends, she went to Brown University, she lives on Bank Street, and she’ll be at a bar in Brooklyn tonight—the perfect place for a “chance” meeting.
As Joe invisibly and obsessively takes control of Beck’s life, he orchestrates a series of events to ensure Beck finds herself in his waiting arms. Moving from stalker to boyfriend, Joe transforms himself into Beck’s perfect man, all while quietly removing the obstacles that stand in their way—even if it means murder.
Coraline by Neil Gaiman
This is actually one of my top favorite books ever. I've read it so many times and it still creeps me out. Both the book and the movie are absolutely creepy and fantastic. I cannot recommend them enough. I think one of the creepiest parts of this book is the visuals. The way Gaiman writes is already creepy and sometimes fairy-tale like and that paired with the events in the story it just gets you.
Synopsis:
The day after they moved in, Coraline went exploring....
In Coraline's family's new flat are twenty-one windows and fourteen doors. Thirteen of the doors open and close.
The fourteenth is locked, and on the other side is only a brick wall, until the day Coraline unlocks the door to find a passage to another flat in another house just like her own.
Only it's different.
At first, things seem marvelous in the other flat. The food is better. The toy box is filled with wind-up angels that flutter around the bedroom, books whose pictures writhe and crawl and shimmer, little dinosaur skulls that chatter their teeth. But there's another mother, and another father, and they want Coraline to stay with them and be their little girl. They want to change her and never let her go.
Other children are trapped there as well, lost souls behind the mirrors. Coraline is their only hope of rescue. She will have to fight with all her wits and all the tools she can find if she is to save the lost children, her ordinary life, and herself.
Critically acclaimed and award-winning author Neil Gaiman will delight readers with his first novel for all ages.
Unwind by Neal Shusterman
This book, like many dystopian stories, is creepy because of the world Shusterman has built. If a child is misbehaving or doing anything outside of what they're expected, parents are allowed to have their children "unwound" which means they are killed and their body parts are used to make better children. It's absolutely chilling and the book (and writing) are addicting.
Synopsis:
The Second Civil War was fought over reproductive rights. The chilling resolution: Life is inviolable from the moment of conception until age thirteen. Between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, however, parents can have their child "unwound," whereby all of the child's organs are transplanted into different donors, so life doesn't technically end. Connor is too difficult for his parents to control. Risa, a ward of the state, is not enough to be kept alive. And Lev is a tithe, a child conceived and raised to be unwound. Together, they may have a chance to escape and to survive.
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