Tuesday, October 31, 2017

[Top Ten Tuesday] Halloween Adaptations I Want



Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish. A prompt is given each week, and I hope to do it every week so I always have something going up on Tuesdays. This week I am talking about ten books I would love to be adapted into Halloween-time television shows or movies. There are so many books I read where I think "this would be a great horror movie/Halloween movie/spooky kid's movie" and these are those books.


This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab

This book is so creepy and fun. The first time I read it I wanted it to be adapted so badly because it would be so aesthetically beautiful. Plus, the story would be great for a movie or television show.

Synopsis:
There’s no such thing as safe in a city at war, a city overrun with monsters. In this dark urban fantasy from author Victoria Schwab, a young woman and a young man must choose whether to become heroes or villains—and friends or enemies—with the future of their home at stake. The first of two books.

Kate Harker and August Flynn are the heirs to a divided city—a city where the violence has begun to breed actual monsters. All Kate wants is to be as ruthless as her father, who lets the monsters roam free and makes the humans pay for his protection. All August wants is to be human, as good-hearted as his own father, to play a bigger role in protecting the innocent—but he’s one of the monsters. One who can steal a soul with a simple strain of music. When the chance arises to keep an eye on Kate, who’s just been kicked out of her sixth boarding school and returned home, August jumps at it. But Kate discovers August’s secret, and after a failed assassination attempt the pair must flee for their lives.



 Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Córdova

This story is about witches, Latinx culture, it has great representation with bisexuality, Asian rep, and of course earlier mentioned Latinx rep. I think we need more young adult adaptations that are more diverse, and this one is definitely a great candidate. Plus, it's spooky and fun and has an amazing atmosphere. It would be such a fun Halloween time movie.

Synopsis:
I was chosen by the Deos. Even gods make mistakes.

Alex is a bruja, the most powerful witch in a generation…and she hates magic. At her Deathday celebration, Alex performs a spell to rid herself of her power. But it backfires. Her whole family vanishes into thin air, leaving her alone with Nova, a brujo boy she can’t trust, but who may be Alex’s only chance at saving her family.


The Beast of London by L.D. Goffigan

This book is a action packed vampire novel that I think would translate really well to a fun movie. It focuses more on action aspects then character development, which I think works really well because it is a lot of fun.

Synopsis: 
 Mina Murray once lived an adventurous life, but after a tragedy in the forests of Transylvania, she left it all behind. Now she has settled into a quiet routine as a schoolteacher in London, engaged to the respectable solicitor Jonathan Harker, attempting to fit into the stuffy upper class London society to which he belongs.

Her dark past comes careening into her present when Jonathan is abducted by a group of vampires from a society ball. Determined to rescue him, she teams up with her former paramour Abraham Van Helsing and his colleague, Scotland Yard Inspector John Seward.

As they pursue Jonathan’s abductors from England to the Low Countries and beyond, Mina realizes that Jonathan’s abduction is tied to a larger threat against humanity…


 Final Girls by Riley Sager

This books is just a good classic horror mystery. It's a lot of fun and I think it would make a good HBO movie or big screen movie. I think the few things I didn't like in this book would be kind of eliminated for the movie, so there's a chance that I would like the movie even more.

Synopsis: 
Ten years ago, college student Quincy Carpenter went on vacation with five friends and came back alone, the only survivor of a horror movie–scale massacre. In an instant, she became a member of a club no one wants to belong to—a group of similar survivors known in the press as the Final Girls. Lisa, who lost nine sorority sisters to a college dropout's knife; Sam, who went up against the Sack Man during her shift at the Nightlight Inn; and now Quincy, who ran bleeding through the woods to escape Pine Cottage and the man she refers to only as Him. The three girls are all attempting to put their nightmares behind them, and, with that, one another. Despite the media's attempts, they never meet.

Now, Quincy is doing well—maybe even great, thanks to her Xanax prescription. She has a caring almost-fiancé, Jeff; a popular baking blog; a beautiful apartment; and a therapeutic presence in Coop, the police officer who saved her life all those years ago. Her memory won’t even allow her to recall the events of that night; the past is in the past.

That is, until Lisa, the first Final Girl, is found dead in her bathtub, wrists slit, and Sam, the second, appears on Quincy's doorstep. Blowing through Quincy's life like a whirlwind, Sam seems intent on making Quincy relive the past, with increasingly dire consequences, all of which makes Quincy question why Sam is really seeking her out. And when new details about Lisa's death come to light, Quincy's life becomes a race against time as she tries to unravel Sam's truths from her lies, evade the police and hungry reporters, and, most crucially, remember what really happened at Pine Cottage, before what was started ten years ago is finished.



NOS4A2 by Joe Hill

This is by far one of the scariest books I've read. So much so, that I want a movie adaptation and I may even see it in theaters even if I would be terrified. I typically don't see scary movies in theaters because I am a wimp, but damn I really want a movie adaptation.

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.



 Ultimate Sacrifice by S.E. Green

I recently read this book and was lucky enough to get an early copy and be apart of the book tour. Which was a lot of fun. Although I had a few issues with it as a novel, I think it would make a really spooky movie. Like Final Girls, I think the things I had issues with would be eliminated and it would translate well into a movie.

Synopsis:
Vickie has always lived a quiet, ordinary life in an equally quiet and ordinary small town. Yet one fateful night a child turns up dead in the woods behind her house in a ritualistic slaughter. Vickie and her family are suddenly thrown into a national spotlight. But as the investigation unfolds, she begins to realize her family isn’t so ordinary after all. Evil is inching closer to those she holds dear and Vickie isn't sure who she can ultimately trust.

 

House of Furies by Madeleine Roux

I did not like this book almost at all. However, I loved the concept and potential, it was the execution  I hated. So, I would love for this book to be adapted into a really awesome scary movie with an actual good story line and good writing, like it should have had from the beginning.

Synopsis: 
After escaping a harsh school where punishment was the lesson of the day, seventeen-year-old Louisa Ditton is thrilled to find employment as a maid at a boarding house. But soon after her arrival at Coldthistle House, Louisa begins to realize that the house’s mysterious owner, Mr. Morningside, is providing much more than lodging for his guests. Far from a place of rest, the house is a place of judgment, and Mr. Morningside and his unusual staff are meant to execute their own justice on those who are past being saved.

Louisa begins to fear for a young man named Lee who is not like the other guests. He is charismatic and kind, and Louisa knows that it may be up to her to save him from an untimely judgment. But in this house of distortions and lies, how can Louisa be sure whom to trust?

Featuring stunning interior illustrations from artist Iris Compiet, plus photo-collages that bring Coldthistle House to chilling life, House of Furies invites readers to a world where the line between monsters and men is ghostly thin.



Undying by Corina Bishop

This is more of a spooky mystery sci-fi that I think would do really well as an adaptation. You're kind of confused with the main character on what's happening, there's some icky gore moments that have you a bit grossed out, and the plot is really good. My biggest problem with the book was the grammar and the editing, not the story, which would translate fine with a good team of writers.

Synopsis: 
To awaken and not know who you are is a crushing feeling. Panic and hysteria override all other senses. Strangers approach and terror builds within your chest. You hope these strangers, with their white lab coats, will bring an ounce of reason back to your jumbled thoughts. Instead they bring needles and knives that puncture your skin, introducing new horrors for your brain to try to comprehend.

This is the life Sentra is born into at the age of twenty-four. She is surrounded by people who only cause her agony and pay no mind to her mounting questions. Sentra cannot even find solace in her dreams, where she is haunted by memories from a woman who died long ago. If the pain and confusion wasn't enough, Sentra's body doesn't seem to be entirely human and her detainers have far greater plans for her in a war she wants no part of.

All Sentra knows for sure is that she wants out and she will do anything to gain her freedom.


Daughters Unto Devils by Amy Lukavics

I read this book last November and it completely freaked me out. It's kind of when you're telling ghost stories with your friends late at night, and you know the stories are absolutely ridiculous but with the setting you're in you get kind of caught up and scared anyway. That's how this story is. It feels a little like a ghost story, and if you read it at the right time it freaks you out. It's a short book, so it could be expanded for a normal sized movie or it can be a short movie but either way I think it would be a good jump scare creepy adaptation. 

Synopsis:
When sixteen-year-old Amanda Verner’s family decides to move from their small mountain cabin to the vast prairie, she hopes it is her chance for a fresh start. She can leave behind the memory of the past winter; of her sickly ma giving birth to a baby sister who cries endlessly; of the terrifying visions she saw as her sanity began to slip, the victim of cabin fever; and most of all, the memories of the boy she has been secretly meeting with as a distraction from her pain. The boy whose baby she now carries.

When the Verners arrive at their new home, a large cabin abandoned by its previous owners, they discover the inside covered in blood. And as the days pass, it is obvious to Amanda that something isn’t right on the prairie. She’s heard stories of lands being tainted by evil, of men losing their minds and killing their families, and there is something strange about the doctor and his son who live in the woods on the edge of the prairie. But with the guilt and shame of her sins weighing on her, Amanda can’t be sure if the true evil lies in the land, or deep within her soul.



The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls by Claire Legrand

If this book was made into a movie it would be in same idea as like Coraline or ParaNorman, creepy but a kid's movie. This could be either live action or animated, but I think it would be a whole lot of fun. It's really spooky, a cute story, cute kid characters, and it has a bit of suspense. I would love this adaptation if it was done right. 

Synopsis:
At the Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls, you will definitely learn your lesson. An atmospheric, heartfelt, and delightfully spooky novel for fans of Coraline, Splendors and Glooms, and The Mysterious Benedict Society.

Victoria hates nonsense. There is no need for it when your life is perfect. The only smudge on her pristine life is her best friend Lawrence. He is a disaster, lazy and dreamy, shirt always untucked, obsessed with his silly piano. Victoria often wonders why she ever bothered being his friend. (Lawrence does, too.)

But then Lawrence goes missing. And he is not the only one. Victoria soon discovers that The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls is not what it appears to be. Kids go in but come out different. Or they don't come out at all.

If anyone can sort this out, it's Victoria, even if it means getting a little messy.



Thanks for reading!  

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