Top Five Wednesday

I have so enjoyed these Halloween themed Top 5 topics this month.  This week’s topic is:

Non-Horror Books that Scared You 
–This can be entire books you found frightening or just specific scenes from those books, but discuss books that weren’t technically supposed to scare you, but did. 

This one was a little tough for me, books don’t scare me.  Movies however can give me nightmares!  I really need the visual to get scared.  But there have been many books that give me the creeps or leave me feeling unsettled.  Most books that leave me creeped out are the psychological thrillers, but there have been some others.

Remember to stop by the Goodreads Group to see other people’s answers for today and to see other topics from this month as well.  There were some good ones.

Onto my list of books that gave me the creeps:

The Darkest Corners by Kara Thomas

This one was just so dark at the end, when you find out what really happened.  It just really creeped me out. 

Summary: There are ghosts around every corner in Fayette, Pennsylvania. Tessa left when she was nine and has been trying ever since not to think about it after what happened there that last summer. Memories of things so dark will burn themselves into your mind if you let them.
Callie never left. She moved to another house, so she doesn’t have to walk those same halls, but then Callie always was the stronger one. She can handle staring into the faces of her demons—and if she parties hard enough, maybe one day they’ll disappear for good.
Tessa and Callie have never talked about what they saw that night. After the trial, Callie drifted and Tessa moved, and childhood friends just have a way of losing touch.
But ever since she left, Tessa has had questions. Things have never quite added up. And now she has to go back to Fayette—to Wyatt Stokes, sitting on death row; to Lori Cawley, Callie’s dead cousin; and to the one other person who may be hiding the truth.
Only the closer Tessa gets to the truth, the closer she gets to a killer—and this time, it won’t be so easy to run away.

Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Gordova

 

The underworld that Alex goes to to save her family is very creepy and dark, not somewhere I would ever want to go.  Still I am looking forward to reading the next book in the series next year. 

Summary: 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. 

 

 

 

Vassa in the Night by Sarah Porter

I always liked the Baba Yaga stories, but this retelling is really dark and freaky and a tad weird.  Once you get past the weird though and just go with it, it is a chilling and creepy retelling.

Summary: In the enchanted kingdom of Brooklyn, the fashionable people put on cute shoes, go to parties in warehouses, drink on rooftops at sunset, and tell themselves they’ve arrived. A whole lot of Brooklyn is like that now—but not Vassa’s working-class neighborhood.
In Vassa’s neighborhood, where she lives with her stepmother and bickering stepsisters, one might stumble onto magic, but stumbling away again could become an issue. Babs Yagg, the owner of the local convenience store, has a policy of beheading shoplifters—and sometimes innocent shoppers as well. So when Vassa’s stepsister sends her out for light bulbs in the middle of night, she knows it could easily become a suicide mission.
But Vassa has a bit of luck hidden in her pocket, a gift from her dead mother. Erg is a tough-talking wooden doll with sticky fingers, a bottomless stomach, and a ferocious cunning. With Erg’s help, Vassa just might be able to break the witch’s curse and free her Brooklyn neighborhood. But Babs won’t be playing fair…

Just Kill Me by Adam Selzer

This one had it’s moments that really creeped me out, but there are also some very funny moments.  But it also made me want to do one of these ghost tours the next time I go to Chicago.

Summary: Megan Henske isn’t one to heed warnings…
When the last letters in her alphabet cereal are D, I, and E, she doesn’t crawl right back into bed. When her online girlfriend won’t text a photo, she just sends more of herself.
And when she realizes that Cynthia, her boss at a Chicago ghost tour company, isn’t joking about making stops more haunted by killing people there, she doesn’t quit her job—she may even help.
But who is responsible for the deaths of prominent figures in the murdermonger industry? Could it be the head of the rival tour company? Or could it be someone near and dear to Megan?
Soon after she learns that she has an uncanny resemblance to a flapper who disappeared in 1922, Megan receives a warning she can’t ignore: the next ghost on the tour might be her…

Dreamfall by Amy Plum

This one freaked me out because the nightmares were so very real.  And there was one that was very similar to one of my own recurring dreams.  It also scarred me to think about being trapped in a dream state with no way out. 

Summary:  Cata Cordova suffers from such debilitating insomnia that she agreed to take part in an experimental new procedure. She thought things couldn’t get any worse…but she was terribly wrong.
Soon after the experiment begins, there’s a malfunction with the lab equipment, and Cata and six other teen patients are plunged into a shared dreamworld with no memory of how they got there. Even worse, they come to the chilling realization that they are trapped in a place where their worst nightmares have come to life. Hunted by creatures from their darkest imaginations and tormented by secrets they’d rather keep buried, Cata and the others will be forced to band together to face their biggest fears. And if they can’t find a way to defeat their dreams, they will never wake up.

Well that is my list for non-scary books that creeped me out.  I hope you liked it.