Tag: horror reads

What’s more terrifying than an HOA?

What’s more terrifying than an HOA?

by ajcwrites ♥ 2 Comments

Hello, readers! I’m back with another book recommendation. This week’s post is about Vincent Tirado’s We Came To Welcome You. This is another one that’s right on time for spooky season. This book is topsy turvy while giving us some BIPOC queer representation.

The story centers around Sol, a butch Black lesbian that’s recently moved into a quiet and uniform community called Maneless Grove. Sol and her wife, Alice, are immediately slammed with the reality that they don’t quite fit in with the neighbors of their predominantly white community.

This is especially true of Sol, who is white-knuckling the reigns on her identity while Alice tries to assimilate. Sol is on an involuntary administrative leave from her job as a scientist at Yale, and it leaves the functioning alcoholic plenty of time to encounter reasons why Maneless Grove isn’t as welcoming as they hope to be.

From neighbors trying to let themselves into her home, to old women clawing at her, desperate to tell Sol that she needs to get out of Maneless Grove before it’s too late, We Came To Welcome You keeps a chill running down until the big reveal.

This book will leave you staring in a sort of passive horror as the curtain is pulled back on the creepy community. In Maneless Grove, the kids don’t speak and aren’t outside playing, every house is painted the same shade, with the exact same curtains, and is home to the exact same people.

Sol and her wife face mounting pressure to join the HOA, and I will tell you this: I hope to never live under an HOA. The community boasts about the ‘benefits’ of joining their HOA, but Sol and her wife are hesitant to cement their place in this community. Also, there might be people hiding in the walls.

This story has what I consider to be undeserved poor reviews on Goodreads but I firmly disagree. Tirado does a great job of underlining the silent fury of the oppressed, and anyone who’s ever felt like they don’t quite fit in will love this one.

I’m reading/listening to another spooky read, so I hope to post about that soon. You can score We Came to Welcome You for $14.99 on Kindle, which is a bit pricey for a Kindle read but it is well worth it. However, don’t listen to me wax poetic about the cost of books when you can go to your local library and borrow a copy for free. So, like, go.

Till next time!

Alicia

Dark and Smooth

Dark and Smooth

by ajcwrites ♥ 1 Comment

Spoopy, scary, just in time for spooky season. This book actually came out in May of this year but I got around to it within the last month.

I feel like King needs no introduction. A master of his craft, and refined with age, I find myself completely absorbed with his newer stuff. Don’t come for me on the old stuff, some of that is good too, but a little before my time. (28! So young, and yet, so old. Don’t believe me? Ask my fucking knees).

It’s a book of short stories! A couple of the stories are anything but short, but that’s okay!

In this collection, King insists we readers keep coming back for more, because we like it darker, and darker, and darker. Most of the pieces in this book absolutely deliver on that front.

Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream is about one man’s brush with clairvoyance, and man, is it good. We follow Danny’s story after he has a dream of where the body of a dead girl is located. This launches a series of events as Danny quickly begins to regret telling anyone about her, as he’s now the prime suspect in her murder investigation. You’ve got to read it to get the full impact, of course, but this one kept me glued to the edge of my seat. I listened to it and read it on my Kindle.

Another standout is Rattlesnakes. Vic Trenton visits the Florida Golf Coast to escape torturous memories of his dead wife and son. He stays in a friend’s McMansion, where odd and odder things begin to happen. Things are moved around where they shouldn’t be, he’s having crazy dreams and the old woman next door might be at the center of it. It’s a slam dunk of a story.

You Like It Darker is a pricey read if you’re buying on Kindle. And King has enough money. But I won’t tell you what to do with yours. Hit up your local library for this one, on Libby, CloudLibrary, or in person, of course! Go say hi to your favorite librarian and if you don’t have a favorite librarian, go make friends with one!

Till next time.

Thanks for reading,

Alicia

I Don’t Know, a Ghost Maybe?

I Don’t Know, a Ghost Maybe?

by ajcwrites ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Hello! Welcome back to ajcreads. I’m back after a month or so, and going forward, I want to try and at least post biweekly for you guys. I’ve been busy writing my YA fantasy novel (more on that in a few weeks), and reading, and working my daytime job. Anywho, I can’t wait to tell you about Home Before Dark by Riley Sager.

If you read one of my previous posts, Creepy, Creaky Houses, you would know that I am a Sager Fangirl. Sager doesn’t miss, struggle, or falter. Home Before Dark is another slam dunk in Sager’s catalog. Did you know that Riley Sager is actually a pseudonym ? Well, now you do.

So, let’s get into it. Home Before Dark, is a heart pounding thriller that may or may not be a ghost story. I had plenty of fun guessing in between feeling my spine tingle from all of the spooky scary stuff going on in the book.

The story centers around Maggie Holt. She is the only daughter of infamous writer Ewan Holt, and Ewan has recently died due to an illness. Upon his deathbed, Ewan asks Maggie to never return to the subject of the book that made him so famous: Baneberry Hall. Maggie and her family fled Baneberry Hall, a massive estate, when she was five. Ewan wrote about the estate in his wildly successful book, House of Horrors.

The legacy of the book and the controversy surrounding the infamous house where several random and grisly deaths have occurred has followed Maggie her entire life. So much so that she can hardly get away from questions from a nosy receptionist at the lawyer’s office that tells her what Ewan left her in his will.

Ewan has left not only a sizeable amount of money for Maggie, but to her absolute shock, he’s left her Baneberry Hall. Maggie had assumed that her father sold it, but he’d kept it all these years. She ultimately goes back on her promise to not go back to Baneberry Hall due to a burning curiosity to visit the place that her parents fled from when she was so young, but to also fix it up and sell for a profit since she’s a designer.

When Maggie returns to Baneberry Hall, things are instantly sketchy. I mean, some of the stuff happening is an instant hell no for me (for real, like pack it up, turn around, no amount of money is worth this, send me my check) Ghostlike activity keeps happening in the house, people may or may not be breaking into the house to say they did for bragging rights, and Maggie is never too sure who she can trust while she investigates the past and tries to learn the true story of what happened 25 years ago at Baneberry Hall.

This novel was absolutely addictive. I listened to it on Audible and I read the physical book from my library (ahem, go to the library, go right now). This story is a spine chilling mystery that constantly begs the question, are ghosts real? Sager almost instantly drops you into Maggie’s body, and every emotion is so visceral and just fucking scary. So creepy, so good, so compulsively readable.

I would advise you to find out by picking up a copy of the book here or you can find a library in your city and borrow it from there. Beware, it might be difficult to get your hands on a copy of this title.

Have you read this one? Let me know in the comments! Are there any other books that you guys want me to read so that I can do the hard work of finding out if it’s good or not? If it is good, it will appear on the blog. I make a point to keep this a book recommendation blog and I only post about what I liked.

Keep it weird until next time (I know I will)