Spooktastic Reading Recommendations 2022!

It’s that time of the year again where horror films reign, kids go trick or treating, and candy is everywhere! Since Halloween is coming up later this month, I’ve compiled yet another list of creepy novels to satisfy your horror cravings. Each book has its own horror rating, from one to three ghosts:

Enjoy these spooky tales to fill your night with fright!

*See last year’s recommendations here!*

Harper doesn’t trust her new home from the moment she steps inside, and the rumors are that the Raine family’s new house is haunted. Harper isn’t sure she believes those rumors, until her younger brother, Michael, starts acting strangely.

The whole atmosphere gives Harper a sense of déjà vu, but she can’t remember why. She knows that the memories she’s blocking will help make sense of her brother’s behavior and the strange and threatening sensations she feels in this house, but will she be able to put the pieces together in time?

Oh does a fantastic job of setting up an eerie, unsettling atmosphere that follows you throughout the book. I appreciated the aspect of an unreliable narrator which added a layer of suspense to the novel. Harper knows that something is wrong, but her memory loss means she isn’t sure of what is fact or fiction. Each scare intensifies over the course of the plot while moving at a smooth pace. I loved the jump scares, and subtle horror features such as a ghostly touch or hair-raising feeling. It made for an immersive reading experience.

Ellie Jordan’s job is to catch and remove unwanted ghosts. Part detective, part paranormal exterminator, Ellie operates out of Savannah, Georgia, the most haunted city in the United States.

When a family contacts her to deal with a disturbing presence in the old mansion they’ve recently purchased, Ellie first believes it to be a typical, by-the-book specter, a residual haunting by a restless spirit. Instead, she finds herself confronting an evil older and more powerful than she’d ever expected, rooted in the house’s long and sordid history of luxury, sin, and murder. The dangerous entity seems particularly interested in her clients’ ten-year-old daughter.

Soon her own life is in danger, and Ellie must find a way to exorcise the darkness of the house before it can kill her, her clients, or their frightened young child.

If paranormal investigations and ghost hunting are more of your thing, Ellie Jordan is a great start to a brand-new series. This is a horror fantasy series laced with horror elements. It was very action-packed and at times the novel sent chills down my spine from the ghostly encounters. This is an engaging novel that will have you rooting for the small, but efficient Eckhart investigations team as they try to help a family in need/ Just when you think you’ve unveiled the mystery there are plenty of twists and turns to keep you on your toes.

She calls herself Calexa Rose Dunhill—names taken from the grim surroundings where she awoke, bruised and bloody, with no memory of who she is, how she got there, or who left her for dead.

She has made the cemetery her home, living in a crypt and avoiding human contact. But Calexa can’t hide from the dead—and because she can see spirits, they can’t hide from her.

Then one night, Calexa spies a group of teenagers vandalizing a grave—and watches in horror as they commit murder. As the victim’s spirit rises from her body, it flows into Calexa, overwhelming her mind with visions and memories not her own.

Now Calexa must make a decision: continue to hide to protect herself—or come forward to bring justice to the sad spirit who has reached out to her for help...

A spooky thriller that keeps the reader engaged throughout the story! This novel is a great blend of mystery and the paranormal. Being that the narrator has amnesia she is trying to piece together the puzzles of her life while also grappling with the fact she can see the undead. All of the what-ifs surrounding the main character kept me wanting to learn the secret mystery. The eeriness and unknown give the novel its horror elements and this feeling is intensified by the special effects in the audiobook (which I listened to). A lot of the twists in the story took me by surprise and I want to read the rest of the series going forward.

Vera has unusual dreams – anything she dreams comes alive. Dream Traveling, her family calls it. Doing it all her life, Dream Traveling doesn’t affect Vera as much as it used to. She has her rules and her methods – as long as she follows them, all is fine.

Until she saw something she discovered she couldn’t handle. Now, her dreams are plagued by The Hunter, a deadly character that wants nothing more than to haunt her mind and leave behind a bloody spree. Vera must find a way to get The Hunter out of her head before he makes sure she never wakes up again.

While the novel starts out calm midway through it escalates into thrills and chills as Vera must figure out how to overcome a deadly nightmare. It’s a thing of mind against matter and Vera has to summon up the courage to face her fears head-on. This book has elements of a thriller, horror, and sci-fi thrown into it. This blend of genres made the book an immersive reading experience. I was on the edge of my seat for the entire second half of the story. I enjoyed this book and its concept so much!

Sixteen-year-old Juliet Moreau has built a life for herself in London — working as a maid, attending church on Sundays, and trying not to think about the scandal that ruined her life. After all, no one ever proved the rumors about her father’s gruesome experiments. But when she learns he is alive and continuing his work on a remote tropical island, she is determined to find out if the accusations are true.

Accompanied by her father’s handsome young assistant, Montgomery, and an enigmatic castaway, Edward — both of whom she is deeply drawn to—Juliet travels to the island, only to discover the depths of her father’s madness: He has experimented on animals so that they resemble, speak, and behave as humans. And worse, one of the creatures has turned violent and is killing the island’s inhabitants. Torn between horror and scientific curiosity, Juliet knows she must end her father’s dangerous experiments and escape her jungle prison before it’s too late. Yet as the island falls into chaos, she discovers the extent of her father’s genius—and madness—in her own blood.

Though I have never read the HG Wells novel this title is based on I still enjoyed reading it just the same. The novel acts as a period drama laced with multiple horror elements. Most islands seem like an oasis, but Moreau’s Island seems like an ominous place even from the start of the novel. Readers know that something sinister lies beyond the shores of the island and the truth of the mystery is truly unsettling. It’s a very dark novel and while there is a love triangle in the plot the story focuses more on horror. It’s a YA novel full of shocking twists.

A master of horror, Junji Ito brings his horrific creations to life in the manga collection Liminal Zone. Terrifically terrifying, Liminal Zone is full of horrific images that can only be described as the bookish fuel of nightmares.

The Liminal Zone is a collection of stories originally written for the LINE manga app in Japan and has now been converted into graphic novel form. The collection consists of four stories and each story brings its own uniqueness to the collection while all equally being spine-tingling. The stories are digestible and like with most of Ito’s works the grotesque yet sometimes beautiful art is what sticks with you long after finishing his stories. I enjoyed this Ito collection more than the previous one I’ve read in the past titled The Dissolving Classroom.