Hi everyone,
After an unfortunate experience with a book I had picked up which went on my DNF pile, I realised that I need recommendations. To summarise, I am looking for Gothic novels/ghost stories/haunted houses type of books.
\- I prefer relatively modern ones, and especially a modern setting – I do like historical novels, but they need to be historically accurate for me to truly enjoy them, which is a big issue in this genre! If you know of a classic fitting these criteria go for it as well, I am not that familiar with classical gothic literature.
\- I like the theme of family, family secrets etc. It’s honestly my favourite thing when combined with ghost stories. I also love the theme of mental illness in this setting – now if you can find me a Gothic novel about a haunted house combining the theme of mental illness and family secret, that would be perfect.
\- It should be at least a bit scary, but not gory. I don’t mind a few dead people, and a few terrifying descriptions, but nothing above Stephen King’s Shining level of gore.
\- Very important: no dead animals. No dead cat/dog/horse/chicken just for the sake of the story – I hate it and I have decided to stop consuming content using that trope. Dead humans are fine.
\- I love books with strong atmosphere, and well developed character.
\- Mature themes are perfectly fine, again as long as it’s not gory and overly descriptive.
\- I don’t think happy ending would work in any case in these kind of stories, but I wouldn’t mind reading one of these books with a hopeful ending maybe.
There are few books in that genre that I have truly loved, so I can’t really give examples, but I can share a few titles if anyone needs to have a better idea of what writing style I enjoy for example.
I’m looking forward to see if ye have any recommendations and please let me know if you have any question/need any precision!
by Imjastv