September Book Recommendations
The bad news: I only have one book recommendation this month. I read a whole lot of duds the past few weeks!
The good news: It's in the horror genre, so it's perfect now that we're in October (where did the year go?!) and it's even got its own TV show!
This month's pick is The Secret of Crickley Hall by James Herbert. A family moves into an old estate closer to the husband's work after the disappearance of one of their 3 children. It's a pretty classic scary story from there. There were deaths in the house prior to them moving in, and everyone's pretty sure that the house is haunted. There are quite a few different characters brought into the story outside of the family which was nice.
I will say, though, that it is 630 pages and doesn't need to be. I found that the author overdid it on the details. He'd use 4 pages to describe one person brushing their teeth in the morning, which is irrelevant to the story so I'd just skim those pages until it got back to what really mattered.
It doesn't take long for the story to become really gripping. You want to find out more about what happened in the house as well as what happened to the family's missing son.
The bonus is that the book is now a 3 part series on BBC! I had seen the left cover above online when I discovered the book, but what I got from the library was the cover on the right. So that's how I found out about the show. Once I looked into it, I found out that the actress who plays Arya Stark in Game of Thrones plays the older daughter! It's actually pretty easy to find online if you're interested in watching the show either after you read the book or on its own. I've watched it myself and although it doesn't stick to the book super closely, it does a good job of portraying the story and keeping true to the main points. I wouldn't watch it before reading the book, though, because I found the book to be more suspenseful (in a good way).
If you're really wanting another creepy read, check out the Asylum trilogy.
The series is about a group of kids who go to a sort of college prep program and stay in dorms that were converted from an old mental asylum. They come across a bunch of old photos from the asylum and start researching what happened there. Strange things happen, and I'll leave it at that so I don't give anything away! They're a nice quick read if you're looking for a little spook.