Non-Horror Books that Scared You

Posted October 25, 2017 by Brin in Memes, Top 5 Wednesday / 0 Comments

Top 5 Wednesday was created by Lainey @GingerReadsLainey on Youtube and is now hosted by Sam @ThoughtsOnTomes

You can join the Goodreads group HERE

There’s a new topic every Wednesday, and you then list your Top 5 books related to the particular topic.

today’s topic is: Non-Horror Books that Scared You

Non-horror books that scared me… at first this seemed like a bit of a difficult topic. I mean, if I want to be scared I would read horror??

Then it got me thinking about books that have themes that are really frightening without being out-and-out horror and I realized that this is actually a really thought-provoking topic. If you want to see more standard horror fare, you could check out this earlier post.

1. 1984 by George Orwell

Okay, I feel like this one goes without saying. The entire concept is so frightening (made even more so by just how relevant it still is today) and I know it will remain one of the most scary, non-horror books that I will ever read.

2. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

I know this isn’t actually an original idea; the film Battle Royale (based on a book of the same name) did it first and (IMHO) better, but The Hunger Games still has children killing other children so it will always be horrifying to me.

3. A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

This is about a young boy losing his mum to cancer. I can, sadly, relate to this all too well. What is truly frightening about this book is the feelings it conveys; the utter hopelessness… the real monster is the thing we cannot change.

4. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

This one is particularly scary because it doesn’t seem so far-fetched really? The whole concept of it is truly frightening because you can pretty much almost see it happening and if that isn’t scary I don’t know what is!

5. Watership Down by Richard Adams

To be fair, the cartoon version is the most scary (especially the opening scene – it used to give me nightmares!) but I do find some of the themes of the book to be utterly terrifying. Humanity is the biggest foe: we kill at a whim rather than out of necessity and as stated in the book we will not be content until we have destroyed the earth. This scares me because it is so very apt.