What's the Scariest Book You've Ever Read?

In the spirit of Halloween (which I can't believe is less than two weeks away...I've already had nightmares about all those germy children ringing my doorbell), let's discuss the scariest books we've ever read!

I read a lot of scary books. I've read at least half of Stephen King's oeuvre, and most of them don't really scare me in the traditional sense. Most of the "scariness" comes more from King's adept portrayal of the human condition, showing how, under the right conditions, anyone can do evil. King isn't afraid to use a good jump scare, of course, but his preference is for those insidious scares that get under your skin and keep you up at night.

With that in mind, one of the scariest books I've ever read—and the book that King says scares him the most—is Pet Sematary. (I've never seen the movie, but I've heard that's pretty terrifying too.) Believe it or not, he never intended for Pet Sematary to be published; after writing it, both he and his wife agreed he had "gone too far," and he put it in a drawer, intending for it to stay there. But when he needed a quick exit from a contract with a publisher, he dug it out and sent it to them, figuring no one would want to read it.

He was wrong, clearly; decades later, he's still surprised about this, but I'm not. Pet Sematary, at least for me, wasn't super scary the first time around; it took me a few reads for it to really sink in, and it's one of those books that really sticks with you. Without giving anything away, the basic idea is this: a doctor moves to rural Maine with his young family. Their road isn't busy, but it's one of those country roads that large tractor trailers occasionally zoom down, and inevitably, their daughter's cat gets run over. An elderly neighbor lets the father in on a secret: beyond an abandoned "Pet Sematary" in the woods behind their house lies the ancient Micmac burial grounds, where the two of them bury the daughter's cat.

The next day, the cat comes back. And this cat is not nearly as cuddly as the one that wears a hat.

It gets steadily more horrifying from there. Perhaps the best way to sum it up is one of the more famous lines from the book: Sometimes dead is better.

Pet Sematary has its share of jump scares, but the scariest part is the way King delves into the deepest reaches of the human heart in the face of tragedy. It's a masterpiece for sure, despite being tough to get through in a lot of ways. But if you want something scary to read this Halloween, give it a try!

What's the scariest book you've ever read?

Bridget Reviews Bag Of Bones by Stephen King

Title/Author: Bag of Bones by Stephen King

Publisher/Year Published: 1998 by Simon & Schuster

How I got this book: Probably bought it at a train station...

Why I read this book: It's Stephen King, and he's awesome.

Rating: 4/5

Bag of Bones is my favorite kind of Stephen King novel: chunky (at least six hundred pages), with several different intertwining storylines. It’s reasonably recent, published in 1998, and as usual has a unique and haunting premise.

Four years after the untimely death of his beloved wife, Jo, from a brain aneurysm, novelist Mike Noonan is still in mourning—and suffering from writer’s block. He decides to leave his Derry, Maine home for Sara Laughs, the lakeside cabin his wife loved. In the unincorporated, rural part of Maine known as TR-90 (called “the TR” by the locals) that Sara Laughs is part of, Mike becomes involved in the plight of the young and beautiful but poor Mattie Devore, whose young daughter is in danger of being taken away by Mattie’s spiteful father-in-law.

In the meantime, Jo’s presence in Sara Laughs continues to haunt Mike—in more ways than one. Mysterious messages appear in magnetic letters on the fridge, and Mike hears screaming and crying in the night. He begins to poke into what Jo was doing during her last few months of life, and discovers some old secrets about the TR that the older residents of the town would prefer remained buried.

Bag of Bones is not really historical fiction, but King definitely shows his talent for it in this novel. While all the “history” in Bag of Bones is made up, the research that must have been involved in writing the segments about Sara and the Red Tops is considerable. Even the supernatural, ghostly elements seemed shockingly real because they were so cleanly interwoven with the more realistic, “historical” stuff.
It was really impressive that the ghostly interference in Mike’s life—both by Jo and later by Sara Tidwell—seemed totally, well, realistic. Also, King is always talented at character development, but his ability to develop Jo’s character almost entirely through her ghostly interludes is pretty amazing.

The most touching and tragic character in Bag of Bones, at least for me, was Mattie. Though only 21, already a widow, and nearly destitute and living in a trailer, she truly strives to rise above her situation in life. She loves her daughter, Kyra, with a fierceness borne not only of being a single mother but of defending her baby from the clutches of her greedy father-in-law, Max Devore. She belongs to a local book club and strives to enrich herself with literature and art. Mike’s initial judgments of Mattie and Kyra are proved completely wrong when he learns more about them, and he is understandably drawn to them—not only to their physical beauty (3-year-old Kyra is just as beautiful as her mother), but to their inner beauty: their joie de vivre, their intelligence, their kindness.

Bag of Bones was actually just recently made into a miniseries with Pierce Brosnan as Mike Noonan, but I haven’t seen it yet and probably won’t; as soon as I saw that James Bond was going to play Mike, I was immediately turned off. Mike Noonan is definitely not the James Bond type, and using Pierce Brosnan to play him just seems completely wrong. Not that Mike isn’t supposed to be handsome in his way, but not in the chiseled-cheekbones, brooding James Bond way. But if you do happen to see it, let me know how it is!

Anyway, I would definitely recommend Bag of Bones to any fans of the general thriller/horror/sci-fi/supernatural genre. It stands out from other Stephen King books for me because it seems different in a way that I can’t quite define—perhaps because it does fit into all of the above genres. It’s a book that I always find myself being drawn back to—the characters and the storyline are so engaging and well-developed. Definitely give this one a try.

Rating: 4 stars

PS: If you're a Stephen King fan, check out my Stephen King Project on my blog--I'm slowly making my way through all his published works!