October is #WickedGoodReads Month at Outlandish Lit and Girlxoxo. This week, we’re focusing on books with wicked people, and today’s discussion is on Books That Prove You Can’t Always Trust Your Neighbors or The People Close to You (see the full list of discussion topics here).
CONFESSIONS BY KANAE MINATO
This is an incredibly twisty thriller that's HIGHLY messed up. What evil can young students do? And how far will a trusted figure, a teacher, go to get revenge? Thank god I'm not in school anymore, because now I don't trust anybody.
After an engagement that ended in tragedy, all Yuko Moriguchi had to live for was her four-year-old child, Manami. Now, after a heartbreaking accident on the grounds of the middle school where she teaches, Yuko has given up and tendered her resignation. But first, she has one last lecture to deliver. She tells a story that will upend everything her students ever thought they knew about two of their peers, and sets in motion a maniacal plot for revenge.
THE TRAITOR BARU CORMORANT BY SETH DICKINSON
Revenge, revenge, revenge! This isn't a spooky horror novel. It's an amazing geopolitical fantasy and one of the best books I've read this year. Our hero, Baru Cormorant, gives her life to lying her way through an empire and never knows who to trust herself.
Tomorrow, on the beach, Baru Cormorant will look up from the sand of her home and see red sails on the horizon. The Empire of Masks is coming, armed with coin and ink, doctrine and compass, soap and lies. They'll conquer Baru’s island, rewrite her culture, criminalize her customs, and dispose of one of her fathers. But Baru is patient. She'll swallow her hate, prove her talent, and join the Masquerade. She will learn the secrets of empire. She’ll be exactly what they need. And she'll claw her way high enough up the rungs of power to set her people free.
THE GIRL NEXT DOOR BY JACK KETCHUM
This book sounds so disturbing that I am too scared to read it. It just seemed like the perfect pick as neighborhood kids torture a girl in what seems like a normal suburban neighborhood.
Suburbia. Shady, tree-lined streets, well-tended lawns and cozy homes. A nice, quiet place to grow up. Unless you are teenage Meg or her crippled sister, Susan. On a dead-end street, in the dark, damp basement of the Chandler house, Meg and Susan are left captive to the savage whims and rages of a distant aunt who is rapidly descending into madness. It is a madness that infects all three of her sons and finally the entire neighborhood. Only one troubled boy stands hesitantly between Meg and Susan and their cruel, torturous deaths. A boy with a very adult decision to make.
What books have you read where family, neighbors, and friends turn out to be the ones that you really have to watch out for?
Tomorrow's topic is your Favorite Psychological Thrillers, but I'll be back on Thursday with my Favorite Female Horror Authors!