Books like Ghoster

Wicked needs no introduction but if you think the book is the same as the musical, think again! The musical takes the bare bones and that's it. Wicked, the book, is closer to something like Game of Thrones. It's high fantasy with interesting characters and an Oz where Elphaba is less magical than is believed. It's a tale about how easy it is to do good and yet be seen as evil due to the manipulations of true evil. It doesn't shy away from real issues that are still prevalent in the real world today.

It's a classic murder mystery. While most murder mysteries focus on the whodunnit, Laura also focuses on the lead detective and him slowly falling for the victim as he learns more about the type of person she was. With this, it changes him as a person too and it has a fabulous cast of characters you want to love and hate.

This book revolutionized the possession subgenre.

I love how the story isn’t a typical paint-by-numbers possession and doesn’t go straight into the belief of a demonic presence. The author focuses on building the varying characters up before the exorcism begins, and I enjoy how Reagan is treated by doctors first, worried she’s ill due to family stress.

My favourite part of The Exorcist is how much focus is given to the exorcism once it starts. Plenty of other exorcism stories may only use the exorcism as a quick fix in the third act, but William Peter Blatty made it an integral part of the story.

A chilling horror in a small fictional English village.

I love The Woman in Black because it’s more than a ghost story; it’s also a story about love and the connection between family. I’ve read it twice and what I love the most about it is the ambience Susan Hill creates with her well-crafted sentence structure.

There’s a lot of focus on Arthur Kipps, the protagonist, and his life before and after the haunting of Eel Marsh, but it’s not only him the story cares about. The Woman in Black herself is a mystery and has a tragic backstory that turns her from a full-on villain to a sympathetic one.

This is my all-time favourite book.

I own two physical copies – one paperback and a special edition hardback that released for a recent anniversary. It’s Stephen King’s debut, but you wouldn’t know it since he was already so comfortable with his writing and understanding his voice. I love that the story isn’t told through conventional means but using news reports and journals.

Carrie White is a character I can relate to, not because I secretly have powers – I don’t, I promise – but because she is the oddball, the type of person who doesn’t fit in. She’s the exaggerated poster child of why bullying is bad, but the book holds one very special message at its core – what does it cost to be nice?

Carrie is shown throughout as this sweet and simple girl who longs for connection, and we see the slow breakdown of her character… show more.

The Monk is a character piece with a slow moving story that uses its pacing to pull the reader in. Go into it as blind as possible as it's the kind of story that starts in one place then ends up where you didn't expect. It's billed as a gothic romance, and there's certainly romance contained within, but there's also a lot of horror - in many different forms. Characters you root for at the start may not be the same characters you root for by the end or even the halfway point. It will challenge your thoughts and make you question what you're reading.

I read the paperback and listened to the audiobook depending on where I was.

Jack Sparks isn’t a pleasant man.

He’s the type of protagonist to elicit an eyeroll and hope he gets his just desserts, and yet Jason Arnopp created such an exciting world that challenged the protagonist and reader alike. I remember wanting nothing but bad things to happen to Jack due to his attitude, but Jason’s writing also endeared him to me.

I soon found myself loving this ridiculous man with a skeleton or two in his closet that helped explain the man he became. It’s such a trippy book and not once did I understand where it was going – which I loved!