LBS Week 13- Scary Books

I don't like scary things- not one bit. That being said, I do have quite a few YA favorites that could toe the line. I've already mentioned Evil Librarian and The Diviners, two books that can be adored while also dishing out serious willies (the latter more than the former, but chills and gore in both). For these latest picks on the blog, I stayed with a traditional definition of scary books, which is by the far the most common request I get from students in 3rd-5th grade. When Mary Downing Hahn becomes too tame (actually never if you're me- Wait Til Helen Comes is still on my shelf and still scaring the piss out of me), these YA horror picks just might fit the bill.

The Awesome by Eva Darrows
Did I buy this book based solely on the badass cover? Well...maybe. This edition is gorgeous, and the premise is divine- Maggie Cunningham helps her mother with the family business. Hunting vampires. She's not like other girls (my least favorite phrase about females but it works here) and she's totally fine with it. Except there is a certain rite of passage that must be fulfilled if she wants to get her professional vampire hunting license, a certificate cannot be obtained while one is in possession of virgin blood. That's right- Maggie has to lose her V card, and she has to do it quickly. Read this book for awesome creepy monster fights and a protagonist that you'll love as much for her toughness as for her vulnerability. I will cop that there are some serious plot holes (enough that I assumed a second book would fill some things in but there don't seem to be plans for another...) but the book is definitely fun enough to enjoy on it's own!

Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake
Despite some extremely chilling descriptions and tense ghostly scenes, this is one of my perennial favorites, a book I take out every Halloween no matter what is going on in my reading life. Cas is a ghost hunter who moves from town to town with his mother, finishing the interrupted work of his father- sending disruptive ghosts to their final resting place. Cas doesn't expect anything unusual when he hears the legend of Anna Karlov, the ghostly girl haunting a house in his latest stop, but as he gets closer to completing his goal of ending Anna, he finds it more and more difficult to follow through...

YEAH HE ACTUALLY FALLS IN LOVE WITH THE GHOST! And it's somehow not corny! And there is a second one (Girl of Nightmares) that I love just as much. It's incredibly fast-paced and leaves you wanting a third. I know Kendare Blake is getting a lot of popularity for her current trilogy but I always hope she'll return to Cas and Anna.

The Girl from the Well by Rin Chupeco
This is the only book I'm recommending that I haven't read. Goodreads is completely split on how scary this is, which makes me assume that it probably toes the line. I'll sometimes scan the Goodreads comments, but they never really match with how I feel about books I've read, so I take it all with a grain of salt. The Girl from the Well is based on the same Japanese legend as the movie The Ring, but this plot has the ghost of the murdered girl spending her time hunting people who hurt children. When she comes across a boy who she cannot save, she uncovers a depth of spirits and doll magic unlike anything she's seen in her three hundred plus years.