If there’s one thing I love, it’s a good spooky or haunted house story and now is the perfect time to be reading them so here are some recommendations and some that I want to read.

HOME BEFORE DARK – RILEY SAGER

Maggie and her parents moved into Baneberry Hall and fled 3 weeks later in the middle of the night screaming about ghosts. Maggie’s dad wrote a book about their experience that made them tons of money but she doesn’t rememember anything and kind of believes thet made it all up. 

25 years later, Maggie’s dad has just died and he’s left the house to her but in his final words, begs her to never return. Maggie decides to return anyway to fix up the house in order to sell it. But when she gets there she starts experiencing some of the things that her dad described in his book and starts to believe that what he wrote was more fact than fiction.

JUST LIKE HOME – SARAH GAILEY

Vera’s mother calls her back and, in spite of their long estrangement, she returns to the childhood home where her serial killer father killed and buried his victims.

Coming home is hard for Vera and it’s made even worse when she finds that a parasitic artists has moved into the guest house and someone is leaving notes around the house in her dad’s handwriting. 

This book is so good and so different to what I expected! It went in a weird direction but in the absolute best way!

ANNA DRESSED IN BLOOD – KENDARE BLAKE

Cas Lowood travels the country with his mother following legends and local folklore in order to find and kill ghosts. He’s just arrived at a small town where locals are scared of a ghost called Anna Dressed in Blood: the ghost of a teenage girl that haunts her formed home dressed in the clothes she was brutally murdered in.

She kills every single person that enters her home… except for Cas.

This book is kind of like Supernatural (TV) even down to the storyline about their dad being killed by a ghost.

THE WOMAN IN BLACK – SUSAN HILL

A junior solicitor travels to Eel Marsh House in Crythin Gifford to sort through the papers of a recently deceased old woman where he begins to see the woman in black. 

Despite his experiences with the woman in black, he decides to stay the night at Eel Marsh house where he begins to learn the reasons behind the hauntings. 

This is a classic horror at this point and I kind of enjoyed the movie adaptation even more than the book! 

WYLDING HALL – ELIZABETH HAND

The young members of a folk band decide to spend a few months in an old mansion, Wylding Hall, where they record an album that will come to make their reputation, but at a terrifying cost: the group’s lead singer disappears within the mansion and is never heard from again.

Years later, the group meets with a documentary filmmaker to discuss what actually happened all those years ago. 

I’d really recommend the audiobook for this one! It’s told through an interview style and the audiobook has a full cast! Think Daisy Jones and the Six meets the Haunting of Hill House.

GALLANT – V.E. SCHWAB

16-year-old Olivia is mute and grew up in an orphange but one day she receives a letter inviting her to live at Gallant with her uncle. But when she arrives, she finds out that her uncle is dead and the estate is empty except for a few servants. 

They allow Olivia to stay as long as she agrees to follow 2 rules: don’t go out after dusk, and always stay on the right side of a wall that runs along the estate’s western edge.

This one is slow and mysterious and is a rare young adult book that doesn’t include a romance!

PLAIN BAD HEROINES – EMILY M. DANFORTH

In 1902, 2 students at the Brookhants School for Girls are madly in love and obsessed with the memoir of a scandalous young writer. A few months later, they’re found dead after a horrific wasp attack, the book lying next to their intertwined bodies. After 3 more deaths on the property, the school is closed for good.

Over a century later, a controversial horror film about the events at the school is being filmed at the crumbling and supposedly cursed school starring hollywood lesbian ‘it girl’ Harper Harper.

Okay, so this one is technically about a haunted boarding school and not a house but it’s really good so I couldn’t not include it. It’s kind of long and very sapphic!

THE TOLL HOUSE – CARLY REAGON

After a difficult few years, Kelda and her young son move into an old toll house on the edge of town. But when Kelda finds a death mask concealed behind one of the walls everything begins to change. Kelda can’t shake the feeling of being watched and her son’s behaviour becomes increasingly concerning. 

Kelda quickly becomes desperate to find out what happened in the house’s mysterious past.

THE SEPTEMBER HOUSE – CARISSA ORLANDO

The September House follows Margaret who finds her dream home in a large Victorian house she bought for surprisingly cheap. Soon after she moves in with her husband they discover that every September the walls drip with blood, the ghosts of former inhabitants appear and they’re all terrified of something in the basement.

But Margaret is determined to stay so a few years later she’s learnt to deal with the hauntings but her husband hasn’t – he’s decided he’s had enough and left her. But then their daughter starts to become concerned when her dad stops answering his calls so she decides to pay them a visit. The only problem is she has no idea about the hauntings and her mother is determined to keep them a secret.

WHITE SMOKE – TIFFANY D. JACKSON

Mari is running from the ghosts of her old life when her newly blended family move to a new town for a fresh start. Her mother has accepted a new job with the Sterling Foundation that comes with a picture-perfect house on Maple Street sitting between dilapidated houses, surrounded by neighbours with secrets. 

Soon after they move in, Mari begins to notice a lot of odd things happening – things begin to vanish, voices can be heard through the walls, lights turn on and off, and there’s a foul smell seeping through the vents that only Mari seems to notice…