Welcome to Booking Through Thursday, a weekly bookish meme about books and reading for everyone who loves both. Booking Through Thursday was first hosted by Deb. With permission, I’ve restarted it in 2026.
This week’s prompt:
Did you ever start a book not expecting to be scared and then all at once you’re double-checking the locks and peering beneath the bed? Did you put on a brave face? Or did you opt out at that point?
Let us know what books we should (or perhaps shouldn’t) try.
What book scared you more than you expected it to?
How to play:
- On your blog: Copy the question/image for your blog, answer it there, and post a quick comment here with a link or trackback to your post so we can read it.
- On social media: Copy the image, answer the prompt, and post a quick comment here with a link.
- Right here: Answer in the comments and start the discussion here. No need to have a blog to play.
Note: If it’s your first time here, your comment may end up in moderation. (My spam filter is aggressive.) I’ll be in after my writing sprints to set it free.
P.S. The prompt is always open, and you don’t have to play on Thursday. Comment whenever you like!
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For me, it was Dracula by Bram Stoker. I read in over the summer when I was home from college. I figured it was an old-timey book, and how scary could that be?
Honestly, scarier than I thought. It’s also kind of hilarious as well.
Also, during one of those summers home, I read Helter Skelter about the Manson murders. (Not sure what was going on during those summers home from college that I was reading all these scary books. I was also working at Green Giant, although I’m not sure that’s related.) Anyway, I was reading one evening, next to the open window, when I heard a scritch, scritch, scritch on the screen and nearly launched myself into the ceiling.
It was just a friend, visiting. Still.
Reading Helter Skelter at all, never mind at night, and next to an open window? You were a brave young woman! And certainly braver than I!
It’s already been established that I don’t do scary reading, or even books that ratchet up the tension too high or for too long. But sometimes I do read spy thrillers, and the one I picked up from Kindle Unlimited recently seemed ok. At first. Yes, the lead character was, from the start, on the run. But there were some relationship that looked interesting. But then the pace picked up from there, the “relationships” were killed off, and when the story finally started providing backstory, and you learned how the lead character somehow got talked into bugging the briefcase of a murderous Russian oligarch (who happens to be his father-in-law), well, I wondered just how smart this guy could really be. As the stakes got higher and higher, the lead character kept making impossibly dumb choices, my nervous anxiety about what was in store for him became intolerable, and when I just couldn’t look anymore, I sent it back to Kindle and started re-reading Circe (Madeline Miller). Infinitely more soothing.
I read the occasional thriller as well, but like you, I often find them unrelenting and frustrating, especially the impossibly dumb character choices. Also? It doesn’t help that, as a former military intelligence officer, I can’t always suspend my disbelief. Although, if it’s also charming, funny, tongue-in-cheek, I’ll be there for it. So, it depends.