Five mind-bending books for spooky season

We are now entering spooky season, as we get close to Halloween and immerse ourselves in the fall spirit. In honour of spooky season, I’ll be sharing a variety of books that could be considered “spooky” either by having supernatural elements or being in the realm of thriller or horror genres. Enjoy!


Once again, we’re following the spooky season theme. This week I want to share five mind-bending books. These books will stick with you and keep you thinking about the story for long after you’ve finished it.

All of these are kind of weird books, and you may want to look up content warnings for these books if there’s any content you want to avoid reading.

All of these books are fascinating and change the way you think. Personally, this is my favourite kind of book, ones that take you by surprise and then you can’t stop thinking about them.

Personally, I wouldn’t want to know too much about these books before starting to read them. These are the kind of books that are best approached blind to fully enjoy the story, with all its twists and turns. So feel free to just skim over the details of the books below, or even just look at the list right below this section.

I’d love to hear any suggestions you have for similar books in a comment below!

Photo by Camila Quintero Franco on Unsplash

Five mind-bending books for spooky season

Here’s a list of five mind-bending books for spooky season.

  1. The Membranes by Chi Ta-Wei (紀大偉) (1995)
  2. Earthlings by Sayaka Murata (2018)
  3. Bunny by Mona Awad (2019)
  4. The Test by Sylvain Neuvel (2019)
  5. The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan (2022)

Keep reading to find out more about each one. I’ve listed them in order of when they were published.

The Membranes (1995)

by Chi Ta-Wei (紀大偉),
Translated from the Chinese (Taiwan) by Ari Larissa Heinrich

  • Year Published: 1995
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, lgbtqia+, science fiction, speculative fiction, dark, mysterious, reflective, medium-paced
  • Classic of queer speculative fiction in Chinese

It is the late twenty-first century, and Momo is the most celebrated dermal care technician in all of T City. Humanity has migrated to domes at the bottom of the sea to escape devastating climate change. The world is dominated by powerful media conglomerates and runs on exploited cyborg labor. Momo prefers to keep to herself, and anyway she’s too busy for other relationships: her clients include some of the city’s best-known media personalities. But after meeting her estranged mother, she begins to explore her true identity, a journey that leads to questioning the bounds of gender, memory, self, and reality.

First published in Taiwan in 1995, The Membranes is a classic of queer speculative fiction in Chinese. Chi Ta-wei weaves dystopian tropes–heirloom animals, radiation-proof combat drones, sinister surveillance technologies–into a sensitive portrait of one young woman’s quest for self-understanding. Predicting everything from fitness tracking to social media saturation, this visionary and sublime novel stands out for its queer and trans themes. The Membranes reveals the diversity and originality of contemporary speculative fiction in Chinese, exploring gender and sexuality, technological domination, and regimes of capital, all while applying an unflinching self-reflexivity to the reader’s own role. Ari Larissa Heinrich’s translation brings Chi’s hybrid punk sensibility to all readers interested in books that test the limits of where speculative fiction can go.

Links:

Earthlings (2018)

by Sayaka Murata,
Translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori

  • Year Published: 2018 (English version in 2020)
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, horror, literary, magical realism, challenging, dark, medium-paced
  • Note, this novel deals with many difficult themes, I would recommend checking content warnings before reading if there are any subjects you want to avoid.

Natsuki isn’t like the other girls. She has a wand and a transformation mirror. She might be a witch, or an alien from another planet. Together with her cousin Yuu, Natsuki spends her summers in the wild mountains of Nagano, dreaming of other worlds. When a terrible sequence of events threatens to part the two children forever, they make a promise: survive, no matter what.

Now Natsuki is grown. She lives a quiet life with her asexual husband, surviving as best she can by pretending to be normal. But the demands of Natsuki’s family are increasing, her friends wonder why she’s still not pregnant, and dark shadows from Natsuki’s childhood are pursuing her. Fleeing the suburbs for the mountains of her childhood, Natsuki prepares herself with a reunion with Yuu. Will he still remember their promise? And will he help her keep it?

Links:

Bunny (2019)

by Mona Awad

  • Year Published: 2019
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, contemporary, horror, literary, dark, mysterious, tense, medium-paced

Samantha Heather Mackey couldn’t be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England’s Warren University. A scholarship student who prefers the company of her dark imagination to that of most people, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort–a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other Bunny, and seem to move and speak as one.

But everything changes when Samantha receives an invitation to the Bunnies’ fabled Smut Salon, and finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door–ditching her only friend, Ava, in the process. As Samantha plunges deeper and deeper into the Bunnies’ sinister yet saccharine world, beginning to take part in the ritualistic off-campus Workshop where they conjure their monstrous creations, the edges of reality begin to blur. Soon, her friendships with Ava and the Bunnies will be brought into deadly collision.

The spellbinding new novel from one of our most fearless chroniclers of the female experience, Bunny is a down-the-rabbit-hole tale of loneliness and belonging, friendship and desire, and the fantastic and terrible power of the imagination.

Links:

The Test (2019)

by Sylvain Neuvel

  • Year Published: 2019
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, dystopian, challenging, dark, emotional, fast-paced

Award-winning author Sylvain Neuvel explores an immigration dystopia in The Test

Britain, the not-too-distant future.

Idir is sitting the British Citizenship Test.

He wants his family to belong.

Twenty-five questions to determine their fate. Twenty-five chances to impress.

When the test takes an unexpected and tragic turn, Idir is handed the power of life and death.

How do you value a life when all you have is multiple choice?

Links:

The School for Good Mothers (2022)

by Jessamine Chan

  • Year Published: 2022
  • Storygraph Categories:
    fiction, dystopian, literary, science fiction, dark, emotional, sad, medium-paced

Frida Liu is struggling. She doesn’t have a career worthy of her Chinese immigrant parents’ sacrifices. What’s worse is she can’t persuade her husband, Gust, to give up his wellness-obsessed younger mistress. Only with their angelic daughter Harriet does Frida finally feel she’s attained the perfection expected of her. Harriet may be all she has, but she’s just enough.

Until Frida has a horrible day.

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Final thoughts

I hope you found something of interest in this list of books.

I’m always looking for more suggestions of books to read. I’d love to know which mind-bending book that you love. Let me know in a comment below!

Have you read any of these books? What did you think of the book?

I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below.

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