Hello, the following article was written by Briana in 9W

Horror novels tend to be less appreciated by audiences,and disregarded as a knockoff of the movies. People say you don’t get the same experiences as you do with television,watching a murderous scene happen before your eyes is not the same as reading about it sadly. You don’t get the same chills down your spine,the same feeling of some sort of entity lurking behind you,watching as you breathe in for possibly the final time. They are wrong.  A well written horror novel is hard to find, sure, but it’s even harder to read because it’s just so close to the real thing. Words can have different meanings, can be arranged differently, can have people arguing about various interpretations of the same scene. With movies and shows,you can’t do that because the answer is in front of you. Quite literally. You can predict the ending of a movie but not a book, you can read the body language of a character, analyse what they do or say,that’s why they are all so predictable. That’s why they are not scary. With a book, yes,you can think about the other meanings but you can’t read between the lines. Because then there is just a blank page. And what good is a blank page at predicting the ending of a story? With novels, there is real suspense. There is real tension and worry for the characters, you can engross yourself in a book and feel what the characters feel, but you can’t do the same with a show because at the end of the day you’re just watching from the outside.

So go out and pick up a horror novel ,one with thick dust on the cover that would have never caught your attention before, one with yellow, crinkled pages that have worn out by how many people read it .And as Spring and Summer come around, read it.It’s not the exact mood for a horror novel,the ideal would be somewhere in late October, with the nights getting cold and dark faster and faster and a little candlelight in a library somewhere. But at the same, will you ever really get scared if you’re expecting it?

My recommendations:

The Haunting of Hill House

The Silent Patient

The Woman In Black

House of Leaves

The Shuddering