The Monster Mash-Up! My Top 5 Monsters in Literature

Monsters are the lifeblood of stories. Monstrous people, beasts, or actions are generally added to give a story that added burst of terror. I love a good monster and the chills that they send down my spine. Although my favourite monster of all time is the Tyrannosaurus Rex from Jurassic Park, I decided that for this challenge, I could only use fictional monsters. Since the T-rex is a real dinosaur, it doesn’t count.

We all know that monsters can be sympathetic, otherworldly, or both. I’ve tried to avoid the sympathetic monster as well, so Frankenstein won’t make it on this list. Books I haven’t read also won’t be featured here which disqualifies Frankenstein again. Sorry! I’ll get to you, I promise.

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Dracula's digs

Dracula is the Classic Horror Story Everyone Should Read

Dracula
Bram Stoker
Horror, Fiction
Dracula
Buy now on Amazon

I used to have a lot of wacky ideas about Dracula. I knew vaguely that it was an older novel (written in 1897 by Bram Stoker). In my imagination Dracula skulked in the shadows and said “I vant to suck your blahd” in a cartoonish accent.

To me, Dracula was about as frightening as the Count from Sesame Street. I always ignored the novel because I thought it would be boring. And that just goes to show how badly I underestimated the Gothic Novel.

Classics are classics for a reason and Dracula surprised me from the very beginning by not being a straight-forward vampire narrative.

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The Only Child by Andrew Pyper – Review

Holy hell, what a ride.

I don’t remember where I first heard about The Only Child or how it ended up in my Overdrive account, but I went into the novel blind. I didn’t know anything about it. Would it be a family drama? A murder mystery?

After a couple pages, I was sure I knew what was going to come of this. It would be a murder mystery and our main character, Lily would find love or something along the way. I should have learned my lesson from underestimating The Girl On The Train last summer. Instead of the competent, but unmemorable novel I was expecting, I was blown away by how deep this rabbit hole went.

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