Top 5 Tuesday was created by Shanah at Bionic Book Worm, but now it is hosted by Meeghan at Meeghan Reads.
This month is all about scary books with the lead up to Halloween and I’ve seen so many other readers putting together spooky and scary books to get themselves in the mood.
Horror is a genre that I never ever thought I would read as I’m a big scaredy cat but upon branching out, horror is so much more than slasher and paranormal horror and it’s become a genre I really appreciate. Thrillers and crime novels are also some of my favourites so I’m excited to be participating this month!
Without further ado, let’s look at some of my top 5 non-scary tropes:
Top 5 horror/thriller tropes that don’t scare you
Vampires
I don’t believe in vampires so they don’t scare me. Now, don’t get me wrong, a vampire book could terrify me, but it wouldn’t necessarily be the vampire that’s scary – it’s more about the threat, the anticipation and the unknown that are the horrifying things.
Alien Abduction
To be honest, I haven’t yet read a lot of sci-fi horror but again, because I don’t believe that aliens are going to suddenly descend on earth and abduct us, it doesn’t terrify me.
Bloody Horror
I am a little squeamish, especially when I see bloody horror on TV or in films, but the amount of crime novels I’ve read where the dismemberment of the victim is written in quite detail means it doesn’t really scare me. Churn my stomach – yes. Terrify me – no.
Final Girl
Yay – she lives! That’s not scary! But the horrid after effects could be. I really want to read The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix to challenge this.
Satanic Cults cliches
I feel like this has featured in so many episodes of Criminal Minds! It’s always a fake and the local population are always ridiculously pent up about it. Nah.
So, what things do scare me?
I’m scared of anything that could be plausible or that play into fears from my childhood. For example, pandemics, stalkers, alone in the dark near the woods, ghosts (really not sure I believe in them or not but the prospect is scary), creepy children… quite a few things really! Next week I’ll be telling you about some books that really did freak me out…
Vampires!! Now that’s a trope I might write a favourites list for!! I do love me some good vampire stories!! I haven’t really read much about alien abduction — in fact, my entire knowledge of the whole tropes sits between the War of the Worlds radio play and Guardians of the Galaxy… which is a pretty broad spectrum!! Hope you had fun this week 👽
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Vampires are definitely not scary! Although I am not sure I agree with you on Alien Abduction!
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I agree with a lot of these! I’m not good with horrow where it’s ghosts and paranormal stuff!
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