It’s All Fun and Games…

Hide is definitely the book that inspired this week’s theme. This book is hands down one of the most tense, white-knuckling the pages, heart-racing all the way books I’ve ever read. It’s exactly that kind of terrifying, cat-and-mouse survival horror that I love, and thanks to White’s unforgettable storytelling, Hide was an instant favorite.

For a deadly game with fourteen players, the objective simple: seven days hiding in an abandoned amusement park. The game starts at dawn, and ends at sunset. The last one standing, wins. The prize? A new life, a second chance, all your dreams finally in reach. But somethings really are too good to be true. And when the other players start disappearing, Mack – who’s particularly experienced at hiding and surviving thanks to her haunted past – realizes that “last one standing” may have a more sinister meaning where this particular game of hide and seek is concerned.

Extreme haunt meets escape room in a chilling work of social horror that you won’t soon forget. Set in 1997, Reprieve tells the story of four contestants competing to survive the Quigley house, a full-contact haunted escape room. They’ve made it to the final cell, and if they can make it through without shouting the safe word, there’s a big cash prize waiting at the end. Success seems guaranteed. Until a sudden intrusion and the violent murder of one of their party upends all their hopes. The novel unfolds in a series of alternating perspectives, as each remaining contestant narrates their version of events. But as their personal stories are told, slowly the truth is is revealed. And the ways in which they all – through their lies, misunderstandings, obsessions, and prejudices – may have played a part in what happened that night.

Now some might contest my classifying Gideon the Ninth as survival horror. But listen: there’s only so much bone and blood you can fit in a book before it starts to edge across that genre line. I mean, the number of corpses alone has to qualify. And the reanimated corpses. And the horrifying constructs of bone and sinew that defy nature and the imagination. Harrowhark Nonagesimus is one of nine house scions competing to serve the Emperor as a Lyctor. But no necromancer can ascend to that hallowed role without their loyal, steadfast cavalier. Unfortunately for Harrow (and luckily for all of us) she’s got Gideon. Her rude, crude childhood nemesis, who she must trust with her life if she hopes to survive the trials that await. Particularly when the other competitors start turning up dead.