Suspense Book Chat with Emily

When it happens with Sid, I would like to welcome back another fellow spooky lover, Emily. Emily, how are you? Good. How are you? Thanks for having me again. Thank you so much for coming back. And so you've been everywhere on my timeline. You were before, but I feel like now it's picking up that like spooky algorithm. And the way you come up with like suggestions, I feel like it's almost every day that you have like something good to read. So right now, what book number are you on? For the year? Yeah. um 76 i think okay that's not bad yeah i'm not like a crazy i'm you know i've never read 100 books a year that's my goal this year for the first time ever but i've i stick in like this 80 to 90 range usually yeah i'm close to my goal like i did a goal of like 50 at the beginning of the year and i was like oh you know i'm gonna surpass it but then when i started doing this show and i was like i don't have as much time as like i used to have so right now i'm at i think 41 so i was like okay i'm almost there you know you'll get there you got plenty of time we got exactly we got a couple more months we're good but the way these months are flying i don't know and so emily tell us a little bit if people don't remember you from before what really draws you to anything thriller suspenseful or spooky um i think it was i got into it as i was trying to figure out what i liked to read i didn't really know what i wanted to read so i was reading everything historical fiction romance fantasy and something about the thriller horror genre has just hooked me it's like the plot twist of it all i think the unexpectedness of it that i love um i don't like to know what's happening i feel like some of the other genres for me personally get a little predictable and i just like don't want that in any way shape or form and a thriller or a horror book just knows how to turn a book on its head and i think it does great because it makes you think more so than like you know like the romance and stuff the only thing you're really thinking about is like the outcome could kind of be either way but i feel like with thrillers and suspense it's like okay is something gonna like jump out is it gonna be this person is like really the killer or is it like a close friend or what like you never know you never know what's gonna happen no my brain is constantly working when i read these books and so you sent over a couple of your favorite books and one of them is the place where they buried your heart and so tell us a little bit about what's in the book and what you liked about it so that one it's really underrated so if you have not read it please read it um it's basically a lot of people on the internet and myself also describe it as like Monster House for adults so it's about this like big haunted creepy house that's eating children in this neighborhood and um yeah and it sounds kind of silly is what i because you know you think a Monster House that's like a kid's movie and it sounds silly but it is not a silly book it is dark it is scary it is it's a lot but it was one of my favorite like spooky books i read this year um i read it in september and it was like the perfect little like intro into my spooky season reading it was so good like so good love Monster House i was just watching it the other day because i think they have it on like Peacock or something like that I think I think like I was like even though this is a kid's movie this movie was a little freaky you know like even for adults I'm just kind of like they did a good job I know and I watched it the last time I watched it I was a kid I saw it in theaters and I never watched it since so then I read that book and everyone was saying oh it's Monster House Monster House I was like I should probably just like watch that movie again so I did and I was like huh maybe that like horror thing was in me the whole time you know yeah it was just slowly festering you know like slowly yeah and now here I am I know and it's funny when we go back and watch those movies because you don't realize how they have so many things in there or sayings that are really for adults like Shrek has a ton of them like now get like when you're older and I'm like I love those type I call them like little goose eggs they just have like little thingies yep you appreciate it differently when you're an adult exactly and so you also like um the house across the lake I feel like it's a lot of house things you know going on so give us a little synopsis of this one and even though you liked it what would you say would be a pro and a con okay this one's a good one for a pro and a con because this book I don't know how much you've seen of it on BookTok or Instagram but it's a very um controversial book in the way that people either love it or they hate it there's no in between um it's about a woman and she's down on her luck she goes to this lake house her parents lake house i think um and she's there kind of just trying to get her life together and she starts watching this couple that lives in the house across the lake and she starts to see some things that raise some red flags with her um she starts to dig a little deeper and things go awry and it's a book where i don't like to tell people too much because it will shock you um the pro is if you are into like the spooky season reads this is going to be right up your alley um my jaw was on the floor i loved it was obsessed uh con is um the twist doesn't work for a lot of people um and i don't i can't really say what the obviously what this is so like you really won't know if you like this book until you read it which is unfortunate i can't tell you based on what you like if you'll like it or not because i'll ruin the entire thing for you so i feel like the way you're describing it kind of reminds me of i think it was the Alfred Hitchcock movie the man in the window or something in the window where it's like a guy across the street and i think he's got like a broken leg or something so he's like kind of stuck in the house and so he's like looking across in like his neighbor's house and like i think the neighbor's husband killed the lake something weird there's always something bad going on in the house next to you yeah and it's like and then you're just watching it's like okay like what do i do but then i feel like nothing great comes from anything dealing with a lake house i just don't know it was a wild wild story it's one of my favorite riley sager books um but it's also a lot of people's least favorite riley sager books so it really just depends on what you like and yeah and riley is a great author when it comes to like different like thriller but and it really makes you think and it's plot twist after plot twist so i might have to add that one to my list to kind of compare his other books and it's like super good for fall i feel like because it is a little bit of a slower burn at the beginning i will say um so it takes a minute to kind of get into but like once he gets the ball rolling in that one it like spirals very quickly and it's highly entertaining i loved it and then your last one that you like is a very popular one that is off the charts right now the witch by freedom yeah that's why I wanted to talk about it now I have not read this one yet I don't think I've read anything by her at least not yet so tell me a little bit about what's in this and what you liked about it so this one my I had two like really favorite things about it well three really Frieda McFadden has never done the whole spooky paranormal anything ever before so I really was like so curious and excited to see her kind of dive into that um and I think she did a great job with it um my favorite thing about it it had two timelines which i love a back and forth like past and present timeline so there was a past timeline in the 1600s there's this woman caroline she's accused of being a witch you know the whole witchy thing then there's a woman in present day Julia and she is now living in Caroline's old house and she believes that house is being haunted by this supposed witch um and yeah it's it it's really good i promise again i don't like to give too much away but um i loved it and the ending is one of my favorite endings Freida McFadden has ever written i thought she wrapped it up so well like not a plot hole in sight in my opinion some people beg to differ but i loved it i thought it got it was i loved it now what would you rate this out of five stars i gave it four and a half stars okay so that's really good then now would you like to see this in a movie or a tv show yes i could definitely probably it's i prefer a tv show for any book i read just because like you get so much more out of it so i would say a tv show but you could do either one with it um yeah it was so good i've read like 20 ish 23 i think Freida McFadden books this one's like i think in my top five it's not my top three honestly it was that good yeah yeah because i've been seeing it like trending and people are like talking about like the cover and the storyline and everything else and i was like huh because i know like you said like she this is like the first time that she's ever done something like this so it's always interesting to see like especially if there's if it's their first time in that specific genre like how it's going to turn out but i mean i think it's good that you gave it four out of five yeah i was nervous i was nervous because i'm like Freida McFadden for me can be very hit or miss so i was just like you know i didn't go in with like crazy expectations and then i was like kind of blown out of the water when i read it i was like wow this was actually really good and i read it for another book club that i'm in and we're having our meeting tonight i'm really excited to talk about it with everybody you're like I got my points for me to talk about I'm ready and so are you currently reading anything spooky no actually I am in the middle of like a palate cleanser book I um just I this sounds so crazy but I like literally started having like scary dreams at night and I was like I think I need to like take a break I had one specific dream where my house was haunted it was terrible I was like I should probably read something else I'm just reading like a regular thriller there's nothing spooky about it it's more like murder mystery um yeah called The Party in the Woods by Fiona Phillips okay big rave in the woods someone ends up going missing 20 years later they find his body and now everything comes back to the surface and they're trying to figure out what happened i'm currently reading like a middle school book because i'm like i needed like you said a little break because the last book i read was American Nightmare which was like a historical horror book which was very great by Kelly McWilliams and then i ended up then i was watching scary movies like Sinister 2 and all this stuff and i had a dream that like a ghost touched me and i actually felt it and i was like you know i think i just need a break for a little bit this is a little bit too yeah that's literally i've been watching a lot of scary movies too that's exactly where i am i was like and i have some really spooky books coming up because halloween like i try to read the spookiest books at the end of october so i was like okay this is a good time to like take a breather until i go right back into it so emily before i let you go is there anything else you would like to say to fellow spooky book lovers out there um just enjoy the spooky season like read all the spooky books all year long really but you know right now is prime time spooky season for me will go through like till thanksgiving so i'm like i got so much lined up i hope everyone else does too it's a great time to just snuggle up and read i love it well emily thank you so much for coming back on the show and giving us some awesome suggestions and for taking the time to chat with me and fellow book lovers out there we greatly appreciate it yeah not a problem thank you again