Fans pick 100 books like Chlorine

I like to think I’m pretty good at guessing where a book is going to go—this is not the case with Gideon the Ninth. Every time I thought I had a grip on what was going on and where we were going, it took a turn. Every time I thought I had an idea of how I felt about a character, new lore dropped, and I fell in love (or in hate, or in a complicated love/hate thing that I have yet to figure out).

By the time I finished, I was torn between picking up the second book in the series to learn what happened next or rereading the first just to see how different it would be once I had a better understanding of the book.

I’m a big fan of genre-bending and trope manipulation, and I was completely blown away by this rare creation of a book. It’s a carefully crafted plot of time manipulation, blending science fiction, fantasy, espionage, and romance, told through letters between two rival agents in a style more akin to a war drama.

Those contrasting styles notably elevated the story for me, accenting the cybernetic future by experiencing the naturalistic one and enhancing the love story through the suspense of corporate espionage.

At no point did I feel as if either empire was the “good” or “bad” one, only that I wanted both of the protagonists to succeed, and that made my first read of this book nothing short of a page-turner.

In this middle-grade horror novel, Steve is feeling lonely and worried. His newborn brother is sick in the hospital, and his parents are understandably stressed. There’s also a wasp’s nest threatening their home, which becomes a bigger problem when the wasp queen visits him in his dreams. One night, the queen comes to Steve and offers to help “fix” the baby.

I have read many, many horror books. I consider myself a connoisseur of the creepy. This book, intended for middle-grade children, remains one of the scariest books I’ve read. It’s filled with dread while also centering on family.

I can imagine a young Wednesday (as played by Christina Ricci or the late great Lisa Loring) reading this book and imagining what she would wish upon her own brother should a wasp queen approach her.

I view this book as an equal mix of cosmic deep-sea horror, exploration of loneliness, and marital devotion.

I really appreciate that this book follows two flawed women across multiple periods of time, on land and in the deep sea, and across the full length of their relationship. The weight of one of them disappearing beneath the ocean for months profoundly affects both of them–mentally, emotionally, and physically–in different and weird ways, but underneath everything is an enduring love.

I particularly enjoyed the slow-moving body horror in this one, plus the escalating creep of being stuck at the bottom of the ocean for months and the overarching terror of losing the one you love.

What terrible tome would Morticia and Gomez have read to little Wednesday in order to ensure that she would have the most noxious nightmares? I believe they would’ve cracked open this gothic children’s classic, written and illustrated by the enigmatic Edward Gorey.

This book recites the alphabet, with each letter representing how a child died. Take, for instance, the representation of our second letter: “B is for Basil assaulted by bears.” What better way for a wicked whelp to learn her letters?

I both chuckled and winced while reading this book, especially with the paired black-and-white illustrations. It’s funny and deeply dark, which is, of course, the perfect mix for an Addams Family fan.

This book is an ideal introduction to the history of the Addams Family, tracing back to their origins as a comic strip in the New Yorker. It is filled with trivia and information about the family throughout the years and how they became so beloved.

Over 200 of the original comics are printed in this book, and I loved being able to see their villainous beginnings. I love learning about the Addams Family and how their mischievous machinations have made them cultural icons.

Perhaps not the scariest book on this list, but it's a good way to learn about how Wednesday became Wednesday.

Maddy is not, and never will be, a bad girl. She's just a scared girl that did some very, very bad things.

That doesn't mean I wasn't cheering her on. Maddy is the kind of heroine that I fantasized about jumping into the pages to fight for. I cussed out many a side-character in my head, just wishing they would try to talk to me like that so I could give them what they deserve.

But Maddy gets her lick back without my help - and it's a remorseless gorefest. The ending of this book is part slasher, part action film that I needed. After getting frustrated with all her hardships, I needed Maddy’s revenge to take over the book, just like her rage took over her.

This is an ambitious story about a sexually-transmitted otherworldly city, and Valente expertly delivers on that concept.

When this book was first published in 2009, it was rare and controversial to have bisexual main characters and multiple sapphic trysts in a speculative novel. It was, therefore, one of the first weird, sapphic books I ever read, and I was absolutely delighted to discover it.

While thoroughly weird in content, the prose is poetic and lush, and the overall strange, beautiful tone of this novel has stayed with me throughout most of my adult life.

It’s always great to get a reminder to be true to yourself when you don’t fit in easily.

This dystopian YA novel has good worldbuilding and a rich lexicon of new words that gives it that idiosyncratic futuristic feeling. The protagonist is a barely fifteen-year-old girl “bender”—someone who doesn’t feel comfortable in their assigned gender and doesn’t hide that. She has been sent to a camp that will determine her future, making sure she doesn’t end up in the “Blight”, a huge concentration camp for society’s undesirables.

But for a good outcome, she must conform, and her fellow campers and new experiences make that confusing and difficult. The ending is fairly open, but she has clearly learned to be true to herself and reject arbitrarily assigned labels.

Mariza Kuznetsova (Something Unbelievable), Irina Reyn (Mother Country), and I all left the Soviet Union as children, before Putin and before all the changes he brought. Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry came of age in the new Russia. The Orchard is a tale of what our own lives might have been if our families had stayed. This loose retelling of Chekov zeroes in on how a childhood begun in the USSR and a young adulthood lived in Russia affected everyone who went through it, how it shaped worldviews, and how it continues to resonate even after decades of immigrant life in America.