The Most Messed Up Books I Have Read 

I love that you state just enough to make a book intriguing without giving the story away.

We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver is a brilliantly "messed up" novel which literally made me feel I had been punched in the stomach when a major plot twist is revealed! Not an easy read for sure but compelling and superbly well written.

I read Dark places at the beginning of this year. It was so good, I know exactly the scenes that you were talking about! 🤦‍♀️📚

The top ones that come to mind are Zombie by Joyce Carol Oates and The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum. I can tolerate true crime, but these thinly veiled "fictionalized" accounts of real life cases just really disturb me.

I always enjoy the thumbnails for your videos! They perfectly capture the theme and vibe of your books.😏📚😳

Yes! So glad you put this video out there! I too like to read books that push boundaries of my comfort. Agreed with some of these and happy to put the others on my TBR. Still waiting for you to read Poppy Z. Brite "Exquisite Corpse".... 😉

I read Three Days in the Pink Tower a while back. I'm not even sure how to describe my feelings about it. It was....devastating? I understand it was a "fantastical" re-telling of real events, but it was a sobering reminder of the terrible things that happen to women and girls every day. Truly painful at times and it has never completely left my mind since then. Thank you for sharing this list!

The very end of Dark Places MESSED ME UP. I thought about it for days, and I read a ton of really dark books. From your list I've read Dark Places, My Dark Vanessa, and Tampa. Really loved them all. I still need to finish Lolita, the writing is beautiful but I need to look words up fairly frequently (not a complaint!). American Psycho is another one I have on hiatus, hope to eventually finish haha. Three Days in the Pink Tower is definitely one I'll be picking up.

😲 Great video! The only books that I find truly disturbing are ones based on true events, like The Girl Next Door. That one still bothers me years later.

Wasn’t expecting Nabokov, but you’re right! That book has disturbed me for years.

Great video! American Psycho is possibly the book that disturbed me the most, my wife can vouch for that. The final murder scenes seriously messed with me and it is the only book I have read that has spilled over into my life, and not in a good way.

Has anyone mentioned the killer inside me? It's not as extreme as most of the books discussed in the video, but it was published in 1952. I read it in the nineties and i had to set down and come back to it when I was ready. Another one I just remembered is filth by Irvine Welsh.

Younger me would be able to handle most of these books. Old, anxious me I don’t think so 😂 I might check out Dark Places though

I'm wondering if you have seen the film White Ribbon? Based on your review of String Follow You might like that film. The story is not the same one but elements of your review reminded me of it. Removing Complicity to my list even thought I liked Wasp Nest. TY for the trigger and prose mentions on this. I have never read Lolita and have no plan to.

That kiss was definitely not on my list...

Thanks for the recommendations Rachael. I'm diving in.

Haha this video got an immediate click from me. Idk why but disturbing is such a buzzword for me! We have such similar tastes, I love your recommendations so much!

In the same line as My Dark Vanessa, Tampa, and Lolita, you have to check out The Reader by Bernard Schlink. It’s a similar story about a young man in post WW2 Germany.

The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum. It's a horror book based on the Sylvia Likens case. It's brutal, but it's written so well that you'll keep going even if your brain is telling you to stop. Two young girls are tortured by their aunt and the neighborhood kids. I read it when I was 26, and I still can't get it out of my head.

Ceremonies by T.E.D. Klein, a atmospheric novel that just pays off with some of nastiest scenes in the genre. Brilliant!

We really need to be able to buy a ShadesOfOrange T-shirt that says "That being said, LET'S GET STARTED!"

The End of Alice by A.M. Homes. It's an incredibly messed up book, but it holds your attention hostage and you can't put it down (as much as you want to). Very well written, but so so many trigger warnings.

Ever since I finished American Psycho, I have been on the hunt for more extreme horror books. AP was so over the top and satirical that I actually laughed out loud at a lot of it. So my next read was Tender is the Flesh. While I really enjoyed it, it wasn't very shocking to me. I finally bought Tampa and read it in a few days because it was SO insane. I was so uncomfortable reading it, and that's exactly what I had been looking for. It was also very sad from the few perspectives we get from the main boy character. So I topped the extremeness of AP and now it's back to the drawing board. I started Exquisite Corpse, so we'll see where that takes me.

The End of Alice was very messed up but one of the most disturbing books I've ever read is The Melting by Lize Spit.

I loved Dark Places ! Sharp objects was awesome too.

I haven't read any of these, and tend to avoid such intentionally disturbing books... But when writing my own ghost story recently, the climax veered from the plot into a grand guignol that required many trigger warnings. Perhaps many of these topics are unavoidable in this day and age?

My fav type of video! American Psycho was one of the first F*cked up book I ever read

Yea for Rachel!

Isn't there a Dark Vanessa in Lolita? Nabokov was a lepidopterist,

I thought the book, American Psycho was much, much more graphic than the movie, but it perfectly captures 1980s NYC pop culture. But the movie did an excellent job of adapting the novel, especially how the filmmakers incorporated Bateman’s monologues (which could last 20 pages!) on Huey Lewis, Phil Collins, etc. 😂

Rec: novella Class Trip, Emmanuel Carrère. First class narrative and sick.

Hogg by Delany is the most disturbing book I’ve been able to get through, barely. I’ve only only read American Psycho from your list and DNF’d another. String Follow sounds the most intriguing. I’ve read a few of Bank’s Culture books and throughly enjoyed them so I might give Complicity a try.

Just a criticism, Lolita was not a young woman. She was a child. I do believe the distinction is important

We need to talk about Kevin. 🏹

I really feel like Brother needs to be on this list.

I read American Pyscho when I was working at B&N sometime between 2006 and 2012. I loved the way Bret Easton Ellis built his character. Jared Leto was great in the movie. "Why are there newspapers on the floor?"

I'm not sure which ones got translated to english but I think you might like Piergorgio Pulixi's books. I've read two of the series that got translated to french, first one was about ritualistic murders, very good read but the second was excellent. It also had vigilante taking on himself fixing the errors of judicial system, but he lets the public vote over life or death. There is also very disturbing element involving teeth.

Gemma by Meg Tilly is Lolita on steroids. OMG what a fucked up book! Worse than My Dark Vanessa, too.

I still need to read Dark Places and watch the movie. Sharp Objects had some disturbing scenes, so I need to prepare myself for Dark Places. A book that disturbed me so much that I had to throw up in the toilet after I read a certain part, was a true crime book on the Shonda Sharer case, The book is called Cruel Sacrifice. It proved to me that I can't read true crime books that get into the gory details. I am too empathic. The two most disturbing fiction books I have ever read are The End of Alice by A.M. Homes, which I almost sent to you, except that you have a young son, and the book involves a 19-year-old girl who becomes sexually fascinated by a young boy. She begins to write letters to an infamous child killer, and he becomes the devil on her shoulder, so to speak. The other most disturbing book I ever read is Juliette by the Marquis de Sade. It is the first book I ever read from the villain's POV, and there is a scene involving a boy who is 8 or 9 years old that absolutely messed me up. Anytime someone says recommend me the most messed up book you have ever read, it is Juliette, hands down. She is an unrepentant sexual predator and killer. Great video, Rachel. Thank you so much!

I wish Gillian Flynn would publish more.

I can't believe KIN didn't make the list

The most disturbing book I've read that's been forever lodged into my memory is Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z. Brite.

I'm gonna say this as I ended up reading it by Stephen king cause i had a teacher who couldn't finish the book due to how disturbing it was to her. I generally liked the book, but she had said she hasn't read a Stephen King book since because the way he wrote freaked her out.

"It's so..... MINTY..." Favorite scene in American Psycho

may have touched on this before but american psycho created a huge controversy when it came out so much so that I decided to read it myself to see if it was really as bad as people said. It wasn't. Complicity is the only banks I've read and thought it was a good revenge story. The two most messed up books I've read are the manchurian candidate by richard condon and headhunter by a couple of canadians whose names I can't recall.⚛😀❤

I was really disturbed when I read My Dark Vanessa. I went to boarding school with a teacher who was disturbingly interested in me. Luckily I was smart enough to say no many times. This book should have had trigger warnings for me. But I didn't see any. I had to put this book down so many times in order to finish. (ending of this story, the teacher was later arrested for pornography online containing young girls. ) He is a registered sex offender and obviously had his teaching license revoked. But who knows how long this was going on?

As someone who came from a family that had generational incest, pedophilia, and hebephilia.. I don't shy away from books that include these topics. It's important to talk about it and have it out in the open. One of the reasons why it continues is because no one wants to bring it up and confront it. Thank you for including those books in your choices.

String Follow has shockingly low rating on Goodreads, which intrigues me 😂

Notice by Heather Lewis is a pretty messed up, disturbing book. I finished it a month ago and it’s really stayed with me.

huey lewis and the news 🐹🧪

The End of Alice by A M Homes

You should read " It's Me, Charlie".

Exquisite Corpse

📚

Finally some books I can recommend to my therapist.

😊

🛸

The most messed up book I’ve read is Poppy Z Brite’s Lost Souls 😳

Tampa: "When her head swiveled my way I could almost hear the grinding sound of a long standing boulder being moved." Great book. Celeste Price is a cartoon character in a circus of absurdity. You did a fantastic job describing the story. 🤡 Clowns: most disturbing.

Hello there hey there hey Hello hey hi hey

🪓🗡✂

😬

👍

🛋️✨📚✨

👺

💋🫦👩‍❤️‍💋‍👨

🔪🗡️

🤯🤔🤯

😬📚💀

😬🙈

🦷🦷🦷🦷

Yawn......

📚🗡🩸

🦨