I like being scared. I like dread, weird rooms, things that do not make sense, folklore that crawls under my skin. But every time I pick up a hyped horror novel lately it is just a woman being watched while she sleeps or a woman tied to a chair or a woman whose suffering is the whole plot. I am not looking for cozy horror or romance with ghosts. I want to be afraid without feeling like the author is enjoying my gender getting hurt.
Give me something where the horror is strange, or cosmic, or ecological, or even just a house that hates everyone equally. Just no more pages of detailed female pain described like poetry.
What horror novels actually respect their readers and their characters?
by Luann97