Riot Recommendation: What Are the Strangest And Most Compelling Books You’ve Ever Read?

Vanessa Diaz

Managing Editor

Vanessa is a writer, reader and generally bookish Latina from San Diego. If loving Agatha Christie is wrong, she doesn't want to be right. Vanessa’s penchant for books, travel and tea is rivaled only by her serious addictions to milk, avocado and floral lattes. When not reading books or selling them, she can be found blogging, working on her first novel or cozying up at a library.

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Size Zero by Abigail Mangin.

Condom dresses and space helmets have debuted on fashion runways. A dead body becomes the trend when a coat made of human skin saunters down fashion’s biggest stage. The body is identified as Annabelle Leigh, the teenager who famously disappeared over a decade ago from her boyfriend’s New York City mansion. This new evidence casts suspicion back on the former boyfriend, Cecil LeClaire. Now a monk, he is forced to return to his dark and absurd childhood home to clear his name. He teams up with Ava Germaine, a renegade ex-model. And together, they investigate the depraved and lawless modeling industry behind Cecil’s family fortune.

I don’t know about you, but I didn’t watch that ball drop on NYE 2019 and think to myself, “Know what? This year we’re gonna stay inside a lot, fight over science, and debate the necessity of the USPS!” Alas, 2020 had other plans. While I sit here longing for a future in which the weirdest plot twists are in the pages of my book and not just my Twitter feed, I want you to lean all the way into the weird and share: what are the strangest, most compelling books you’ve ever read? Come shout them at us on Facebook and Twitter, then we’ll round up your answers and be back next week to share a roundup with your fellow Riot readers. Hit me with your best shot, Riot fam. I mean, how much weirder can it ge—you know what, let me just not.