Riot Recommendation

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

Vanessa Diaz

Managing Editor

Book Riot Managing Editor Vanessa Diaz is a writer and former bookseller from San Diego, CA whose Spanish is even faster than her English. When not reading or writing, she enjoys dreaming up travel itineraries and drinking entirely too much tea. She is a regular co-host on the All the Books podcast who especially loves mysteries, gothic lit, mythology/folklore, and all things witchy. Vanessa can be found on Instagram at @BuenosDiazSD or taking pictures of pretty trees in Portland, OR, where she now resides.

View All posts by Vanessa Diaz
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.