Books like Don't Let the Forest In

Don't Let the Forest In by C. G. Drews reads as atmospheric, unsettling. These 12 books share its genome — matched by how they actually read, not just their shelf label.

What Don't Let the Forest In is like to read

A queer, gothic YA horror where devotion curdles into obsession and a boy's macabre sketches step out of the page — atmospheric, bloody, and emotionally intense. Best for: YA readers who want dark academia braided with monster horror and a fiercely codependent central bond.

The Haunting of Hill House

Shirley Jackson · 1959

A haunted house consumes its inhabitants through slow psychological erosion — Jackson's accumulating, ornate sentences turn domestic unease into dread, culminating in Eleanor's dissolution rather than her escape.

intensely scarycomplete story

House of Salt and Sorrows

Erin A. Craig · 2019

A gothic fairy-tale retelling drenched in seaside atmosphere, where ghostly visions and glittering midnight balls braid into a mystery about whether a family is truly cursed.

creepy, not gorycomplete storydeep cut

The Silent Companions

Laura Purcell · 2017

A slow, dread-soaked Victorian gothic where isolation and hostility close in around Elsie as the sinister wooden figure seems to watch and wait; the horror creeps rather than jumps.

intensely scarydeep cut

And the Trees Crept In

Dawn Kurtagich · 2016

Both explore trauma & isolation

The Loney

Andrew Michael Hurley · 2014

A slow, dread-soaked recollection of a childhood pilgrimage where faith, family tension, and an eerie coastal landscape close in around the reader; the horror is atmospheric and psychological rather than visceral.

intensely scarycomplete storydeep cut

The Fall of the House of Usher

Edgar Allan Poe · 1704

A short, dread-soaked descent into a decaying house and a disintegrating mind — Gothic to its bones, more atmosphere than plot.

complete storydeep cut

The September House

Carissa Orlando · 2023

Both explore grief

Catherine House

Elisabeth Thomas · 2020

An immersive, slow-building gothic mystery about isolation and institutional secrecy at an elite, cloistered school, driven more by atmosphere and dread than action.

creepy, not gorydeep cut

Eight Ghosts

Sarah Perry · 2017

Both explore supernatural & isolation

Haunted

Joyce Carol Oates · 1994

A literary horror collection that turns ordinary domestic and psychological spaces into sites of creeping, unresolved dread, favoring unease over jump-scares.

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