Welcome to the IT list
There’s a lot of excitement over the upcoming big-screen reboot of IT, with its record-busting “most-watched-ever” trailer inspiring first-timers and re-readers alike to dive into Stephen King’s massive terrorscape featuring an ancient creature who uses childhood fears to prey on the innocent, and who resurfaces in the lives of seven individuals, now adults, to settle some unfinished business.
It was actually way harder than I thought it would be to make a readalike list for IT. There are plenty of books that combine horror and coming-of-age elements, since terror has a way of shattering any wide-eyed childhood innocence, but I didn’t want the list to be too much of the same thing, and variety is a more difficult goal to achieve.
I think I managed to gather a good mix of titles, trying to avoid too many of the obvious matches. And if none of these strike your fancy, you can always check out the list of clown books I made on here last Halloween.
This is 98% less scary than IT, but it’s a thematic match: a horror-laced adventure featuring the (surviving) adult members of a teenage detective team (and their dog) who reunite and return to the scene of their final investigation; a case whose eerie loose ends lingered long after the supposed culprit was unmasked. Now, as damaged, less-than-wholly-sane adults, they confront a primordial terror and their own pasts.
Cutter is the new King, and most of his books work here. The Troop features Boy Scouts on a deadly field trip, The Deep’s got a malevolent force beneath the sea and childhood fears given form (there’s a scene with a toybox that’s pure Pennywise), and Little Heaven’s characters, nearly destroyed by a powerful, ineffable being, return to its lair years later, hoping to finally defeat it. Combine all 3, and you have IT.
Aaron returns to his childhood home after the sudden, suspicious death of his mother; the same home where his younger brother disappeared from their bedroom fifteen years earlier. Now, alone in the house, he is overcome by half-recalled but fully-disturbing childhood memories of being terrorized by an evil presence emanating from the bedroom closet, one which preys on children but isn’t finished with grown-Aaron yet.
A thirteen-year-old boy awakens from a four year long coma caused by a tornado with certain visionary abilities that change the course of his life and the lives of his friends during one eventful summer, the repercussions of which bring them all back together again twenty-five years later in a mishmash of coming-of-age story, SF and spooky rather than terrifying horror with frequent direct references to Stephen King.
Stop me when this sounds familiar: Five 12-year-old boys prepare for a carefree summer in idyllic ’60’s small town America when everything goes evil: missing classmates, weird apparitions, dismembered people and animals, and since none of the adults are stepping up, the boys must do battle with these supernatural forces, propelling them into adulthood and testing the bonds of their friendship. Did you say “stop?”
The Summer that Melted Everything
The third “summer” match, this isn’t a horror novel, but there are similarities to IT in shape and theme: told from the POV of a past-haunted man recalling childhood suffering and set in a small town filled with unusual characters, one of whom issues a formal invitation to the devil, whose arrival unsettles the townsfolk as it becomes clear that an evil already lived among them, one worse than the devil himself.
This coming-of-age story uses magic and supernatural elements without committing to full-blown horror. Here, the irreal supplements the real, recreating the spirit of childhood that accepts magic as a birthright, before innocence is stripped away by experience. Bonus points for juxtaposing a boy’s loss of innocence against the social unrest of 1960’s America, undergoing its own growing pains.
A villain who uses the same fear-exploiting tactics as Pennywise without the supernatural benefits of shapeshifting or century-spanning longevity. Following a conference for people afflicted with severe phobias, several attendees are targeted by a serial killer specializing in bespoke murders; adapting his methods to correspond with each victim’s deepest fears, proving that humans can be monsters, too.
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Yeah, yeah, this might be the laziest suggestion I’ve ever made, but it’s not an inaccurate match: young boys, an evil that beckons enticingly before it strikes, and—you guessed it—clowns.
This has the same bones as IT: a coming-of-age small town horror novel in which a disproportionate number of people, frequently children, have gone missing for generations, victims of a beast that uses fear as a weapon. But these bones are wrapped in pure Southern Gothic: the demon is part of the town’s folklore, and deliverance depends upon the fate of an unlikely trio’s journey to Granny Woman and a magical potion.
Pennywise and me hope you have enjoyed these suggestions. Let us know if there are other titles you think are spooky in an IT kind of way!
