5 Great Books To Read if You Love Stranger Things

Fans of Stranger Things often point to the show’s throwback nature, bringing the nostalgia of the 1980s with a mix of two 80s icons, Steven Spielberg and Stephen King, as their influences. Of course, this means mixing the films of Spielberg, specifically things like E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, with the novels of Stephen King, using the idea of kids finding themselves in dangerous situations, while still playing in the era of hair metal, yuppies, and John Hughes movies. The good news is that there are a lot of novels that Stranger Things fans can read that take a similar stance, both with the nostalgia aspects and the idea of kids in danger.

Here is a look at five great books to read if you love Stranger Things.

5) All Hallows by Christopher Golden

When describing the book on its back cover, Christopher Golden’s All Hallows says it has the “80’s nostalgia of Stranger Things,” which was a big selling point. However, this is a straight-up horror novel about a small community in Massachusetts in 1984, when four unknown children show up on Halloween and blend in with the other kids trick-or-treating in vintage costumes, begging the other kids to hide them from The Cunning Man.

Add in the families in the town falling apart as horrifying secrets are revealed, and this is a novel that delivers a terrifying 1980s-based horror story, with the kids trying to survive in a world that tries to hurt them at every turn. Author Christopher Golden is a sci-fi and fantasy writer who previously co-created the Outerverse comic book universe with Hellboy creator Mike Mignola.

4) The Institute by Stephen King

Stephen King was a huge influence on Stranger Things, and the Duffer Brothers even wanted to adapt King’s The Talisman novel, although that fell by the wayside. It is easy to see King’s influence on the organization terrorizing Hawkins from novels like Firestarter, but one of King’s more recent novels also has a very similar theme. In The Institute, a government organization finds kids with psychic powers, murders their families, and abducts the children in an attempt to weaponize them.

It sounds extremely similar to Firestarter‘s backstory, but this is more focused on where the kids are kept and their attempts to escape. It seems like this plays strongly in the aspects of the story where Eleven was held and experimented on. For anyone who wants to read a story that bears a striking resemblance to Hawkins National Laboratory, The Institute is the best out there.

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3) Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury

For anyone who wants to read a brilliant fantasy novel that Stranger Things likely used as an influence as much as it did Stephen King, go back further to a novel that King has called one of the most terrifying stories he ever read. Ray Bradbury released Something Wicked This Way Comes in 1962, and it tells the story of two young boys who end up fighting for their lives at a traveling carnival that arrives in their small Illinois town.

The story follows two 13-year-olds named Jim Nightshade and William Halloway and their nightmare experience when a creepy carnival arrives in town, where its leader can offer up anyone’s desires, but with a deadly twist. Much like Stranger Things, this takes place in a small town where the kids realize they have to fight for their lives, or they will lose everything they hold dear in the end. The book was a clear influence on Stephen King’s career, with hints of it in IT and Needful Things, and it is a perfect read for fans of Stranger Things.

2) My Best Friend’s Exorcism by Grady Hendrix

Grady Hendrix has developed a nice career writing horror novels that often play as much as a dark comedy as a scary tale. When looking at his work, it is easy to see the similarities between his 2016 novel, My Best Friend’s Exorcism, and both Stranger Things and Stephen King novels. The story follows Abby and Gretchen, friends since fifth grade, when they bonded on everything from E.T. to roller skating. However, when they start high school, things change.

My Best Friend’s Exorcism is a story about how kids change when they start high school and often drift apart from their older friends. However, it tells the story in a supernatural style, as one of the girls decides her friend is actually possessed, with a demon living inside her. In the end, this is a story about the friendship between two kids and how a friendship that close will survive to the end, as they fight to save each other by any means necessary.

1) IT by Stephen King

Stephen King’s IT remains one of the author’s most beloved novels, and it is easy to see this as the closest story to that of Stranger Things. The book takes place in two time frames, with one being a group of kids known as the Loser’s Club and the second with the kids as adults, all returning to their hometown to finish a battle they started all those years earlier.

Instead of a demon from another dimension and his army of monsters, the kids in IT have to fight a demon from another world who can change shapes, but usually takes the form of Pennywise the Dancing Clown. The parts with them as adults are not as similar to Stranger Things, but watching the Loser’s Club fight Pennywise as kids is easily where the Duffer Brothers came up with their ideas for their kids fighting Vecna.

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