Synopsis: From the New York Times bestselling author of The Stolen Child comes a hypnotic literary horror novel about a young boy trapped inside his own world, whose drawings blur the lines between fantasy and reality.
Ever since he nearly drowned in the ocean three years earlier, ten-year-old Jack Peter Keenan has been deathly afraid to venture outdoors. Refusing to leave his home in a small coastal town in Maine, Jack Peter spends his time drawing monsters. When those drawings take on a life of their own, no one is safe from the terror they inspire. His mother, Holly, begins to hear strange sounds in the night coming from the ocean, and she seeks answers from the local Catholic priest and his Japanese housekeeper, who fill her head with stories of shipwrecks and ghosts. His father, Tim, wanders the beach, frantically searching for a strange apparition running wild in the dunes. And the boy’s only friend, Nick, becomes helplessly entangled in the eerie power of the drawings. While those around Jack Peter are haunted by what they think they see, only he knows the truth behind the frightful occurrences as the outside world encroaches upon them all.
In the tradition of The Turn of the Screw, Keith Donohue’s The Boy Who Drew Monsters is a mesmerizing tale of psychological terror and imagination run wild, a perfectly creepy read for a dark night.
Review:
I got this ebook from Netgalley in return of an honest review.
The Boy Who Drew Monsters is not a horror book and yet, at the same time, it is.
The biggest assets of this book were the atmosphere that surrounded it and the incredibly developed characters.
As for the fist, I found it to be just perfect for a story like this: mysterious and dark and impersonal. You were seeing it all happen inside your head and it messes up with your mind. You could sense the story slowly building up and becoming more and more like we expect it to be. The climax was so gory and surreal and grim I never saw it coming, at least not like it did.As for the characters, they were such an important part of this story in particular. We get to see this through the perspective of the parents, Tim and Holly, and the boys, Jack and Nick, and that made it possible to present the backstories of these characters, bit by bit, which completely enhanced the reading experience.
This was honestly a very emotional read: Jack Peter's disorder, the thoughts going through his parents minds and Nick's own struggles, they really got to me in a way I didn't expect.
The monster/fantastical part was spot-on. It was introduced gradually and obscurely enough that it completely got under my skin and kept me on the edge of my seat.
The side stories (the shipwreck, the priest, the Japanese housekeeper) they all came together so well with the main plot, and they turned this into a truly horrifying and creepy read.The only 'negative' thing I need to point out is not even negative: the pace was very slow, so it took me a while to read it, but, like I mentioned before, that really contributed to the atmosphere and general feel of the book.
And then came that ending! Never saw it coming and it hit my heart like a wall of stones. It was a beautiful conclusion to this incredible book.
I would definitely recommend this to read at night, under the covers with your lights out, but I would also mention that this is a bit more suitable for older readers, as it contains a bit of violence and gore.
