Bird Box by Josh Malerman

They weren't kidding when they said read this book in one sitting! Holy smokes! It was a true page turner. I made the mistake of reading this after 10:00pm while I was home alone... Bad choice. It's not really "scary" but it's disturbing and psychologically thrilling and frightening. Which sounds like scary, but it's not your classic scary story with jumps and scares. It just makes you scared to look out into a dark night because you're afraid of seeing.... whatever you might see.

That was one of my favorite parts about Malerman's writing: he never actually made a villain. Rather, he created the concept of a villain or just the knowledge of the villain. Readers never get a description. All we know is that someone discovered that it's a creature of some sort, and we can deduce that it's multiplying. But what exactly is it? We don't get to find out which drives the plot that much faster because I was frantically turning pages trying to gain some insight as to what these people were seeing. 

And I wanted to see it. Even though I knew people were dying because of it, I felt like I just had to know exactly what we were dealing with. Because of the lack of description, I couldn't formulate any creature in my head: was it grey? was it furry or scaly? did it walk, swim, or fly? Unfortunately, and fortunately, I didn't get those answers. Unfortunately, because I really wanted to know, and fortunately because since I didn't get those answers, I'm left thinking about it. And I'll think about it for a few days, wondering what it was, wishing I knew.

I loved the alternating chapters in this book; this helped to keep driving the plot. This especially came true towards the end of the book when the plot picked up in both places in time. Then you were constantly holding your breath as new twists were revealed at each chapter end, and you had to start over at the next chapter, all the while thinking of the previous revelation, which makes the next revelation all the more powerful and striking.

It's amazing what Malerman did in this story. Instilling fear in his readers with the sensations, experiences, and thoughts of the main characters, he never actually described the horrors. The readers live in a blind world alongside the characters, because we're never allowed to open our eyes to the horror.