Screwy but scarrry!
Frightened by the “Other Mommy” in her bedroom closet who asks her, "Can I go into your heart?,” lonely 8-year-old Bela enters into a horrific waking nightmare involving her whole family.
Set in the fictional small town of Chaps, Michigan, near the other made-up places in dread specialist Malerman’s novels, the story involves a deeply troubled family. Bela’s actual mommy has been cheating on her father, Daddo, whose friendliness and good cheer clash with his wife’s dark streak. Wrapped up in their squabbling and work demands, they’ve neglected to pay attention to Bela. Sweetly seductive in the beginning, Other Mommy offers Bela, who blames herself for the whole mess, a solution. They will trade places, with the Babadook-like presence reincarnated in the girl, and the girl...who knows where she’ll go. “Whatever you do, most of all, don’t allow someone else’s meanness, someone else’s cruelty, to get inside of you,” Daddo lectures Bela. Soon enough, a screaming, shape-shifting version of Other Mommy is revealed to everyone, leading the family to run off to an assortment of supposedly safe places and bring in experts in the spirit business to get rid of Other Mommy. Leave it to Mom and Dad to get so caught up in their plight that they miss half of what Bela has to say. As a result of long monologues about secrets and lost innocence and such, the book loses some of its edge. And though Bela may well be little more than a stick figure by design, that deprives the novel of a deeper dimension. That said, Malerman keeps us in his grip, as he did in his best book, Bird Box (2014). The novel isn’t the original that Neil Gaiman’s Coraline is, but it still deserves a place alongside it on anyone’s Halloween bookshelf.
Screwy but scarrry!Pub Date: June 25, 2024
ISBN: 9780593723128
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: May 4, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
BOOK TO SCREEN
For readers who like their fun laced with skin-crawling weirdness.
A comic-strip artist loses first her cat and then, possibly, her mind.
Working with artists Horner and Staehle, as he did for Hidden Pictures (2022), Rekulak uses illustrations to support a paranormal thriller plot. Penny Padgett, a 27-year-old cartoonist living in Philadelphia, has published three beloved graphic novels about her life with her cat, Popcorn, and is working on a fourth when Popcorn darts out the window during a snowstorm and disappears. When all efforts to locate him fail, Penny spirals into unproductive despair. Her live-in boyfriend, Dean Everhardt, who works in finance, insists she accompany him to a cocktail party at the Brandywine Valley estate of his most important client, Evelyn Bruehl. At the party, Penny hears mewing that at first she’s sure must be Popcorn, but which turns out to be a very different cat named Godfrey. Godfrey immediately attaches himself to Penny, and when Evelyn—who’s about to take an extended trip to Europe—asks her to cat-sit, Dean pressures her to agree. Though at first Godfrey’s presence helps Penny break through her writer’s block, she’s completely disgusted by his custom-made food, which is delivered by his equally repugnant private veterinarian. And then something very strange starts happening to her artwork, which is suddenly filled with macabre and demonic imagery she can’t remember producing. Also, she’s losing weight and something terrible is happening to her skin. At this point the plot pivots into full-on horror, with a disgusting infestation of giant beetles and revolting odors taking over Penny’s house and a horrific murder next door. Penny finds some clues about what’s happening in a biography of Evelyn Bruehl’s grandfather, illustrator Barnabas Godfrey—the cat’s namesake. The 80-plus pages of illustrations include both Penny’s comic panels and Barnabas’ 19th-century images, the latter also filled with hints of what will emerge in the dramatic, screamworthy climax.
For readers who like their fun laced with skin-crawling weirdness.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9781250895875
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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