Bird Box

Bird Box
Josh Malerman, 2014

Premise: Malorie is finally bringing the children to what she hopes is safety. The only problem is, she can't look.

I remember there being a good amount of buzz for this book early on, and then some backlash. So I know I'm not saying anything new when I say this book was rather disappointing.

The idea is intriguing. Something mysterious is causing people to go mad, and you can only protect yourself by not looking, so people are barricading themselves in buildings and learning to navigate by sound. The book is intercut between Malorie's journey trying to bring two young children to possible safety, with all of them blindfolded, and how she came to be alone in a house with two children.

The story is interesting and tense, but not especially scary until near the end. Of course this leads to a situation in which humans are worse to each other than the monsters are and some sections that were unnecessarily gross in my opinion.

I understand that it's sort of the point, but as a genre fan, I can't accept getting zero explanation of what is actually going on. The book doesn't care what was going on, it only cares about the extraordinary things people will do out of desperation.

I understand that, but I found it fundamentally unsatisfying.

2 Stars - An Okay Book