by Jason Rekulak
4.3 · 4 reviewsA young nanny finds her quiet new job unraveling when a small boy's crayon drawings start telling a story no child should know.
Mallory Quinn is rebuilding her life. Fresh out of rehab and clinging to hard-won sobriety, she lands what feels like the perfect position: live-in nanny for a warm suburban couple and their gentle five-year-old son, Teddy. The work is easy, the family is kind, and the little cottage at the back of their property feels like a fresh start she barely dares to trust.
Then Teddy's drawings begin to change. A boy who sketches rabbits and sunny afternoons starts producing images that are darker, stranger, and far too sophisticated for a child his age. A figure dragging a body through the woods. A face that shouldn't exist. Teddy says his new friend Anya helps him draw, but Anya isn't real, and the pictures keep coming.
As Mallory tries to make sense of what she's seeing, she has to ask whether the drawings are warnings, the residue of something violent buried in the past, or signs that her own mind is slipping. The deeper she digs into the house and the family she works for, the harder it becomes to tell who is being protected, who is being deceived, and what is reaching out through a child's hand.
First published in 2022.
4 reviews
The first two thirds are fantastic and properly unsettling. I just felt the explanation behind it all was a bit too tidy and the final act traded dread for a chase. Still a fun, fast read that I'd recommend for spooky season.
Mallory is such a sympathetic lead and her sobriety storyline gives the scares real weight. Smart, creepy, and emotional all at once. I've already pushed it on three friends.
Great atmosphere and a narrator I genuinely worried about. There's a twist partway through that completely reframed the story for me. The ending leans a little more action-movie than I wanted after such a slow creeping build, but I still couldn't put it down.
I did not expect a horror novel to use actual drawings as part of the storytelling, but it works so well here. Watching Teddy's pictures get more disturbing page by page had me dreading every chapter break. Read it in two sittings and slept with the light on.