Keith Donohue

Developing agoraphobia after a near-drowning incident, a 10-year-old boy draws increasingly disturbing pictures of monsters while his parents search for answers about strange noises coming from the nearby ocean at night. By the best-selling author of The Stolen Child.

A Novel

The Boy Who Drew Monsters

Colleen

3 Stars
 
*A creepy (but not scary) story of a boy surrounded by monsters*


I first came across The Boy Who Drew Monsters on a list of books set in Maine. I’m not sure exactly what it is about my home state that makes a surprisingly good horror setting, but it does. But I am only in the mood for Horror sporadically, so The Boy Who Drew Monsters has languished on my TBR backlist for a while now. Luckily I was in the mood for something creepy, so I finally got around to reading this.

The story surrounds a young autistic boy, Jack Peter, who is also extremely agoraphobic. But when his parents start seeing mysterious things in the night, they realize that there may be more to Jack Peter’s fear than they realized.

At first, I was expecting something like A Monster Calls. But the story went a different direction. I can’t elaborate on that point without spoilers though…

The story was creepy, but I didn't connect much to the story. More specifically, I didn’t connect to the characters. The narration is done in close third person switching between several characters. None of them were particularly pleasant. In fact, they were borderline nihilistic. I hate nihilism. While I did appreciate that Donohue didn’t gloss over the struggles involved in raising a child who was both autistic and agoraphobic, it would have been better to have some variety of temperaments amongst the characters. Instead, all the characters had a glum negativity that gave the whole story a monotone feel. And although the bleakness did amp up the atmosphere, I still prefer more variety of emotion from characters.

In terms of Horror, The Boy Who Drew Monsters isn't a scary or gory book. It stays in the creepy/spooky level which is fine by me. I can't stand it when authors use gratuitous gore in an attempt to ramp up a story's scariness.

The plot kept me engaged, and I did enjoy the story overall. Well enough that I will probably check out more of Donohue’s work. I liked The Boy Who Drew Monsters even though I was not as emotionally engaged with the characters as I would have liked. 


RATING FACTORS:
Ease of Reading: 4 Stars
Writing Style: 4 Stars
Characters and Character Development: 3 Stars
Plot Structure and Development: 3 Stars
Level of Captivation: 3 Stars
Originality: 3 Stars

Janice Hopper

This was a pretty effective story, mostly. The boy with issues and odd compulsions, the hapless parents, the house by the sea, all built a compelling story that kept me reading.

But I figured out the ending well before the end.

Still, interesting & atmospheric, but 3 stars for predictability.

Amanda Valentin

This book was amazing! This book was so much better then The Stolen Child! I loved the psychological thriller aspect mixed with the supernatural, add in creepy little kids and monsters and this makes a great horror book! The ending however got me! I have not been "tricked" by a twist ending in a long time! All I can say is Wow!

Tanya Sutton

After looking at the reviews for this, it seems to be a "love it or hate it" kind of book. I very much fall into the "love it" category. Donohue is talented at building up a creepy atmosphere without going overboard. It has the feel of a Japanese horror novel - the very wrong and scary existing in a very real and familiar everyday kind of world. Some complaints say that it's not scary and I'd agree - the monsters are not the scariest part of the novel. What Donohue does, though, is build up the tension between the characters and with their surrounding. A run of the mill New England snowfall is made terrifying when two people are left alone in the house and one doesn't trust the mental stability of the other, as an example. The last page contained such a gasp-out-loud realization for me that I had to go back and re-read the final lines to be sure I wasn't misunderstanding what happened. I was blown away and it was a brilliant twist I didn't see coming. (Disclaimer: other readers said they did, though, so maybe I'm just dull when it comes to foreshadowing?) This is a great read to pick up in the fall and even in the winter, on a snowy day when you can't leave the house.

Brei Gay

Not my typical genre to read but it was a really good book short and sweet and the ending blew my mind!

Melissa Railey

Lindsay Maldonado

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.

The Boy Who Drew Monsters A Novel

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