Bird Box

I don't know how to review this. I don't typically do horror, because I'm a big ol' fraidy cat, and monsters that cause insanity and suicide/homicide if you look at them is a far cry from romance novels and nonfiction (my typical fare lately).

Ironically, there are a lot of parallels of this book to the pandemic (changing behavior based on this thing you don't understand, avoiding leaving the house unless it's absolutely necessary), and in that sense, now was kind of the perfect time to read it. Thanks book club, for spending five years joking about picking this book and then finally actually selecting it now.

This was definitely scary, but it was more psychological and atmospheric than jump-scary. But I also read it in two days, so clearly I was pretty riveted. There are quite a lot of descriptions of people succumbing to violent deaths, but most of the time they are not happening actively, so much as the main characters (housemates) discovering what's happening in the outside world by listening to radio or TV news reports, while they can still access those resources. The characterization of the housemates was great, their blindfolded forays into the yard or outside the neighborhood were always grip-the-edge-of-your-seat suspenseful, and maybe the most horrifying thing to realize is that, at some point, the main characters try to call 9-1-1, hospitals, a funeral home, numbers at random hoping that ANYONE will pick up — and you realize that no one is there, no one is coming to save them, no one CAN save them. Survive on your own or don't.

(From the beginning of the book, we know the main character, Malorie, is pregnant, and I think it needs to be said that nothing bad happens to any babies while they are still in utero.)