Bird Box

Such a wonderful book. The movie didn't do it justice.

It's one of my favourite books that crafts a survival tale in an unrealistic scenario into something insanely realistic. It's no doubt that it's hard to convince a reader to fear a being we cannot see, and this book easily accomplishes it. It adds something special by filling the book with human perspective, and showing us how different characters might interact with an unknown entity. The author lets every character shine regardless of their personality.

At the end of the day, do you fear a creature that drives you insane or do you fear the insane for what they might do to you?

Precise rating: 4.5 ⭐️

I ended up being quite conflicted about this one - the writing was quite sparse but lent itself well to the story, the characters weren't overly likeable but it worked in the context of the plot, the fact we never got a proper explanation drove me mad but also worked well in terms of mystery and atmosphere. See, totally conflicting!!

All in all I did enjoy it and read it fairly quickly but I don't think it's one which will stay with me or that I'll reread. I also watched the Netflix film just after and thought it was not the best, a lot had been changed and the pacing was awful! As usual the book was better!

The idea, the universe of this book is amazing. I love horror stories and I love ones like this, where said horror is unseen, without a name or a face. The pacing and the structure of the book doesn't let you get bored at all, always wanting to know what happens next or what happened before. That said, I didn't totally enjoy this book. Lot of things where unsatisfying, and some where too fictional. I know this is fiction, but in a story where things are supposed to happen in our real world and present time, I need some logic. Plus I felt the ending was lacking, but then again, I suppose it couldn't end any other way.

Still, entertaining and easy to read. All in all, quite good.

Bird Box is the hit I never saw coming. Even though I didn't go into it blind, having already caught the Bird Box madness when Netflix released their film adaptation, I nevertheless found reading the book to be a worthwhile experience. Malorie proved to be a compelling character who managed to overcome my initial unfavorable impression as the book progressed. There's something frightening about what is unseen and unknown. There's also some frustrating in reading a book about mysterious creatures and having those remain remain unknown and unexplained the whole time. I'm hoping to learn more about the creatures in the sequel. One of my complaints about the film was this lack of clarity about the creatures, and the book did little to clear it up. That's not to say that Malerman's book has no surprises for those who've seen the film, but in this particular respect no additional explanation was offered. I enjoyed the dark tone of the book, and found the idea of what people will do in order to survive to be especially relevant today. Highly recommend. Read the book and watch the movie.

Well, I sure did not expect to like it so much.

This was an excellent read, and had me in total suspense the whole way through.

First, what I didn't like. I would have liked more development of the supporting characters, but I feel like this was sacrificed in the interest of pace, and it really was so perfectly paced so I can't complain too much. I think stopping to spend more time fleshing them out would have thrown the balance off, but it did leave my wanting more.

Next, one of the character's dialogue is written in a way that felt quite out of tone with the rest of the novel and came across almost cartoonish. But, so much else was happening that it didn't give me time to dwell on it, so it wasn't so bad.

Lastly for what I didn't like, the ending was a bit cumbersome to me. It was ultimately satisfying but awkward. It was like it needed to be either streamlined a bit or explored more. It seemed like the author wanted to introduce a few last ideas, which were definitely interesting, but we didn't get to explore them, and they felt a little dropped in your lap.

These are truly very small quibbles, because I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The author builds tension in such a perfect and careful way, and when things hit fever pitch, it just gets absolutely terrifying. The atmosphere of mystery and foreboding is expertly crafted and never lets up, pushing into overdrive in a few of the horrifying and ghoulish setpieces.

Switching back and forth between the past and present was a genius approach and serves to keep the reader guessing and at what Malorie has endured, and how she had ended up in the situation she finds herself in.

Malorie is beautifully and sparingly written. The author allows us to experience her fear, her anxiety, her pain, and vulnerability, but we never lose sense of her courage, her drive to survive and her fierce and protective nurturing for the children, even when it drives her to do things that seem brutal at first.

I thoroughly recommend this to anyone who's looking for a book with a tight, thrilling story, and a tight, foreboding atmosphere, and enjoy books that pose more questions than they answer.

Malerman mastered the atmosphere here and really had me nervous at times. I sort of wish there had been more of a conclusion, but I also believe that would've made this book lose rereadability for me. As it stands, I think I could reread it and still feel unnerved.

Some months ago I listened to a half a dozen podcasts from the folks at BookRiot and after hearing them suggest this book three times, I added it to my maybe-list. And then I decided, what-the-hell, and snapped it up since it promised to be something weird and different. Well it sucked me right in. It was weird, different, creepy, suspenseful and awesome. People are seeing something outside that makes them either suicidal or homicidal and suicidal. And these things escalate until people are covering their windows and becoming shut-ins subsisting on hordes of canned food. If people dare to venture outside, they blindfold themselves. One young mother decides to venture 20 miles down a river with two four-year-old twins, all of them blindfolded. This story is told in simple language and sticks with you. I kinda loved it.

I wanted to love this book. It definitely left a sense of impending doom, and creeping dread, on my psyche. But I wish that the cause of the strange occurances would have been explained more...surely it's not all just “insanity fuss”. And I don't care if that puts the reader in the same place as the characters, not knowing. I want to know. Final verdict: bejabber-making, but flawed.

Something is out there. Something that on seeing drives you into a screaming, murderous, hysteric breakdown. Whatever it is out there it bears no obvious malice. They don't attack and simply kill by being observed.

Malorie and her two kids survive by holing up indoors with the windows covered and doors bolted. They only venture outside with blindfolds. Searching for the promise of a better life and other survivors they must navigate the outside world and travel the river completely blind.

Ironically it's the scenes where Malorie is completely in the dark that are so compelling. Horrifying and descriptive based solely on smell and sound there are several scenes that are incredibly vivid. Those scenes alone would push it to a 4.5 but sadly when the blindfolds are removed and Malorie is inside the narrative pales to dull greys. The characters aren't clearly defined and the story lags. Still a fun, quick read.

More of a 1.5
Flat characters, overly simplistic writing, predictable plot that had one of the most unsatisfying and boring endings I've ever read, and the past timeline was more interesting than the current plot. Honestly one of the worst thrillers I've ever read.

An original, thrilling, and even, gasp, scary post-apocalyptic horror novel. It's rare for a book to keep me in its grip from the first chapter to the last.

Years removed from my initial watch of Bird Box (the film), I wanted to sit down and give this a try. I liked it, and I thought it was tense and so miserable in places that I had to take a breath to keep going, which is good! And in other places, I found myself struggling to not start skimming. It's good, but it definitely lags in the “past” timeline chapters, and I think that some of the emotional beats were a tad repetitive without adding too much new. Wouldn't read it again, but definitely better than the movie.

While I found the prose and phraseology occasionally jarring, the premise of the story is a very interesting one and I think Malerman has done well to leave a lot to one's imagination - much like the characters you aren't given all the information and you end up wondering.

The main character, Malorie, I didn't engage with very well as you see so many different facets to her in such a short period of time it is difficult to latch on to just one. The character of Tom is only presented as one version of himself so he's a lot easier to engage with.

The story itself feels quite compact and short (regardless of page counts) and the frequent ‘chapter' breaks make it easy to read a little bit in short bursts. There are better composed novels admittedly; and this one is still worth reading. If you have a completionist mentality, it might nag at you all the things that are not answered in the book. That is the point, though.

Ah, I really loved this. I mixed it up and did some on audio and read some (mostly because I didn't want to waste gas driving around listening to another chapter, lol).
I'm late to the game on this one and I couldn't help but compare it to A Quiet Place. There are a lot of parallels here: death caused by the use of a human trait (sight and making sound), children in peril, agonizing home births, and microphones and amplifiers. Good god, I will never forget that chapter in the bar.
There are some truly terrifying moments in this book. I couldn't put it down.
I was struck over and over again by Malorie's determination to live, the situation was so dire that I could understand people giving up hope.

Maravilhoso! Muito melhor que o filme, nos faz ver imagens sem ser excessivamente descritivo. E dá medo!

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.)

Its not often I read a book where you get grabbed roughly in the first couple of paragraphs and then forcefully dragged along until the very end. Starting this on a Sunday afternoon meant I was missing some serious sleep on Monday morning. :)

I am an odd fan of horror, if you can actually call me that. The usual horror tropes I find to be dull, boring, unimaginative, and frankly an insult to my intelligence most of the time. I think its because they tend to lean too heavily on the tropes without adding any creativity to the mix.

Someone passing out or dying from fright because they are in a graveyard (yes I have read this!) makes me roll my eyes. I spent a good chunk of my childhood family vacations in county court houses and graveyards because my mother was into genealogy. I played games among the headstones. They are not scary or spooky. They are calm, peaceful, and somewhat sad.

Death and the dead do not frighten me. I have sat by too many death beds in my lifetime. I have held the hands of dead family members, kissed their cheeks before the coffin lids were closed.
I know exactly what the skin of a corpse feels like. Death is not scary, it is just sad.

I am not afraid of ghosts, goblins, demons, or similar. Maybe its my SF/F background where those very types of characters can be the PoV/heroes.

Monsters: if it can be identified, it can be defeated. Period. Maybe its the SF/F background again.

So yeah, assuming I will get all scared and similar because a demon popped up in the middle of the room . . . sorry ain't enough for me. My first reaction is, well is it going to do anything? Perhaps its its turn to buy drinks? In my opinion its a very lazy author who assumes something will be frightening or unsettling or spooky all by itself with no effort on their end.

Bird Box is NOT one of these books. Nothing is visible. Nothing is identified. Nothing is known. All we see are the effects, what happens to the people who see . . . something. Something which drives them utterly insane, to murder, to suicide.

Its the terror of the unknown. The claustrophobic environment. Keep your doors closed and locked. Keep your windows closed, blinds closed, drapes closed, blocked by cardboard and wood and beds and anything else that can be found. Keep your eyes closed.

Hunger, exhaustion, loneliness, fear. Terror of the unknown, the undefined, the unknowable. Now that can be scary, that can be spooky.

Now imagine being a mother with 2 small children all alone in this environment. That is terrifying.

This book is excellent.

It delivers exactly what a psychological thriller should– a sense of creepiness while also managing to keep the reader on their toes throughout the entire novel.

I'll be honest when I say that the Netflix adaptation does not do this book proper justice. There are simply emotions and events that occur in this book that cannot be translated into film.

I'm so glad I picked this up this year, but I'll admit that I am a little worried that the sequel simply won't be able to deliver since I have such high expectations for it now!

Bird Box is like a classic zombie apocalypse story with an interesting twist: instead of monsters destroying the world, humans go mad and kill each other upon seeing something outside. The problem is, no one knows what it is that these people see, so the few survivors that are left shut themselves indoors and only travel outside with a blindfold.

It's a bit like A Quiet Place, but with a focus on sight instead of sound.

The story takes place in a suburban town in southeast Michigan, and most of this is set within the confines of a single house. As with many horror/suspense stories, the unknown parts of the setting are just as powerful as the known. There's an atmosphere of fear and dread throughout the entire story, even when there isn't much happening.

Malorie is just trying to survive and get her kids to safety. It's not easy raising children in a world where they can never look outside. Their entire world is limited to a single house, and Malorie has trained them since birth to have nearly superhuman hearing.

The story is split into two timelines. In the current timeline, Malorie is finally trying to escape her house to a better place. The only problem is that the better place is 20 miles downriver, and she has to navigate a post-apocalyptic world with her kids while blindfolded.

In the past timeline, Malorie learns she is pregnant just as news stories start to break about people going crazy and killing each other in horrific ways. She has to deal with the downfall of society and try to survive with the few sane people that remain.

Bird Box excels at creating a disturbing atmosphere. Every time someone has to go outside blind, even the most normal things are ominous. There's also some graphic and disturbing violence.

It's a little jarring when the narrative jumps back and forth in time, but this allows for certain plot points to be revealed in a more interesting way and maintains some mystery. Since many people go insane in this world, the nonlinear plot calls into question the sanity of the POV character at times.

You might enjoy this if you like your horror to focus on the unknown and the nature of human beings rather than the supernatural or high-intensity thrills. If you prefer a diverse and complex cast of characters, you might be disappointed. Malerman focused on nailing the atmosphere and tone of the book and only really fleshed out the main character and a couple of side characters. This is also not a book in which a lot happens, similar to scary movies where much of your fear comes from your own imagination.

Overall, this was a great book. I don't read much horror but I enjoyed this a lot. Even better, it was released as a Netflix movie starring Sandra Bullock in December 2018!

Find this review and more at The Fantasy Inn

La premisa que plantea este libro me fascinó desde el minuto uno y ha superado mis expectativas.
El hecho que el apocalipsis de la sociedad venga de mano de unas criaturas que hacen que la gente enloquezca solo con verlos, provocando que los supervivientes tengan que salir al mundo exterior con los ojos cerrados, a ciegas para sobrevivir, me parece original e innovador.
Además el autor consigue transmitir perfectamente la angustiosa sensación de no ver, la vulnerabilidad al entorno y la dependencia del resto de los sentidos, los cuales están mucho menos desarrollados que la vista.

Como me pasa en todas las películas y libros que tratan algún tipo de post-apocalipsis, me ha encantado la evolución y los cambios en los seres humanos, como pasan de ser personas “normales” a transformarse en seres fríos que dejan atrás los escrúpulos y los principios, estando dispuestos a todo con tal de seguir viviendo.
Me hubiera gustado que se hubiese extendido un poco más este aspecto, aunque estoy bastante satisfecha.

El ritmo de la novela es trepidante por lo que se lee enseguida, para mi gusto se hace demasiado corta, ya que hubiera sido interesante que se desarrollasen algunos temas. Por este motivo no se lleva las 5 estrellas (pero vamos que un 4,5/5 no está nada mal).

Lo recomiendo a todo al que le gusten las historias sobre el fin de la sociedad y el comportamiento humano cuando se le lleva al límite (y además le guste sufrir un poco).