The Devil Crept in

This book was definitely suspenseful and it definitely made me tense while reading. For that, I enjoyed it, but there are definitely some criticisms to be had.

I thought the beginning was pretty slow. Stevie was investigating his cousin's disappearance for a long time I felt, and I think some of that could've been cut for the sake of not boring the reader. Not that I would have DNF'd it personally - I've read another one of Ahlborn's books and enjoyed it, so I had a good impression going into it - but I could understand if someone else would.

Part two is when things start to pick up, and you start to realize the deepness of shit Stevie and his cousin got themselves into. That said, this is where one of my major gripes comes in. It's a spoiler though, so I'm going to censor it. Overall, I thought Rosie's story was really intriguing and I was really invested in her character throughout. The part that bugs me is how Otto, her son, is described throughout the book. He's presented as physically and mentally disabled, and the way the author describes him really rubs me the wrong way. Ahlborn describes him as malformed, disfigured, and generally using language that's supposed to invoke disgust with the way he looks. The author also infantilizes him, although I think this could be argued as Rosie attempting to give him excuses in the narrative. Additionally, a slight tangent but it is related, I felt weird about the way the characters in the book talked about Stevie like he was going to lose it and kill someone (which, granted, he did at the end, but he thought it was in self defense). While I understand that this is the popular outlook for those with mental disabilities, specifically the ones that are more “scary” to the general populous, I just think it perpetuates a myth that does more harm than good.

Part 3 was definitely the most tense to me. After you've realized that shits going to hit the fan, it's a bit of a slowburn, but Ania really knows how to build the suspense. Also related to my earlier spoiler, it's made to seem like Stevie is an unreliable narrator due to his psychosis and potentially undiagnosed schizophrenia. I do like how effective the author made this, because at the end of the book, you're really not sure what was real and what wasn't. Unfortunately, it does tie into the whole “scary disorder” thing I mentioned previously.

I also do feel like the ending falls apart a little bit if you start to think about it. Maybe Stevie just hallucinated the whole thing, or Ras magicked it away somehow, or some other third thing, but without any expansion on that, it's hard not to just call every witness to Jude assaulting his mom and Stevie defending them a plot hole.