“Something is out there, something terrifying that must not be seen. One glimpse of it, and a person is driven to deadly violence. No one knows what it is or where it came from.
Five years after it began, a handful of scattered survivors remains, including Malorie and her two young children. Living in an abandoned house near the river, she has dreamed of fleeing to a place where they might be safe. Now that the boy and girl are four, it’s time to go, but the journey ahead will be terrifying: twenty miles downriver in a rowboat–blindfolded–with nothing to rely on but her wits and the children’s trained ears. One wrong choice and they will die. Something is following them all the while, but is it man, animal, or monster?
Interweaving past and present, Bird Box is a snapshot of a world unraveled that will have you racing to the final page.”
It’s been awhile since I was so excited to read a book and then it actually met all my expectations. I had read numerous reviews on this book prior to picking it up, and it sounded really intriguing. I tend to be drawn to apocalyptic books from time to time, and I’m really glad that I ran across this book.
The story is mostly written from the POV of the main character, Malorie. It begins with her life in the wake of the end of the world, after tragedy struck and most of the population has been pretty much eliminated by an unknown source. She is alone in an abandoned house with her two children. She wants to now leave the safety of her house and travel with her kids, blindfolded, down a long river to try and find some sort of salvation. Her and her children need to be blindfolded because whatever has wiped out the population does so by being seen. People who saw whatever this thing was, would go mad and kill themselves. Sometimes even kill others beforehand. The only way to stay safe from this is to blindfold yourself so that you won’t see it.
During the narration of their travel down river, the author also goes back in time to describe exactly how Malorie got to where she is now and how she has survived thus far. He goes all the way back to her first getting pregnant and hearing some news/viral stories about weird incidences of people going mad. We learn how she makes it to this abandoned house, all the other survivors/characters she meets, and how she is able to survive and raise two children.
This book was seriously creepy and I couldn’t put it down. I got sucked into it immediately and needed to know the outcome. I thought all of the characters were well-written, and I could relate to them easily. The story line flowed perfectly, and the author seamlessly went from the present to the past and back again.
If I could give any faults to the book I would say that I was a little disappointed not finding out what exactly caused everything to happen. Also, the one scene with her driving blindfolded would never happen. She would have popped a tire so fast that driving would have no longer been an option. But who knows. And that’s just me searching for anything to critique. There was also another scene that I wasn’t particularly fond of, but I don’t want to give anything away by discussing it.
I thought the ending was great. I honestly didn’t even think ahead to that being an option and I thought it really rounded out the story.
I most definitely recommend this book and give it a whopping 5 stars. If there is ever a sequel I will be one of the first ones in line to get it.
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