Goodreads Synopsis: 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.
Review:
The Boy Who Drew Monsters is a book I randomly picked off the shelf because the title intrigued me. The black and stark white text of the cover also drew my attention because I’m kind of a sucker for a good book cover.
Following the story of a young boy named Jack Peter who suffers from asperger’s, this book explores the thin line between dream and reality. Jack begins to draw monsters that begin to come to life and terrorise his family and friend, Nick. Jack Peter also has severe agoraphobia having almost drowned a few years before the story begins and refuses to leave the house.
Reviewing this book is very conflicting for me because, honestly, I almost put the book down as a DNF after the first 100 pages. However, I really wanted to know the resolution and powered through, which brought me to the incredible ending. The climax and resolution of the book were everything I had been hoping for when I first picked it up, and I absolutely loved the plot twist at the end.
However, the beginning was just so boring. I believe this book could have been half the length that it was and had an even stronger impact on the reader. The beginning was like trudging through the same repetitive chapters over and over again. The parents characters are also pretty unlikable for me. It is reasonable for parents of a child with special needs to be frustrated and occasionally angry, but these characters become unsympathetic after about five chapters as they continue to talk about how annoying Jack is and constantly victimizing themselves.
The writing style itself was also pretty grating after a while. There are only so many epithets one should use before it totally confuses the reader as to whom the subject is actually referring to. “The boy”, “the other boy”, “the males”, and so on should be used sparingly in my opinion. Please, just use their names.
As you can probably tell, this book kind of irritated me, mostly because the ending was so great while the beginning was so mediocre. But I stand by the ending. It was moving, it was written with more precision and less overcompensating flare. Jack is finally forced to face his fears, the monsters are revealed, and there is a plot twist that leaves you slightly stunned and sad; though your suspicions may be have been set from the beginning.
I feel this book had a lot of potential had it been executed properly. The beginning could have been cut in half as there was too much repetition and overly fancy writing. However, the ending really struck me and was everything I had been hoping from the book.
Personally, I wouldn’t rush to tell you all to read this book, but I wouldn’t not recommend this book to readers either. If you feel you can trudge through the beginning then go ahead and read it. You may find a beautiful story at the end. But if you are a more impatient reader like myself, then I would perhaps skip this particular novel.
I would give this book a 3/5.Though, had it not been for the last 100 pages, I would have scored it the bare minimum.
EM.
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