BOOK REVIEW: Bird Box by Josh Malerman

Format: Library book
Links: Amazon UK | Goodreads
Blurb: 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.

I wouldn’t particularly describe it as dystopian or post-apocalyptic but for the sake of the review, I will. So in a post-apocalyptic world, we follow Malorie. In a dual time-line, we see how Malorie got to where she is in the “present” chapters in a disturbing and chilling world where something out there has caused the human race to go mad, get violent, kill others and eventually… kill themselves. One look at this “thing” and it’s too late. But nobody alive knows what it is. Is it a man? An animal? A creature? Something from another dimension?

So at present, Malorie is journeying from her house to a safe house, along the river in a rowing boat, with her two young children. All 3 of them are wearing blindfolds and are doing the entire journey blind. Because one look at what’s out there and it’s game over. We learn that Malorie finds out she’s pregnant, shortly after this pandemic begins and when her sister dies, she answers an ad in the paper to join a house with a group of survivors. There she makes friends and meets Tom and Olympia – another pregnant woman.

They learn to survive – although only just. They’re thinking of innovative ways to make life easier and more livable for the group. But on the night that Malorie gives birth, a sequence of events leads everything to go horribly wrong and that marks the start of a long journey of survival for Malorie and 2 young children. In a world where they can’t look outside and they don’t know what’s out there.

This book was to put it bluntly, outstanding. It was low-key terrifying in that usually, we have to see something in order to be terrified by it. A demon, a monster, a ghost – whatever it is that might scare you. But in Bird Box, the complete opposite is true. The reasons it’s so scary is because like the characters, we can’t see what’s out there. In certain scenes where a particular character is outside, blindfolded but describes the sensation of knowing someone or something is standing there, next to them. Sheeeeesh, it sent shivers down my spine!

Bird Box is incredibly easy to read and quite simply written for such a rich book, which surprised me but I wasn’t put off from it. It just makes my reading experience in particular because I could really get stuck in and read it quicker. Despite me saying it was written quite simply, it was descriptive enough for us to be able to visualize exactly what was going on (even when the characters were blindfolded and couldn’t actually see what was going on themselves, which is extraordinary) but the author didn’t word dump a load of unnecessary descriptions either. 

Malorie is our main character and it’s quite clear that she’s an extremely strong woman who has been through an awful lot. Adding in a pregnancy to the world she’s living in, I don’t know how she survived. But she did. And in the final scene it becomes quite clear that she doesn’t know how she did either. I love how it ended – I won’t say whether it was good or bad but I thought it was a good, solid ending and it definitely didn’t leave me disappointed. I was happy to draw the line under Malorie’s story at that point.

This book is being made into a movie which will be available on Netflix in December, featuring Sandra Bullock and Sarah Paulson and I literally cannot wait to see this story come to life. Will we finally see the creatures that have caused this? I’m not sure if I want to but we’ll soon see. This has got to be one of the most original, nail-biting and encompassing reads I’ve read in a while. It’s restored my faith in the horror genre and I love how the author has stepped away from the conventional horror elements and instead, allowed us to be scared by something else. The unknown. And our own imaginations.