Book Review: Malorie by Josh Malerman

Bird Box was the kind of fast paced, heart pounding, white knuckled ride to horror town that’s impossible to put down. The sequel, Malorie….well, I wasn’t sure what it was, at first. It starts out with a bang then calms down. Time skips ahead and suddenly the kids are teenagers and they’ve been living the last decade in relative safety – but has their lifestyle really been what a teenager would call living?

Finally, something happens that spurs Malorie into action, luring her and her kids away from the protection of their home. I understand that a conflict was needed to raise the stakes and force the characters into action, but the decision seems completely unlikely given the Malorie readers have come to know. Regardless, danger and mayhem and horror ensue, culminating in a satisfying ending.

That said, this sequel really can’t compete with the near perfection of the original. This one focuses more on the character’s emotions as they come of age in the ‘new’ world and the specific challenges that presents, which isn’t a bad thing, but it does put a minor damper on the horror. Still, a good read.

From Goodreads: Twelve years after Malorie and her children rowed up the river to safety, a blindfold is still the only thing that stands between sanity and madness. One glimpse of the creatures that stalk the world will drive a person to unspeakable violence.

There remains no explanation. No solution.

All Malorie can do is survive—and impart her fierce will to do so on her children. Don’t get lazy, she tells them. Don’t take off your blindfold. AND DON’T LOOK.

But then comes what feels like impossible news. And with it, the first time Malorie has allowed herself to hope.

Someone very dear to her, someone she believed dead, may be alive.

Malorie has already lost so much: her sister, a house full of people who meant everything, and any chance at an ordinary life. But getting her life back means returning to a world full of unknowable horrors—and risking the lives of her children again.

Because the creatures are not the only thing Malorie fears: There are the people who claim to have caught and experimented on the creatures. Murmerings of monstrous inventions and dangerous new ideas. And rumors that the creatures themselves have changed into something even more frightening.

Malorie has a harrowing choice to make: to live by the rules of survival that have served her so well, or to venture into the darkness and reach for hope once more.