I had low expectations going into this book, but I was in the mood for something quietly horrifying and unsettling. I saw someone praising this on Reddit, and it was freely available on Audible.
And it was exactly what I wanted. Which is to say, it left me deeply unsettled.
Amanda, an architect in what appears to be a happy marriage, finds her life slowly unraveling. It starts off with a quiet tapping in her apartment that she and her husband can quite track down. They write it off as pipes, or possibly a mouse in the walls. She also takes up smoking, much to the annoyance of her husband – who she finds herself fighting with more than normal. He works late, and she begins punishing him in small, passive-aggressive ways. One night, while sitting next to him, smoking a cigarette, she reaches over -without really even knowing what she’s doing – and burns him with her cigarette. Meanwhile, she’s having dreams of a beautiful, dark haired woman with pointed teeth.
Spoilers follow: This was advertised as there being some kind of mystery as to whether or not Amanda is possessed or losing her mind, but it seems pretty clear that she’s possessed. This doesn’t really seem to walk that line between the two possibilities. At least, I didn’t read it that way. Either way, watching her marriage dissolve around her as she starts shoplifting, and sleeping with other men, and actually kill people was horrifying and depressing – but very well executed by Gran. It never felt to wallow in Amanda’s degradation, despite how helpless she was in fighting back. The demon was just implacable, and reminded me of the movie It Follows, which I loved.
I don’t want to spoil too much of the book, but if you’re in the mood for a troubling psychological horror, this book packs quite a punch. It reminded me of Gone Girl, but Amanda is neither a narcissist nor a psychopath. She’s just a normal woman who….changes. Her mind is no longer her own, and she finds herself doing things that horrify her.