Bird Box

Horror

Post-Apocalyptic

⭐A 2018 Top Rated Read⭐

By Josh Malerman

Paperback 480 pages
Publisher HarperVoyager (29th Jan 2015)

ASIN B00FIUO8K0

ISBN-13 978-0007529902

‘BIRD BOX turns the old Hollywood cliché of facing down the demon inside out – then tears it into little pieces’ Daily Mail

📕My Review

The news begins to report murders and suicides on a global scale. Something is driving people insane. But no one knows what the 'something' is - once it's been seen, it's too late. The world is panic-stricken as reports increase. It's spreading like a deadly virus. People board up their windows. No one dares to look outside. No one can step outside unless their eyes are covered.

Following the suicide of her sister, pregnant Malorie seeks refuge in a 'safe house' inhabited by other strangers. Together they form a close bond and learn to survive in the New World. But everything changes when Gary knocks on their door seeking a place to stay. Malorie thinks he's a potential threat. Is he what he appears to be or is there something darker lurking within?

OH MY GOODNESS, this book is outstanding! It totally blew me away! I loved every single word, paragraph, page and chapter. I was chilled to my core; genuinely scared to within an inch of my life. I couldn't read quickly enough - I HAD to know how it ended.

The horror within the story is merely hinted at and boy oh boy, how the reader's imagination goes into overdrive! What is the 'something' that awaits outside? Monsters, demons, creatures from another planet? Imagine not being able to step outside with your eyes open; forever trapped in a world without nature - the sky, the river, the fields. All are gone, yet still existing. You can touch but you cannot see.

Don't go into this novel expecting a gorefest - you wont get it. It's so much more. It's all the worst nightmares you've ever dreamed; the worst you can imagine dreaming. It's intelligent, it's suspenseful, cloying, claustrophobic, atmospheric. It's....well...it's just amazing! 

How can you fight an enemy you cannot see?

Read it...if you dare!

Barnsey's Books Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

📗The Blurb

Most people dismissed the reports on the news. But they became too frequent; they became too real. And soon it was happening to people we knew.

Then the internet died. The televisions and radios went silent. The phones stopped ringing.

And we couldn't look outside anymore.

Josh Malerman's debut novel Bird Box is a terrifying psychological thriller that will haunt you long after reading.

📘The Author, Josh Malerman

Josh Malerman is an American author of novels and short stories. Before publishing his debut novel Bird Box with ECCO/HarperCollins, he wrote fourteen novels, never having shopped one of them.

Being the singer/songwriter of the Detroit rock band The High Strung, Malerman toured the country for six years, as the band played an average of 250 shows a year, and Malerman wrote many of the rough drafts for these novels in the passenger seat between cities on tour. He says this about those days: “I never saw the books with dollar signs in my eyes. It was no hobby, that’s for sure, it was the real thing and always has been, but I was happy, then, simply writing, and while I blindly assumed they’d be published one day, I had no idea how something like that occurred.”

As the pile of rough drafts grew, so did the questions as to what he was planning on doing with them. Malerman often says that he lived long in a “glorious delusion” in which he took part in phantom interviews, pretended to have an agent, debated with fictitious editors, and placed invisible hardcover books upon his shelves.

It wasn’t until a friend from high school, Dave Simmer, contacted him that those delusions became reality. Simmer, having worked with authors and properties in Hollywood, asked Malerman’s permission to send one of his books to some people he knew in the book business. Malerman heartily agreed and the pair sent out Goblin, a collection of novellas that all take place in the titular city of Goblin. From there, a team was assembled and Malerman suddenly found himself speaking with a real agent and debating with actual editors. He says this of the part Simmer played in his career: “There were two things at play at that point in time; one, Dave was a ghostly benefactor, golden hearted and smart, descending from the sky to help me. And two, what may sound like some luck couldn’t have become fortunate if I wasn’t armed with a dozen novels to talk shop with.”

Josh Malerman's website