Please note that I received this book via NetGalley. This did not affect my rating or review.
Trigger warning: Rape is discussed, but not shown.
The only reason why I am giving this two stars is that the stories within the big plot, “Bedtime Stories for Monsters” were fantastic. Frankly if this book had just been the stories from that unpublished manuscript I would have been happy. Because when you jump from those stories to the “plot” my whole head started to hurt. I wanted to publish my review before I take my trip and I am begging the book gods to give me a good book or maybe even two while I am on vacation. I have been hitting the worst streak that I have had in some time with regards to books. “Malice House” had poor characters, a nonsensical plot after a while, plot holes galore, terrible flow, and the ending was set up as I don’t even know? A sequel? I am going to stay far away from it anyway.
“Malice House” follows “artist” Haven Marbury. She returns to her dead father’s home in Washington state, called Malice House. Her father was a famous author, who eventually passed away from dementia and apparently had way too many debts and not much to leave Haven outside of the house. We quickly find out that Haven is running from something back in New York and an event that involved her ex (well not really) husband. When Haven starts to explore Malice House, she finds an unpublished manuscript that her father wrote called “Bedtime Stories for Monsters”. Haven cannot put it down and starts to draw/sketch the monsters her father has described within which include: The Harbinger, the Witch of Went, the Hellhound, Pinchy, the Decaylings, Uncle Arnold, the Kestrel, and the Robber Saints. When she asks her father’s old contacts/literary group called the Ink Drinkers for help in selling the manuscript along with her drawings, she is hurt when they pronounce her drawings terrible, but want their hands on the manuscript. And when Haven says no, things start to go bump in Malice House. Soon people are found dead and they appear to be killed in similar ways to her father’s works and in the unpublished manuscript.
So Haven is not a great character. Something comes out later that describes why she acts the way she does, but it felt like a neat little cheat. I think at one point I was wondering how she was conscious since she barely ate, but was just consuming a half bottle of Scotch it seemed like every five seconds. Not to mention coffee she suckered out of Kylie. She keeps doing so many dumb things that I stopped counting after a while. It just seemed that she had a lot of hatred for her father and then you find out why and it seems like it was more benign neglect than anything. He was obsessed with his writing, and she was angry he didn’t seem to make a bigger deal of her drawings. I just thought the book jumped around too much for you to get a handle on their relationship.
The other characters are really shallow outside of the little peeks we get into the stories within the book. It’s sad the monsters were written better than Haven and other characters like Kylie, Catherine, Ronan, and others. The whole Kylie thing still makes zero sense to me and I just don’t even want to dwell on it anymore.
The writing just seemed to double back and forth after a while. I just got tired of Haven for just obsessing about Rafe Kahn and then about the manuscript, Kylie, Catherine, etc. Then she was back to Rafe again and in between all of the mess would think about her ex-husband and the mysterious incident that happened in New York.
The setting of Lundie Bay seems weird to me. Malice House definitely has its secrets, but Lundie Bay just has dead bodies popping up and everyone seems like oh sure let’s ignore that. It felt a little too much like the families on Nightmare on Elm Street who just ignored what was going on on in Springwood, Ohio. The only reason why that worked and made sense for that movie was back then in a small town you could hide that kind of thing. Also you didn’t have the 24 hours news going on. In this day and age though, so many people popping up dead would have resulted in a media frenzy. It just felt a little too ridiculous to me after a while. Especially since there’s a mention of the rich who have second homes there. I guess there was a slight out with an aside being made that most have left for their homes back in California since the weather had gotten colder.
On another note, I don’t know if adding illustrations of what Haven was seeing when reading through the manuscript and what she drew as a result could have made the book stronger, but since there’s a whole thing later about the written word and art, it seems like a missed opportunity.
The ending leaves things up in the air. I just sighed about it. The book could have ended in a darker way and I would have given it more stars. But it seems that Shepherd wanted to just leave things open ended.
I am reading this book for Cannonball Read 14 book bingo:
- Monster: Could involve dragons, kaiju, serial killers, and billionaires! Something very large, very scary, or over-hyped.
- There are a ridiculous amount of monsters in this book, and even a manuscript included called “Bedtime Stories for Monsters.”