THE BOY WHO DREW MONSTERS

I’m working my way through a delightfully haunting book at the moment, Keith Donohue’s The Boy Who Drew Monsters. It was featured in a recent issue of Book Page as one of the featured titles in Anne Rice’s list of horror novels to watch for, and as a horror story fan, I immediately put it on hold. 

Here’s a description of this book from Novelist: 

"Ever since he nearly drowned in the ocean three years earlier,10-year-old Jack Peter Keenan has been deathly afraid to venture outdoors. Refusing to leave his home in a small coastal town in Maine, Jack Peter spends his time drawing monsters. When thosedrawings take on a life of their own, no one is safe from the terror they inspire. His mother, Holly, begins to hear strange sounds in the night coming from the ocean, and she seeks answers from the local Catholic priest and his Japanese housekeeper who fill her head with stories of shipwrecks and ghosts. His father, Tim, wanders the beach, frantically searching for a strange apparition running wild in the dunes. And the boy's only friend, Nick, becomes helplessly entangled in the eerie power of the drawings. While those around Jack Peter are haunted by what they think they see, only he knows the truth behind the frightful occurrences as the outside world encroaches upon them all. In the tradition of The Turn of the Screw, Keith Donohue's The Boy Who Drew Monsters is a mesmerizing tale of psychological terror and imagination run wild, a perfectly creepy read for a dark night. - For readers of Neil Gaiman, Jason Mott, and Audrey Niffenegger.

Interested? You can find this title in RockCat here. Looking for similar haunting psychological fiction while you’re waiting for The Boy Who Drew Monsters to become available? Try these authors:

1. Brockmeier, Kevin
Reason: Brockmeier and Donohue write fantasy-laced literary fiction which raise questions about our world and the choices we make. Their character centered novels build deliberately, moving steadily toward a compelling conclusion. -- Becky Spratford

2. Hoffman, Alice
Reason: These authors' works are Haunting and Character-driven, and they share: the genres
'Magic realist fiction' and 'Literary Fiction' and the subject 'New England'.

3. Lahiri, Jhumpa
Reason: These authors' works are Haunting, Moving, and Character-driven, and they share: the genre 'Literary Fiction' and the subject 'Identity (Psychology)'.

4. Rachman, Tom
Reason: These authors' works are Moving and Character-driven, and they share: the genre 'Literary Fiction' and the subject 'Identity (Psychology)’.