First published 2014
Malorie grips the oars of a rowboat, her two four-year-old children beside her. All three wear blindfolds. They cannot remove them, no matter what they hear in the water or along the banks. Five years ago, something appeared that kills anyone who sees it. One glimpse drives a person to deadly violence. Survivors learned to live in darkness, covering windows, moving only by sound and touch. Now Malorie faces an impossible choice. Stay in their house by the river and slowly starve, or attempt a twenty-mile journey to safety. She has trained the boy and girl to navigate by hearing alone. Their lives depend on it. Something follows them downstream. It might be human, animal, or the creatures themselves. The story moves between present danger and past events, when Malorie lived with other survivors under Tom's leadership. They created routines and rules to stay alive. But supplies dwindled. Someone had to venture outside. Trust became as dangerous as sight. Malorie learned that in a world gone mad, the living can be more terrifying than the unknown.
Genres: horror, psychological-thriller, dark-fantasy, apocalyptic
Vibes: dark, emotional, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: House, River
Period: Five Years Ago, Present Day
294 pages · Kindle Edition · Ecco
Content warnings: anxiety, death, graphic-violence, mental-illness