Eerie by Blake & Jordan Crouch (CBR-IV #30)

Cannonball Read IV: Book #30/52
Published: 2012
Pages: 284
Genre: Horror


At first, I thought maybe this was father/son writing team, but after reading the interview with the authors at the end of the book I found out that Jordan Crouch is Blake Crouch's little brother. Interesting. I like Blake Crouch, so I figured I'd give this book a shot.


The book had a really good synopsis: It starts out with a horrible car wreck with a brother and sister and their dad. The dad is severely brain damaged and the kids are left parentless since their mother had died not to long before the accident. 


Flash forward thirty years and now the little boy (Grant) is detective with the Seattle Police. He hasn't seen his little sister, Paige, in years -- ever since he tried to conduct an intervention to get her away from drugs and prostitution. One day he gets a lead on Paige's whereabouts. She's now a high-end prostitue in the area. Pretending to be a new client, Grant ends up at Paige's house.

When he reunited with his sister, he thinks she is still on drugs because she looks awful -- too thin with bags under her eyes. However, Paige has a different problem. There is something living under her bed that won't let her leave the house. If she tries to leave, she gets violently ill. And now that Grant has been inside the house, he is trapped to.

Then...everything just goes downhill. The plot gets boring after a while (they can't leave the house! What is that thing under the bed?). Literally half the book is them just being trapped in the house with nothing really happening. Mostly, I just wanted to know that the heck that thing under Paige's bed was. Until I found out that is.

Which bring me to the ending. The AWFUL ending. I'm STILL not sure what happened. I won't spoil it, but I was really disappointed. It's was definitely one of the most WTF endings to a book I have ever read -- and not in a good way. It was a complete letdown.

I think this would have been a better short story or novella than an actual novel. The plot was intriguing, but it really needs a better ending.