Bird Box / Josh Malerman

Yesterday I saw the trailer for netflix's adaptation of Bird Box, and my reaction was to immediately (after watching Jeopardy, of course) go get my copy of the book and start reading it because IT WAS FINALLY TIME. I've owned Bird Box for several years, and just never brought myself to actually read it, until now. I started and finished it last night and now here we are.

Usually when I read a spooky and/or scary book, I have to either not read it at night or read a VERY GENTLE palate cleanser before falling asleep. So when it was time to go to bed but I wanted to keep reading, I bundled into bed with Bird Box almost finished and with Age of License / Lucy Knisley to get me to sleep sans nightmares. Now don't get me wrong, Bird Box has some good, evocative scenes, and pages that I read very quickly because the action and the tension were moving so quickly. But when I read the last page and closed the book, I didn't feel like I needed to read something non-scary. I still did, because I luv 2 read, but I didn't neeeeeed it. The ending of Bird Box is fine, it's just a little lackluster. It's a fine book! It feels like it could have maybe taken another round of editing? The way I feel about Bird Box is about the same way I feel about Horrorstor: it's a great concept executed well, it's just not a Triumph of Literary Genius, and that's fine!!! I think what may have happened here is that my expectations for Bird Box were off from what Bird Box actually is and that's why I'm feeling a bit weird about my reaction to it!!!

Bird Box was fine! It wasn't bad, and it wasn't amazing. It was nice. I've lifted a gif rating from Alley to explain how I felt about this book: