Let’s Read Good Books

My Thoughts:

May contain spoilers

Years ago I started Ashes and had to put it down. It was too scary. It freaked me out. But I enjoyed what I did read, so I will be picking it up again. In the meantime, I decided to try one of Bick’s older YA novels.

I did not expect Draw the Dark to feature Nazi villains. Christian is a troubled teen who lives with his uncle, the sheriff of their small rural town. His parents both disappeared, and Christian believes that his father was pulled into the “sideways” place, and his mother, mourning his loss, followed him there. Now Christian draws doorways and frightening landscapes, and the people in town think he’s a heartbeat away from murdering everyone.

This was a weird book. I don’t know if I liked it, though Bick’s writing was strong enough to drag me along with Christian as he has one vividly real nightmare after another. Soon he realizes that he’s sharing dreams with a patient in the nursing home he’s serving probation at. The nightmares are bloody and brutal, and he thinks he’s witnessing a murder from decades ago.

I thought these were the best parts of the book. When he’s sucked back in time to witness a horrific crime in bits and pieces. His struggle to decipher the weird time jumps he’s experiencing were so engaging. Who are the people in the visions he’s been having? What do they have to do with the barn he’s repainting?

Draw the Dark was a unique read, and I haven’t read anything like it before. The pacing was uneven and that dampened my enjoyment.

Rating: 3.75 Stars