Eight-year-old Bela lives with her parents, Mommy and Daddo, in what seems like a pretty ordinary house.
Except there's something else living there with them. Bela calls it Other Mommy.
At first, Other Mommy stays hidden. She appears in Bela's room, lurks in her closet, and asks her the same question over and over again: “Can I go inside your heart?” Until now, Bela has avoided answering. But Other Mommy is getting bolder. She's venturing beyond Bela's room, appearing in new places, and becoming harder to ignore.
And she still wants an answer.
Soon, Other Mommy isn't something only Bela knows about. Her parents begin to realize that something strange is happening in their home too. Whatever has been hiding in Bela's closet is no longer content to stay there.
From a young age, we learn to fear the things that go bump in the night. There's something that happens when you turn out the lights. Your ordinary room suddenly becomes a little more mysterious. That closet you've opened a hundred times during the day? In the dark, you're suddenly not so sure what's waiting behind it.
Of course, we grow up. We learn there aren't monsters hiding under the bed or waiting in the closet. We know better.
Or at least we're supposed to.
Because I'll admit, even as an adult, I can still get a little creeped out by the darkness of an empty house. I'll catch something out of the corner of my eye or find myself walking just a little faster toward the light switch. For a moment, all those things you were afraid of as a kid don't seem quite so ridiculous.
I know there's nothing there. But that doesn't always stop my imagination from thinking otherwise.
That's exactly where Josh Malerman got me with Incidents Around the House. He taps into that fear of the unknown that scared us as children and reminds us that it never really left.
The entire book is told from Bela's perspective, letting us experience her innocence and confusion about what's going on with Other Mommy. She doesn't always understand what she's seeing or hearing, even when we, as readers, can start to piece it together. That makes the horror all the more unsettling.
And that's not the only layer Bela's perspective adds to the story. Her parents are desperately trying to protect her from something they can't explain, even as the cracks in their own marriage begin to show. Bela doesn't fully grasp those problems either, but she's caught in the middle of them all the same.
In that way, Incidents Around the House becomes as much about Bela losing her innocence as it is about the thing haunting her. Other Mommy threatens that innocence in one way, while the world around her threatens it in another. As the secrets and mistakes of the adults in her life come to light, Bela is forced to see things about her family that she wasn't ready to see.
That's what makes the horror here work so well. Malerman takes those simple childhood fears and turns them into something much more complicated. Eventually, we all learn there aren't really monsters hiding in our closets.
But that doesn't make the world around us any less scary.
For more information, visit the author's website, Amazon, and Goodreads.
(2026, 87)
Other Mommy sounds super creepy! Sounds like a great Halloween read.
ReplyDeleteVery creepy! It was the perfect book to cap off spooky season with!
DeleteI was already creeped out at "other mommy". Terrifying when evil baddies use the kids.
ReplyDeleteThat contrast between innocence and evil really makes this one terrifying!
DeleteThis sounds all kinds of creepy.
ReplyDeleteVery much so!
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