Title: Hidden Pictures

Author: Jason Rekulak

Publisher: Flatiron 2022

Genre: Thriller

Pages: 373

Rating: 4/5 stars

Reading Challenges: 

Fresh out of rehab, Mallory Quinn takes a job as a babysitter for Ted and Caroline Maxwell. She is to look after their five-year-old son, Teddy.

Mallory immediately loves it. She has her own living space, goes out for nightly runs, and has the stability she craves. And she sincerely bonds with Teddy, a sweet, shy boy who is never without his sketchbook and pencil. His drawings are the usual fare: trees, rabbits, balloons. But one day, he draws something different: a man in a forest, dragging a woman’s lifeless body.

Then, Teddy’s artwork becomes increasingly sinister, and his stick figures quickly evolve into lifelike sketches well beyond the ability of any five-year-old. Mallory begins to wonder if these are glimpses of a long-unsolved murder, perhaps relayed by a supernatural force.

Knowing just how crazy it all sounds, Mallory nevertheless sets out to decipher the images and save Teddy before it’s too late.

I got this recommendation from Meredith at the Currently Reading Podcast. Every once in a while I really want a fluffy spooky thriller. I want something that I can speed through and get involved in a story but not think too much about anything. This book hit just exactly what I needed this week. I immediately got sucked into the spooky drawings and figuring out the mystery of what they mean. We are on a roller coaster of emotions as we speed through the mystery. I wasn’t the biggest fan of the unreliable narrator trope. Couldn’t we have made Mallory a regular person and not a former drug addict? Why dies every protagonist have to have a tragic backstory? Other than that quibble, I enjoyed the rest of the story. I definitely did not guess the ending of the mystery.

Next up on the TBR pile: