Tense and sad. The main character gets failed at every turn 

The Devil Crept In was my first Ania Ahlborn read and while I wasn’t totally in love, I enjoy her writing style enough to read more from her. (Most likely Brother because that seems to be the one people talk up)

This book was a little slow pace for my liking, I really struggled to get through the first half of it when usually a book this length would maybe take me three days at the most, but once the plot picked up around the 50% mark I finished it very quickly. 

There were a lot of things about this story that I liked. The atmosphere was great, very creepy and gritty, parts of it definitely made me feel gross to read.

I enjoyed Stevie as our main narrator (I love the unreliable narrator trope) and I thought it was very effective that we saw things from his POV and how frustrating it was when no one would listen to him or take the time to understand him. It’s horrific to feel as if you have something very important to say and not have the ability to express it, though this is a reality a lot of people face. It was sad to see the way in which every adult in Stevie’s life failed him,

culminating to one major tragic event that ultimately he will bear the burden for.

I did think making the creature kind of a monster and kind of a disabled person was a little on the nose but I saw what Ania was getting at there, I’m just not sure it was 100% successful in its delivery.

I enjoyed the ending too though I understand why it wouldn’t be for everyone.

I like an ambiguous end and though I was sad that Stevie got no Justice for the unfair life he lived, sometimes unfairness is just the truth of things and that’s the scariest possibility of all. My only complaint about the ending is that while I liked the man moving into the town afterward sorta setting up shop in the trauma he caused in order to find his next victim, I really wish we got to know more about that bit of the story. Rosie running into this man and then having a one night stand with the devil is a huge plot point but is nothing more than a few sentences here and there. I would’ve liked to hear more about the experience from Rosie’s POV and her grappling with the fact that she may have had sex with Satan and birthed his offspring. I mean, that seems pretty significant.

This was a solid read. It was gritty, challenging, tense, sad, dark, and unnerving, but I wouldn’t suggest this novel for everyone, I think the level of bleakness and ambiguity would be a hard sell for most. However I’m excited to see what else Ania Ahlborn has to offer. 

What started out as a decent small town horror story turned into a study on disability as monstrous in horror. The plot was interesting and I liked it until the flashback into the origins of the monster in the book via it's mother. As a disability studies student I got completely unimmersed

and couldn't help but analyse the depiction of the monstrous child and his relationship to his mother as a reflection of the lives of a lot of disabled people in reality and how disability is seen and treated as monstrous, a curse from the devil. I was just writing an essay about it in my head the rest of the book, especially since while the mother is not depicted as a good person, the flashback parts are still written from her perspective in a way that sways the reader to be at least a little sympatethic to her, a poor woman gone insane and evil because she birthed a monstrous, disfigured, disabled child.

 

Interesting as a study of disability depicted in horror and how it reflects the real life, still alive and well, belief that disability is of the devil. That is where the devil crept in. Ultimately I was disappointed in an otherwise promising horror story.