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.