Narrated by: Suzy Jackson
Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
Categories: Literature & Fiction, Horror Mystery Thriller
Language: English

“I loved it.” Stephen King

From Jason Rekulak, Edgar-nominated author of The Impossible Fortress, comes a wildly inventive spin on the classic horror story in Hidden Pictures, a supernatural thriller about a woman working as a nanny for a young boy with strange and disturbing secrets.

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.

Sometimes images do tell a story. While I was listening to this book on my daily commute, I had a strange thought. Why would these crispy parents, so in tune with the needs of their child, hire an ex-addict? When all the other nannies were college educated, spoke more than one language and had a degree in child psychology? Why expose your child to the possibility of witnessing a relapse? I totally agree with re-integrating ex-cons and ex-addicts into society – but to make them responsible for a small life? Day in and day out? It’s a lot of work.

It’s only when the story of Anya, Teddy’s imaginary friend, starts to surface I ended up thinking… the parents are hiding something too.

Why would Teddy, who was left handed, have charcoal and crayons all over his right hand? Why would his room smell of ammonia? I really thought he was haunted by this woman killed in the woods who wanted her body found.

And then when other stuff kept happening, I started really wanting to see it from Teddy’s parents perspective.

Here I am, offering a chance to have a new start to an ex-addict girl who is now filling my kid’s head with stories of supernatural, holding seances with the crazy lady next door and who seems to attract male attention like honey. The next door neighbour’s kid, the husband.

The husband is a worry – he is a bit touchy feely and not wanting to jeopardize her position with the family, the nanny does not speak out for the occasional shoulder rub or the really inappropriate way he shows up drunk in her private quarters. I, as the potential mom, would have ended this collaboration waaaay sooner than Caroline had.

It’s only with the murder of the next door neighbour due to a heroin overdose that some things click into place.

The sequence of drawings that Teddy makes don’t tell a story of a random woman being murdered. They tell the story of Teddy’s abduction. The big reveal is that Teddy isn’t a 5 year old boy, she’s a girl who was kidnapped from her mother when she was only 3 and the mother died.

The sinister ones were always the parents.

I liked this book but I did find it slow in parts. I liked the “why?”s of Mallory – how did she end up killing her sister, hooked on drugs and living in a halfway house.

I liked her redemption arc.

I didn’t like just how convenient certain things were. Like the lady who used to live in her cottage not actually having been murdered but faking her own death so she could run away with the local coloured boy and have mixed children in a time when this wasn’t allowed. I didn’t like how Mallory found out Teddy was a girl a month in and not sooner – they have been to the pool before. I also didn’t like how Caroline and Ted decided to hire a nanny when they knew their kid was stolen. Why not live away from the world forever?

The end does have a few more twists but all in all it was a very enjoyable horror.