Explore our new BookBrowse Community Forum!

Book Summary and Reviews of The Boy Who Drew Monsters by Keith Donohue

The Boy Who Drew Monsters by Keith Donohue

The Boy Who Drew Monsters

by Keith Donohue

  • Critics' Consensus:
  • Published:
  • Oct 2014, 288 pages
  • Rate this book

  • Buy This Book

About this book

Book Summary

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Stolen Child comes a hypnotic literary horror novel about a young boy trapped inside his own world, whose drawings blur the lines between fantasy and reality.

Ever since he nearly drowned in the ocean three years earlier, ten-year-old Jack Peter Keenan has been deathly afraid to venture outdoors. Refusing to leave his home in a small coastal town in Maine, Jack Peter spends his time drawing monsters. When those drawings take on a life of their own, no one is safe from the terror they inspire. His mother, Holly, begins to hear strange sounds in the night coming from the ocean, and she seeks answers from the local Catholic priest and his Japanese housekeeper, who fill her head with stories of shipwrecks and ghosts. His father, Tim, wanders the beach, frantically searching for a strange apparition running wild in the dunes. And the boy's only friend, Nick, becomes helplessly entangled in the eerie power of the drawings. While those around Jack Peter are haunted by what they think they see, only he knows the truth behind the frightful occurrences as the outside world encroaches upon them all.

In the tradition of The Turn of the Screw, Keith Donohue's The Boy Who Drew Monsters is a mesmerizing tale of psychological terror and imagination run wild, a perfectly creepy read for a dark night.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

Media Reviews

"This is a traditional horror story - something you could easily imagine Graham Masterton writing - with a delicious twist near the end that makes you rethink everything you've just read." - Booklist

"With such a spooky novel, it's almost too much to hope for a good ending, but Donohue manages to surprise and satisfy nonetheless. A sterling example of the new breed of horror: unnerving and internal with just the right number of bumps in the night." - Kirkus

"The ghostly influence of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw haunts this chilling novel by Donohue (The Stolen Child)… Donohue is an adept creator of atmosphere… A brisk and winningly creepy narrative." - Publishers Weekly

"The novel unfolds through rich prose and a deeply imagined story. The final page - the final sentence, really - comes as a clever surprise, but one that resonates soundly. Fans of Donohue's first novel, The Stolen Child, will be pleased. Also recommended for readers of Joe Hill." - Library Journal

"It will raise the hairs on the back of your neck. Keith Donohue manages to peer into the darkest nightmares of childhood and beckon forth the monsters from the closet...Atmospheric and haunting." - Eowyn Ivey, New York Times bestselling author of The Snow Child

"An eerie, unsettling novel about the monsters outside your door...and the ones inside all of us. Donohue fills his pages with intimacy and dread, and whips up an ending that'll take your breath away." - Christopher Golden, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Snowblind

"The Boy Who Drew Monsters left me breathless and reeling, questioning the line between what is real and what is imagined — and realizing that the meeting of the two is where true terror dwells." - Jennifer McMahon, New York Times bestselling author of The Winter People

"Keith Donohue has crafted a brooding, Serlingesque tale of tragedy, heartbreak, and the things that go bump in the night. Creepy, nostalgic, and understated, The Boy Who Drew Monsters is a tale meant for the dark of night, but most will want to enjoy it with all of the lights on." - C. Robert Cargill, author of Dreams and Shadows

This information about The Boy Who Drew Monsters was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Author Information

Keith Donohue Author Biography

Photo: Cade Martin

Keith Donohue's novels include the national bestseller The Stolen Child, Centuries of June, and Angels of Destruction. He also has written reviews for the Washington Post. Donohue has a Ph.D. in English with a specialization in modern Irish literature and wrote the introduction to the Complete Novels of Flann O’Brien. He lives in Maryland near Washington, DC.

Author Interview
Link to Keith Donohue's Website

Name Pronunciation
Keith Donohue: don-a-hew

Other books by Keith Donohue at BookBrowse
  • The Stolen Child jacket

5 more...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

More Recommendations

Readers Also Browsed . . .

more literary fiction...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $45 for 12 months or $15 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Top Picks

  • Book Jacket: Graveyard Shift
    Graveyard Shift
    by M. L. Rio
    Following the success of her debut novel, If We Were Villains, M. L. Rio's latest book is the quasi-...
  • Book Jacket: The Sisters K
    The Sisters K
    by Maureen Sun
    The Kim sisters—Minah, Sarah, and Esther—have just learned their father is dying of ...
  • Book Jacket: Linguaphile
    Linguaphile
    by Julie Sedivy
    From an infant's first attempts to connect with the world around them to the final words shared with...
  • Book Jacket
    The Rest of You
    by Maame Blue
    At the start of Maame Blue's The Rest of You, Whitney Appiah, a Ghanaian Londoner, is ringing in her...

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Pony Confidential
    by Christina Lynch

    In this whimsical mystery, a grumpy pony must clear his beloved human's name from a murder accusation.

Who Said...

Choose an author as you would a friend

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

F the M

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.