Hidden Pictures

I listened to this on my drive to Michigan and I'm struggling to understand how it won "best book" for Goodread's Horror genre. It started out promising, but then just went off the rails.

Hidden Pictures tells the story of a young adult girl, Mallory, recently rehabilitated, who becomes a live-in babysitter to young Teddy, whose pictures begin to tell a story, and Mallory finds herself struggling to solve their purpose. I absolutely loved this book and found it hard to put down from the get-go.

I enjoyed most of this book because I found it very readable, very focused on the fact that it's a thriller. I don't enjoy when thrillers start to digress or try to add side plots to fill up time - I want thriller all the way, and this does deliver. I thought Mallory was an intriguing character, though I think more could have been done with her spirituality.

I also enjoyed the paranormal aspects of the story throughout and the fact that actual drawings are included in the book.

So my 3 stars are for all of that. But the ending went off the rails. There were aspects of the twist I liked, but for the most part it was just so random, and I don't enjoy it when it feels like it comes out of nowhere. There's also some classic Villain Monologuing which was unfortunate.

This book probably has the high rating that it has because it is so readable and the twist is "shocking." But shocking doesn't automatically mean good or interesting for me, and in this case it was disappointing.