Let me be honest with you; I considered feeling the hem of my son’s blanket, you know, to see if I’d find teeth sewn in. Fortunately, it’s just a standard piece of fabric. And the dinosaur prints on it don’t look menacing at all. I can safely assume it is not evil or possessed. One can never truly be sure though. Thank you, Kealan Patrick Burke, for inspiring me horror in the most innocent of objects.
On To The Book Now!
Blanky is a fast-paced horror novella told from Steve Brannigan’s point of view, a father struggling to cope with the loss of his daughter and the separation with his wife. He lives alone in the home where the worst horror a parent can know happened. His life is a steady fall into drunkenness, bitterness, grief, and failure.
That is until he finds something totally unexpected in their daughter’s bedroom: her favorite blanket.
Hadn’t the blanket been lost somewhere between the transport to the hospital and the cemetery? Or hadn’t it been buried with their daughter? One thing is sure: the blanket was not in their possession anymore, and the discovery marks a turning point in Steve’s descent into Hell.
Burke clearly understands that the higher you stand, the harder you fall. He has us cheer for Steve as he finally picks up the pieces with his wife and moves on with his life only to stack a new layer of misery to his existence. Even when things seem to get better, we can feel something is off. The tension builds up early, making us wondering what is going on.
Blanky is a wild ride into Burke’s world. The first pages root us effectively to the story; we can’t put the book down. Both the intrigue and the tension are effective in that regard, and, as the story unfolds, it leaves us, readers, guessing, guessing more, wondering where the Hell this is going until we reach the end and whatever we figured out is to trash out. You might not like the ending, but you can’t deny its unpredictability. Thumbs up to the author.
My Impressions:
I adored this book. The plot is great and original, totally unpredictable, as I already mentionned. It keeps us on our teeth all along. The prose is superb, simple but effective, and tinted with just enough sarcasm and bleak inner thoughts to immerse you deeply into Steve’s mind.
I Highl recommend it!
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