The Creeping

Received from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Rating:

Cover image and summary from Goodreads:

Twelve years ago Stella and Jeanie vanished while picking strawberries. Stella returned minutes later, with no memory of what happened. Jeanie was never seen or heard from again.

Now Stella is seventeen, and she's over it. She's the lucky one who survived, and sure, the case is still cloaked in mystery—and it's her small town's ugly legacy—but Stella is focused on the coming summer. She's got a great best friend, a hookup with an irresistibly crooked smile, and two months of beach days stretching out before her.

Then along comes a corpse, a little girl who washes up in an ancient cemetery after a mudslide, and who has red hair just like Jeanie did. Suddenly memories of that haunting day begin to return, and when Stella discovers that other red-headed girls have gone missing as well, she begins to suspect that something sinister is at work.

And before the summer ends, Stella will learn the hard way that if you hunt for monsters, you will find them.

I was looking forward to reading this because creepy mystery/thrillers are often my favourite kind of book.

I loved The Creeping. I really enjoyed the story, including the mystery of what happened to Stella and Jeanne when they were kids, the complex friendship between Stella and her BFF Zoey, and the atmosphere. And I enjoyed the writing.

Yeah yeah yeah, all of that’s great, but what I really want to talk about is the fact that this book genuinely frightened me. I won’t go into any detail because I definitely don’t want to spoil the story, but to me, this is significant because I read anywhere from 100-150 books a year, and I often think that this makes it difficult to surprise me as a reader. I’m also not easily scared or frightened by what I read. I definitely read books that are spooky or creepy while I’m reading them, but that feeling doesn’t stick with me once I put those books down. The Creeping, though, stayed with me when I was done, and kept me up at night thinking about it. I loved it!

The one that that I didn’t enjoy was that the love interest seemed too good to be true, letting Stella treat him poorly and walk all over him.

Tense, riveting, unputdownable, frightening, suspenseful – there are so many ways to say that this was a great book that genuinely got under my skin and I loved it. I’ll be getting my hands on a finished copy for my bookshelf!

I can’t recommend this awesome book enough, and I’m really looking forward to Alexandra Sirowy’s next book!

Find out more on the publisher’s website!