Blurb: To eight-year-old Bela, her family is her world. There’s Mommy, Daddo, and Grandma Ruth. But there is also Other Mommy, a malevolent entity who asks her every day: “Can I go inside your heart?”
When horrifying incidents around the house signal that Other Mommy is growing tired of asking Bela the same question, over and over . . . Bela understands that unless she says yes, soon her family must pay.
Other Mommy is getting restless, stronger, bolder. Only the bonds of family can keep Bela safe but other incidents show cracks in her parents' marriage. The safety Bela relies on is on the brink of unraveling.
But Other Mommy needs an answer.
Review: Bela loves her Mommy and Daddo very much, and she thinks she's friends with Other Mommy who comes out of her closet at night. Except Other Mommy is starting to get scary, and other people are seeing her too. The entity keeps asking to go into Bela's heart, but Bela doesn't feel it's right and so the haunting gets more violent. All the while the adults around her are dealing with their own problems and Bela just wants to be kind and make everyone happy. That includes Other Mommy... if she's her friend.
This supernatural horror tale is narrated by an eight-year-old girl. She seems a little younger than eight to me. I thought she was six with her innocence, but it could be she was coddled and protected by her family. Yet they do speak to her like another adult and have parties a lot in which they encourage her to attend. While Bela tells the story, it's more her parents' story. They're already on the edge of divorce. The mother is unfaithful, and boldly so, and the dad is oblivious, seemingly stoned a lot. They have this thing where they each sit on Bela's bed and talk out loud about very adult things when they believe Bela is asleep. Though they never really check if she's truly asleep. The Other Mommy's existence can be mirrored by the parents' relationship. Bela thinks Other Mommy is a friend at first. She plays with her and comforts her when her parents fight or party. Later, when the parents are tumbling toward divorce, Other Mommy becomes mean and demands to take over Bela's heart. It was heartbreaking for Bela in so many ways.
The descriptions of the entity are truly horrifying. Like the eyes low down on her face and the black hair on the backs of her arms, and her demon form. Bela doesn't seem as rocked by it as the adults are when they see Other Mommy, and I love that contrast. The tension keeps getting tighter and tighter, winding me up to the big climax. (I have a definite opinion about the ending, but I won't spoil that for anyone.) The unusual style of prose took me a little while to get used to, but it added to the creepiness.
This is the first book in a long time that did raise the hairs on the back of my neck. This is a read with all the lights on type of story.
Commenti