Bird Box

Have you ever read a book that started out so promising, only to slowly fizzle out as it went? That's sadly how I feel about Bird Box. It took me a while to finally pick this up. I like to let the hype about things die down first, so I can really immerse myself and see how I feel. In this case, I'm kind of disappointed with what I found. I'm all for suspending disbelief while reading. I'll believe anything you tell me to, as long as it makes sense to the overall story and has enough toeholds to keep me hanging on. Bird Box just left me floating out there in ether.

For a story that focuses so heavily on the inability to see, there wasn't a whole lot of description of the other senses. It was all so vague, with Mallory only occasionally mentioning slight sounds every now and then. Plus I had the hardest time with Mallory as a character anyway, so that made things rough. She is SHRILL. Oh how shrill she was. Maybe it was the audio book I was listening to, but her inability to calm down and assess situations drove me nuts. I think it was meant to build tension. In fact, I could see the effort there. All it did was make me want to draw some duct tape across her mouth and walk away. Harsh? Perhaps. All true though.

Add in the fact that the timeline jumping was a little confusing, and the fact that the ending just kind of WAS, and you have a story that I am ambivalent about.