Books › Come Closer
Come Closer
224 pages
A razor-sharp, deeply unsettling descent into the darkest corners of the psyche, delivered with terrifyingly casual detachment.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like watching a slow-motion car crash from the passenger seat, entirely unable to hit the brakes. It is a masterclass in claustrophobic, dread-soaked storytelling, moving at a propulsive clip that makes it easy to devour in a single, breathless sitting. The prose is deceptively spare and matter-of-fact, which only amplifies the chilling nature of the narrator's unraveling identity and escalating transgressions. There is a dark, seductive undercurrent to the horror here, tapping into the terrifying liberation of losing control and giving in to one's shadow self. It will thoroughly delight readers who crave psychological thrillers that blur the line between mental illness and the supernatural, offering a sharp, unforgettable shock to the system.
- Mood
- dread-soaked
- claustrophobic
- hypnotic
- eerie
- Tone
- matter-of-fact
- chilling
- detached
- darkly seductive
- Pace
- propulsive
- Themes
- loss of control · the shadow self · unraveling identity · female rage · domestic suffocation
- The writing
- Spare, razor-sharp, and deceptively simple, delivering horror with chillingly casual precision.
- The arc
- A chilling descent from mild irritation and confusion into total, terrifying surrender to one's darkest impulses.
- Who it's for
- Fans of psychological horror and unreliable narrators who love a short, sharp shock of a book that blurs the line between madness and the supernatural.
Content notes
- animal cruelty
- gaslighting
- violence
- infidelity
- mental illness
About the book
A recurrent, unidentifiable noise in her apartment. A memo to her boss that’s replaced by obscene insults. Amanda—a successful architect in a happy marriage—finds her life going off kilter by degrees. She starts smoking again, and one night for no reason, without even the knowledge that she’s doing it, she burns her husband with a cigarette. At night she dreams of a beautiful woman with pointed teeth on the shore of a blood-red sea.
The new voice in Amanda’s head, the one that tells her to steal things and talk to strange men in bars, is strange and frightening, and Amanda struggles to wrest back control of her life. A book on demon possession suggests that the figure on the shore could be the demon Naamah, known to scholars of the Kabbalah as the second wife of Adam, who stole into his dreams and tricked him into fathering her child. Whatever the case, as the violence of her erratic behavior increases, Amanda knows that she must act to put her life right, or see it destroyed.
Description from Open Library.
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