Title: I Found the Boogeyman under My Brother’s Crib
Author: Ben Farthing
Publisher: Self-Published
Publication Date: September 24, 2024
Genres: Horror, Contemporary
Length: 112 pages
Source: I borrowed it from the library.
Rating: 2 Stars
Blurb:
How do you protect your family from an urban legend?
Rachel hears a stranger laugh in her baby brother’s nursery.
She races in to see a dark figure slip beneath the crib, disappearing into an eerie reflection of her brother’s room.
Mom and Dad don’t believe her. They accuse Rachel of making excuses for breaking their strict rules about healthy sleep.
But Rachel knows what she saw.
The Boogeyman wants her baby brother.
The Boogeyman wants to drag him away into his eerie realm beneath the crib.
Rachel’s not going to let that happen.
I Found the Boogeyman Under My Brother’s Crib is a tale of urban legends, liminal spaces, and things that go bump in the night, from Ben Farthing, the “King of Creepy” (MJ Mars, author of The Suffering).
Content Warning: Kidnapping and child abuse.
Review:
Nobody can get away with being naughty forever.
The narrator captured the frustration of being a sixteen-year-old who doesn’t always feel like adults are listening to her well. While my parents were thankfully nothing like Rachel’s, just about every teenager at least occasionally has a conversation with their parents that doesn’t make sense. Sometimes you grow up and understand the adult perspective better, but not all parents make the sorts of decisions that are in their children’s best interests and that can be seen from another perspective in five, ten, or twenty years.
This novella would have benefited from more character and plot development. The premise was strong in the beginning but later scenes didn’t build on it in the ways I hoped they would. It petered out instead of explaining why the characters behaved the way they did and what the boogeyman was truly capable of which was disappointing to me. I had been anticipating this novella all autumn due to how much I enjoy this series in general and expected to give it a much higher rating than I ultimately did.
With that being said, I thought the ideas in this tale were interesting ones and could see how they may have been meant to fit together. It was interesting to learn the historical context of the boogeyman in this universe and what people hoped would happen when they talked about him. There was a twist involving this antagonist that was fun and would have encouraged me to go for a higher rating if it had been given more time to develop.
This is part of the I Found series that can be read in any order.
I Found the Boogeyman under My Brother’s Crib had a creative premise.