Rating:

“When you eliminate the impossible, all that remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

Author: Jason Rekulak

Mallory is 18 months sober and desperately looking for a new start in life. Her sponsor has potentially landed her a lucrative position as a live-in nanny with the Maxwells. Caroline Maxwell, the mother, knows Mallory’s history, and she is willing to forgive, especially when she realizes that Mallory might be able to help five-year-old Teddy let go of his morbid obsession with his dead imaginary friend, Anya. Ted Maxwell, however, is another matter. He will be a hard sell. It’s touch and go at first, but finally Mallory gets the job. The Maxwell’s rules are just as stringent as they are bizarre – but Mallory is determined to be successful, and she loves little Teddy.

Things get spooky, however, when Teddy keeps drawing pictures of a dying woman being drug into the forest. Then, Mallory starts hearing things in her isolated cottage. When she learns that the guest house she lives in was the site of a brutal murder, she begins to suspect that Teddy’s imaginary friend is terribly real. Anya is hardly an innocent figment of a child’s imagination, and as she becomes more desperate to get her message across, Teddy degenerates into a possessed frenzy.

Hidden Pictures starts by making us care about Mallory, an admittedly too-good-to-be-true protagonist whose allegedly dark past has no bearing on her currently perfect self. Still, we feel Mallory’s need for success as it merges with her concern for a very disturbed little boy. What starts with tension soon becomes downright creepy, and the author keeps the tension going. We have the creepy, perfect atheist, all-about-science parents, who are either in deep denial or hiding a part of the picture. We have the weird next-door neighbor with her supposed connection to the spirit realm. We even have a potential love interest who starts out by supporting Mallory’s ill-fated investigation.

The story is a slow burn, and this isn’t a “jump out at you” kind of tale, nor is it the “evil kid vs babysitter” saga of so many stories. Teddy is innocent. He is merely a conduit through which something or someone else is trying to speak. As things escalate, the Maxwell parents hide Teddy’s increasingly graphic pictures, and Mallory herself begins to draw. The mystery deepens.

Image by Alicja from Pixabay

And then it turns. While this started as a slow-burn thriller, more atmosphere than event, the conclusion ratches everything up as the pieces come together into a hideous puzzle. This is both the surprise and the weak point in the story.

I love what Jason Rekulak does with the conclusion, the truth of what Teddy sees and is conveying. It’s both unexpected and clever. This could have been a five-star, Gone Girl-esque shocker, except for the parents.

While the conclusion gains a lot through its twist, the parents lose their established personalities. Ted Maxwell goes from the stalwart character to something else entirely, a shift that is far too abrupt and convenient. It doesn’t work. It could have been earned, perhaps, with more time and build up, but as it is, it reeks of plot device. The same can be said for Caroline. If only the parents hadn’t shifted into typical thriller dumbness, Hidden Pictures could have been truly glorious. Still, as it was, the ending was so unexpected, that I enjoyed it anyway.

The epilogue though . . .  we could have done without that. Let the story end on a bang and stay there. Leave us wondering, let the future be either a dark chasm or a land of hope, based on the reader’s interpretation. Letting us know destroyed some of the dark magic.

While imperfect Hidden Pictures is one of the best thrillers I’ve read in a long time. It kept me engaged and guessing. I’ll definitely seek out more from this author.

– Frances Carden

Follow my reviews on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/xombie_mistress

Follow my reviews on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/FrancesReviews

Frances Carden
Latest posts by Frances Carden (see all)