“[A] chilling Christmastime horror yarn…Like a child’s attention, the book may seem to wander in its final third before ultimately revealing itself to have been horribly on point all along.”

“Ingenious…Donohue unspools his simple story
patiently, delivering jolts when necessary, but mostly concentrating on the
stress generated in a family with an unhappy child. It’s a modest novel,
elegantly worked, with a nice chilly twist at the end.”

“Clearly, we are in the territory of the wholehearted, up-for-anything
gothic, which even as it undertakes a melancholic exploration of the
lost, forlorn, and bereft operates with the volume cranked and the plot
on greased wheels. As a writer, Donohue always seems to know exactly
what he is doing….and in The Boy Who Drew Monsters he twists the
screw on Jack with the finesse of an expert. It is a pleasure to watch
him glide along, pulling one squirming rabbit after another from his
copious hat.”

“A classically hypnotic horror story…The Boy Who Drew Monsters dissolves notions of reality and fiction and leaves behind an eerie narrative about what haunting aberrations might lurk just outside our peripheral vision.”

“An eerie, unsettling novel about the monsters
outside your door…and the ones inside all of us…Donohue fills his pages with intimacy and dread and
whips up an ending that’ll take your breath away.”

“Both an eerie, engrossing tale of the
supernatural, with a sting in its tale, and a superb evocation of troubled
youth. The Boy Who Drew Monsters
reminds us that there is no rage like the rage of children.”

“The ghostly influence of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw haunts this
chilling novel…Donohue is an adept creator of atmosphere…A brisk and winningly
creepy narrative.”

“The novel unfolds through rich prose and a
deeply imagined story…The final page—the final sentence, really—comes as a
clever surprise but one that resonates soundly. Fans of Donohue’s first novel,
The Stolen Child, will be pleased.
Also recommended for readers of Joe Hill.”

“This is a traditional horror story—something you could
easily imagine Graham Masterton writing—with a delicious twist near the
end that makes you rethink everything you’ve just read.”

“Donohue’s writing is as evocative as Jack
Peter’s drawings, both startling and heavy with emotion…A sterling example of
the new breed of horror: unnerving and internal with just the right number of
bumps in the night.”

“If Bronson Pinchot’s name is listed as narrator on an audiobook, download the book and don’t worry about its topic. In this case, he’s shaping the chilling story of a boy named Jack Peter, an agoraphobic with Asperger’s syndrome who is holed up in his home on the Maine coast during the winter. Pinchot makes the story, with his Northeastern accents and his abbreviated, and sometimes eerie, childlike tones. As fascinating as the main characters are, however, it’s a priest and his caretaker who are given the most distinctive voices, along with the tipsy father of Jack Peter’s pal. And there’s no mistaking the terror in the voices of Jack Peter’s mother and father as they’re swept along by terrifying events.”

“It will raise the hairs on the back of your
neck. Keith Donohue manages to peer into the darkest nightmares of childhood
and beckon forth the monsters from the closet…Atmospheric and haunting. The Boy Who Drew Monsters is all the
more chilling because it is grounded in real family life, with its heartbreaks
and tenderness.”

“There are no monsters. That’s what Jack
Peter’s parents tell him and what I kept telling myself as I got sucked deeper
and deeper into this delectably chilling novel…The Boy Who Drew Monsters left me
breathless and reeling, questioning the line between what is real and what is
imagined—and realizing that the meeting of the two is where true terror
dwells.”

“Keith Donohue has crafted a brooding,
Serlingesque tale of tragedy, heartbreak, and the things that go bump in the
night. Creepy, nostalgic, and understated, The
Boy Who Drew Monsters is a tale meant for the dark of night, but most will
want to enjoy it with all of the lights on.”