I picked up Sara Gran’s Come Closer on a whim, on the recommendation of a staff member at the library. It’s 20 years old, and I’d never heard of it. Sometimes that leads to a hidden gem, sometimes I learn I shouldn’t take recommendations from that person anymore. This was a bit of both.
Come Closer is perfect escapism. It’s a short, fast-paced and undemanding story with a few grisly surprises.
The narrator of this story is a young professional and a newlywed, describing the process of discovering that she may be possessed by a demon. About 50 pages in, I’d pegged it as a YA book – an R.L. Stine for older kids. I think that’s probably about right. PG-13 Stephen King.
The first-person narrator is a clever move, and it introduces questions that are a little more complicated than you expect from a book like this: how much of the narrator’s behaviour is demon-induced versus simply a release of existing feelings of repression?
I enjoyed this, but I wouldn’t broadly recommend it. It’s in the same category as Lee Child or James Patterson – like a decent Netflix movie that you can put on while folding laundry. In fact, there was a film version in the works but it looks like it’s stalled.
I never would have picked this up on my own, but I don’t regret doing it.
