Malorie

A Bird Box Novel

By: Josh Malerman

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell

Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's Summary

In the “fast-paced, frightening” (The New York Times Book Review) sequel to Bird Box, the inspiration for the record-breaking Netflix film starring Sandra Bullock, best-selling author Josh Malerman brings unseen horrors to life.

Nominated for the Bram Stoker Award

“Malorie is even more of a psychological thriller than Bird Box, and all the scarier for it.” (The Wall Street Journal)

Twelve years after Malorie and her children rowed up the river to safety, a blindfold is still the only thing that stands between sanity and madness. One glimpse of the creatures that stalk the world will drive a person to unspeakable violence.

There remains no explanation. No solution.

All Malorie can do is survive - and impart her fierce will to do so on her children. Don’t get lazy, she tells them. Don’t take off your blindfold. And don't look.

But then comes what feels like impossible news. And with it, the first time Malorie has allowed herself to hope.

Someone very dear to her, someone she believed dead, may be alive.

Malorie has already lost so much: her sister, a house full of people who meant everything, and any chance at an ordinary life. But getting her life back means returning to a world full of unknowable horrors - and risking the lives of her children again.

Because the creatures are not the only thing Malorie fears: There are the people who claim to have caught and experimented on the creatures. Murmerings of monstrous inventions and dangerous new ideas. And rumors that the creatures themselves have changed into something even more frightening.

Malorie has a harrowing choice to make: to live by the rules of survival that have served her so well, or to venture into the darkness and reach for hope once more.

©2019 Josh Malerman (P)2019 Random House Audio

Critic Reviews

“Another taut, breathless supernatural thriller...[Josh] Malerman masterfully evokes apocalyptic horrors via understatement and suggestion while facilitating suspension of disbelief through nuanced characterization and thoughtful worldbuilding. This is a bang- up sequel.” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) 

“I can’t remember the last time I had to set a book down because it was too intense for me to continue. And that’s only the halfway point. Once Malerman hits the gas you better hang on tight, because he doesn’t let up until the stunning finish. Malorie is a relentless thriller that will fry your nerves and twist your heart. It’s absolutely brilliant.” (Philip Fracassi, author of Behold the Void) 

“You know how you sometimes begin a series on Netflix and you tell yourself ‘I’m just going to watch one episode’ but ten hours later you’ve binged the entire series because the story is so relentlessly compelling? This is the book version of that experience. Not only did I read this book in one sitting, it still haunts me, swirling in my imagination even as I write this.” (Jamie Ford, New York Times best-selling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet)

Just *dreadful* - Unbelievably awful!

This was a long, painful slog. By 35% in the "heroine" gets terribly hard to endure. Parts are just too hard to swallow, others drown in what comes to feel like one long melancholy pity party.

And then there is the ending. After everything endured to get there, this ending is so, so bad. It's just inexplicably awful. It's like the author just gives the finger to the reader. It includes a scene of mass carnage that just gets coldly accepted, as if it's supposed to be a small price to pay. And our protagonist metes out her own fatal justice to someone who, while not very likable, did he really deserve this fate?

The narrator is pretty good - but her talents were way overshadowed by this incredibly bad sequel to Bird Box. I have almost 700 audiobooks in my Audible library and probably another 300 or more listened to from local libraries. This is the worst review I've ever given and it deserves every bit of it. You have been warned!

2020 strikes again

First of all, the story. I don't even understand how this happened. The first book was so well thought out and really got into the minds of the characters. I felt like I was there. This book, everyone was annoying, everything was impractical and unbelievable, and the overall storyline just sucked.

She kept calling them her teens which was beyond annoying, the word unfathomable was used about a hundred times and the narrator's way of saying peninsula made me want to throw my phone across the room.

2020 has produced few great things. This was not one of them. I normally love this author. Super disappointed.

Say "Teenagers" one more time! I double dog dare u

I think this book was written to torture prisoners in Guantanamo. I did my best to try to finish it. But I had to give up 2 hours before the ending. Bird box was great! One of my favorite books! However, this awfulness I have no words for besides complete torture!

Was HOPING For 5 Stars

I wish I could have given it 5 stars, lucky to get 4 though. (As I gave the 5 stars to the 1st book, which was AWESOME)

The story is good, but to many flashbacks.
To many thoughts put into words & more thinking than action to be honest. They eat up the book & felt like more of a filler, than an asset to the new storyline.

Malorie & her teens get a list of survivors & will they find anyone they are hoping to find?
Will the children grow up in a world of death or sacrifices?
Can Malorie face her fears like her children want to & they really feel the need to?
Is it possible to coexist with the creatures? If yes, then how?
Can the creatures get into your mind in other ways then by just being seen? Good luck figuring out that question, for what it does not answered or explaine.
Can you see the creatures without going crazy?
Who will survive?
Who did survive?
Who's crazy now & who's sane?

Who is or are the worse.....The creatures or the mad?

So much hope for the story, but sadly it left to many unanswered questions & to many things completely unexplained. It honestly just left me hanging & scratching my head...not because it itched, but because it took me down a road that had nowhere to go.

I couldn't recommend the book to be honest, unless it's free maybe.

The narrator was great, but the writing did not do her justice. She is great though & absolutely did her best with what she had to read from. Well spoken, clearly spoken, emotionally correct with her tone & really puts you in the moments of intensity when it called for it!
I absolutely can recommend her as a narrator 100%!!


The ending REALLY WAS AWFUL!
It's like the writer wasn't sure how to end it & was pressed for time!!
It just seemed slapped on the end & as a lot of other things in the book...left you HANGING, while saying, "What the heck just happened & why did it happen?"

Loved Birdbox but this was just lazy

I was displeased from the very beginning. The conclusion of the last book was swept away in the first 16 min of the books deus ex machina. So many plot holes, so illogical, and the conclusion was ridiculous. The work around for the creatures is so obvious, there would be no way it hadn’t been tried by hundreds before. I will not be continuing the series. If you loved the first, pretend it was also the last.

Awesome, but not as scary but just as good as the first book!

Definitely not as scary as the first book, but you learn so much more about the characters and their back stories and answered a lot of u answered questions I had from the first book. I loved seeing how the kids grew up and their adventures. There are some incredibly twists that I never could have imagined that happen. This book did not disappoint but I wish it was longer, I didn’t want it to be over!!!

Satisfying

I heard a lot of people hating this book saying it wasn't necessary and didn't add anything to the story but I completely disagree. It answered a lot of questions about what would happen to this world and our antagonists. It's not a masterpiece, but it was a very satisfying character journey. I couldn't put on the sleep timer and listen in bed because the unseen menace is still suspenseful, but in the end it made my weekend a little nicer when I finished this book. It's an easy, satisfying read I would recommend for anyone in a reading slump.

Nothing happens in this story...

The title says it all. I hated this story, and ended up just kind of half-listening to it in the background whilst doing other tasks. I didn't read the first one, so I have no idea how it stacks up, but I did see the Bird Box movie, and this sequel feels totally unnecessary.

My biggest complaint is boredom. Nothing happens in this book whatsoever. It's a lot of building tension and emotional introspection with little payoff. I think this is owed mostly to the fact that the story is told from the perspectives of characters that are blindfolded most of the time, so the narration can't describe anything with much certainty aside from the character's own thoughts and impressions, which is actually a great opportunity for unique storytelling. The problem is that it isn't executed very well. The same concepts get re-hashed over and over until you want to tear your hair out. Yes, for the one thousandth time, I understand that Tom resents his mother! This repetitiveness would be ok if you merely had to sift through it to get to the interesting stuff, but again, nothing happens in this story. And whenever it seems like something will happen, a deus ex machina comes out of nowhere to solve everything.

Money Grab

There is no payoff here, the story stumbles along until the writer finds himself in a box and four chapters later, it's over.

Pretty good!

I was a huge fan of Bird Box. I’ve listened to the audiobook several times, and I liked the movie when it came out as well. I made sure to keep my expectations low for this 2nd installment, but I was so excited I stayed up the night before it’s release so I could listen right away :) it was entertaining, and I almost couldn’t focus on work until I finished the book. I recommend it for sure. But if you didn’t love the first book, maybe there are other books you should try first before this one.