Book Title: Hidden Pictures
Author: Jason Rekulak
Publication year: 2022
Publisher: Flatiron Books (US)
ISBN: 9781250819345
Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all.
– Abraham Lincoln
When this novel first came out, I encountered it almost everywhere on the internet — from social media feeds to book forums. While I typically approached online reviews with scepticism, the synopsis intrigued me. It described a young woman just out of rehab who starts working as a babysitter for a wealthy family and notices something strange about the young boy’s artwork.
I often find myself drawn to unique takes on supernatural thrillers. So, it was no surprise that “Hidden Pictures” quickly rose to the top of my reading list.
As mentioned earlier, the story follows a character named Mallory, who struggles with personal guilt and grief over her sister’s death, leading to her downward spiral into drug addiction. After being clean for 18 months, her sponsor arranges for her to babysit for a couple named Caroline and Ted for the summer, following a successful in-person interview. The couple’s young son, Teddy, is about to start at a new school, so Mallory’s job is to help him come out of his shell and make friends over the summer.
However, we soon learn that Teddy has an imaginary friend named Anya, who appears in his drawings. Author Rekulak takes his time slowly introducing the photos, Anya’s presence, and Caroline’s strong opposition to the suggestion that his drawings mean anything.
As Mallory sifts through Teddy’s drawings, so do you — one minute you’re reading about some scribbles that kind of look like a bunny sitting in the grass, and the next thing you know, you’re looking at it. Every drawing that Teddy creates is in “Hidden Pictures”. This means that when Mallory sees his disturbing drawings — like a woman who looks like she crawled out of “The Ring”, or a man dragging a woman by the ankles through a forest — so do you.
Meanwhile, Mallory begins running again — her passion before the accident with her sister — and meets a young man her age, Adrian, with whom she later becomes connected. Adrian becomes her rock, the person she can lean on, as things begin to unfold and several truths are revealed.
Rekulak keeps his cards close to his chest throughout until we reach an explosive final scene where everything is revealed, followed by an epilogue that fills in the gaps and lets us know what occurred post ‘The End’.
Along the way, the novel kept me on the edge of my seat. I was hooked from the beginning and wholly invested in Mallory’s quest to find the truth.
However, although I was fully invested at times, I did find it overly long. There was a significant amount of repetition in chapters, and I wasn’t sure why we had two or three chapters in a row that essentially told the reader the exact same thing.
Regarding the final ‘reveal’, there were a few sentences that I think were supposed to be subtle but stuck out like a billboard, which created an ending that I didn’t find as shocking as I think it was supposed to be.
Overall, from page one until the very end, I was invested. I wanted to know what happened, and even when I had figured something out, I had to know the truth, and I couldn’t wait to get back to the book. That, to me at least, suggests that this was a really solid book, and I think if you’re looking for a supernatural thriller that will have you racing through it, look no further.
