Slender Man - Review

Author: Anonymous

Genre: Horror 

Format: Paperback

Pages: 335

But I believe that there are things that live in the darkness, and I believe those things have teeth.

While I've never really jumped on the Reddit train, I do remember when the Slender Man was created. I remember the two girls who blamed it for a murder they committed. And, I know he creeps my roommate out to no end. I also know that I adore Creepy Pastas, and Slender Man is my favorite of all of them. It's a creature that's effortlessly creepy because it's that thing in the darkness that's both there and not there. Plus the suit-looking thing, how tall it is the lore, it all sings to me. So when I found this book tucked away in the horror section, I saw it was written by "Anonymous" and done in the found footage format. 

I was all in. Then this book sat on my TBR card for a year until I put it on the stack of books to read in 2023. So glad I didn't put this off another year. While this book wasn't exactly what I was expecting, I devoured it because it blew away my expectations. I'm a slow reader for many reasons, but I read this book in three days. I can normally sit still long enough to read about a hundred pages a day on my days off, and a little less when I work. 

Slender Man consumed any free time I had over three days. Anytime I wasn't at my job I was reading. Bus, got me to work early, go to Starbucks and throw down a hundred pages. Have to wait thirty minutes for my bus after work, get a beer, and read. This was how attached to Matt I was through the whole book. How hellbent I was to know what exactly was happening, and what was going to happen next.

And grant it, the Found Footage format does make it easier to consume page count because there's less on the page. You can have that point. But, the format doesn't always work with every story. I've DNFed a few books where this format makes the story hard to read. But, for Slender Man I don't feel like there was another way to tell this story as effectively.  One is because our phones, social media, and internet intake these days are massive for every generation. Whole lives are lived online. So it makes sense that if something terrible was happening, the record of it all would be on our main character's, Matt, phone.

I also liked the unknown aspects of this story. Things Matt couldn't remember, things Lauren couldn't remember. Audio that we never got to hear. All of those things work into the lore and into this story well. Watching how Matt isolated himself, and 'hearing' him talk about how scared he is. For me, it made me so much visceral how scared this kid was. 

Then add on the police interviews and the clever little news articles to make it feel like this could have really happened. It all flowed very well into a cohesive story that I don't think I would have read as fast or really enjoyed if this had been written in the traditional sense. So many good choices were made with this book that is so easy to fall into the story, the school, and the lives of the Bakers. Every little thing has a purpose if at the time you don't really understand at the moment what is. Steve's actions had the perfect fallout for the end.

But, hands down the connection with Brad and why he was important was perfect to the ending of this story. I honestly thought Brad was kind of a throwaway character, or maybe another trick. I was very wrong because the ending to the book, no matter how much I thought maybe we'd get a happy kind of ending. It was amazing. I love how this book ended. It was kind of like being dropped off a cliff and the drop was much shorter than you thought it was. 

This was a solid read for me. Yeah, I only gave it four stars, and here's why. I wanted it to be just a bit scarier. Hands down this book is a total mind game, and it did give me some trippy freaking dreams for a few days. Like the lucid ones where you can't quite remember if you woke up until you awake. Still, I'd have loved a few more jump scares. However, there are some solid creepy-as-hell moments in this.  It was way more of a mind-bend than I thought it would be, which was solid.

Still, I wanted a bit more need to sleep with lights on moments. 

HAPPY READING!!