Title: Daughter's DrawingsAuthor: Nick Botic
First Published: July 7, 2023
Publisher: Self-Published
Pages: 304
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Format: Ebook
Source: Kindle Unlimited
Rating:
Synopsis:
“I think someone broke into your car.”
It was during a pit stop at a rural diner that we heard these words, and began the years-long terror that would change our lives forever. Someone had indeed broken into our car, but they had ignored the laptops and tablets and luggage.
All they took was our daughter’s most prized possession: a folder full of her artwork.
We didn’t know what to think when Katie’s works started coming back to us, one slightly-amended piece of art at a time. But when this connoisseur of our six-year-old daughter’s creations began bringing the subjects of our her drawings to life in twisted, disturbing ways, we knew that we were dealing with a danger worse than any of us could have ever imagined.
Based on the viral short story of the same name, Daughter’s Drawings is the “surreal, methodical, and tormenting” (Felix Blackwell, Stolen Tongues) tale of a strange stalker’s obsession and the horror of stolen innocence, a relentless onslaught of anxiety that dissects every parent’s worst nightmare and confronts readers with the question, “How far would you go to protect the people you love?”
Get the Book: AmazonReview
Daughter’s Drawings had humble beginnings as an episodic story posted on Reddit that was later expanded and converted into a novel. I can see why it became popular, this book has one hell of a hook: a child’s drawings are stolen and piece by piece the art is returned with… additions. I truly wanted to like this book more than I did, and for the earlier parts of the novel I was really digging it until it started to drag. I had to push myself to finish the book if only to find out how it would end.
While the reveals are action packed and deliver well on the premise the journey there was a struggle. The narrator, Nick, is perhaps one of the most frustrating lead characters in a horror story ever. I struggle to believe that a family that experienced issues with a stalker breaking into their house would leave their doors unlocked. Over and over he just buried his head in the sand and hoped that the obviously dangerous stalker would just lose interest in him and his family. It became repetitive and that took away from the tension built by some of the scarier parts.
This story would have benefitted so much from further editing not for grammar but to work on pacing and story development, at least to me. It’s a decent first novel that will appeal to the right reader, it was unfortunately a miss for me.
Quote
“Someone had broken into our car, and the only thing they’d taken was a folder filled with my daughter’s artwork.”
Content Warnings
View Spoiler »About the Author
About Nick Botic
Nick Botic is an award-winning author based in the United States. After becoming one of the top contributors to the nearly 15-million member horror literature Reddit community r/NoSleep, Nick began publishing books featuring his own work and that of other author under NBH Publishing.
He has since started his own YouTube channel, where he provides various horror content, including the series “100% True: The History of Creepypasta and Internet Horror” and narrations of his stories.
Nick has written over 100 short stories and series, and is currently at work on his debut novel, an expansion of his viral hit “Daughter’s Drawings”, as well as a comic book based on an original short.
Ultimately, Nick is looking to expand into filmmaking and audio drama production.
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