Hidden Pictures by Jason Rekulak

From Jason Rekulak, Edgar-nominated author of The Impossible Fortress, comes a wildly inventive spin on the classic horror story in Hidden Pictures, a supernatural thriller about a woman working as a nanny for a young boy with strange and disturbing secrets.

Fresh out of rehab, Mallory Quinn takes a job as a babysitter for Ted and Caroline Maxwell. She is to look after their five-year-old son, Teddy.

Mallory immediately loves it. She has her own living space, goes out for nightly runs, and has the stability she craves. And she sincerely bonds with Teddy, a sweet, shy boy who is never without his sketchbook and pencil. His drawings are the usual fare: trees, rabbits, balloons. But one day, he draws something different: a man in a forest, dragging a woman’s lifeless body.

Then, Teddy’s artwork becomes increasingly sinister, and his stick figures quickly evolve into lifelike sketches well beyond the ability of any five-year-old. Mallory begins to wonder if these are glimpses of a long-unsolved murder, perhaps relayed by a supernatural force.

Knowing just how crazy it all sounds, Mallory nevertheless sets out to decipher the images and save Teddy before it’s too late.

This book is on my list of favorites for the year. The way it was written, the plot twist, the characters all come together to make one amazing book. 

The story follows Mallory who is in recovery from drug addiction. She has been clean and sober for over a year and is looking for a job to get her life back together. The job she gets sounds like a dream. Basically being a nanny for a young boy, she gets her own cottage in the backyard to live in. But of course the job isn’t quite as dreamy as it seems. 

The boy, Teddy, has a creepy looking imaginary friend that he draws pictures of. One of the best things about this book is we get to see the pictures that this boy draws which lend themselves to the story making it unique and a little extra creepy. As the story progresses Mallory tries to unravel the mystery of the “imaginary” friend as it seems less like an overactive imagination and more like a ghost. Teddy’s parents don’t believe in ghosts or the supernatural, firmly planting their beliefs in science. However as the story goes on things are less easy to explain and it seems more and more like this family is being haunted by a ghost. But why are they being haunted? 

The author did an amazing job immersing the reader in Mallory’s world. This book was a page turner and I struggled to put it down. The plot twist near the end was also so well done I never saw it coming. The pictures in the book definitely make it worth picking up either the ebook or physical book versus reading it as an audiobook. You would still get the gist of the book as an audiobook but the pictures lend to the story so well. Makes everything feel more real and more creepy. 

Trigger Warnings: Drugs and Drug Addiction

Overall Rating: 9/10

Re-readability Rating: 10/10