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The last stop in my end-of-the-world reading marathon was Bird Box, the 2014 debut novel by Josh Malerman, an author/ musician based in Michigan. This is a book that tears right down the middle for me, with a fantastic hook and a cellar chock full of horrors on the odd numbered pages, wretched writing on the even numbered pages. I won't have my mind made up how many stars this deserves until I finish writing here.

The novel begins in a house in suburban Detroit where Malorie lives with her young children, Boy and Girl. For four years, none of them have ventured outside except briefly, and always wearing blindfolds. The windows are covered with cardboard and wood. Dark stains Malorie has been unable to clean away soak the carpet in various spots of the house, which she once shared with six roommates. There is no electricity, no running water. And no visitors.

Protected by a fog that rolls in one October morning, Malorie makes the decision to flee with the children. Donning their blindfolds, they make their way along a path to a well, which opens into a clearing and within eighty yards, a dock on a river. Having trained the children to use their hearing and little else, Malorie warns them that there are things out here that will hurt them and to listen. Climbing into a rowboat, they head into the unknown.

Moving back in time four years and nine months, Malorie moves in to a rental home in Westcourt she finds with her sister, Shannon. Malorie is late for her period and while examining her belly in the bathroom, is alerted by her sister of a news update on what in recent days has become known as "the Russia Report"; three unrelated cases of normal people brutally attacking each other before taking their own lives. It's believed the victims saw something before turning deranged. And now, there's a case in Alaska.

A pregnancy test confirms that Malorie is five weeks along by a guy she doesn't seem to know well. The neighborhood has begun acting strange. People stay indoors and when they have to go outside, shield their eyes. Within three months, the girls have covered the windows with blankets. What is now known as "the Problem" has been reported as far east as Maine and south to Florida. A national curfew has been installed. Malorie asks her sister what it is that people could be seeing.

The sisters ask each other this question constantly. It'd be impossible to count the number of theories that have been birthed online. All of them scare the hell out of Malorie. Mental illness as a result of the radio waves in wireless technology is one. An erroneous evolutionary leap in humankind is another. New Agers say it's a matter of humanity being in touch with a planet that is close to exploding, or a sun that is dying. Some people believe there are creatures out there.

Hearing something upstairs, Malorie discovers (view spoiler)[Shannon has pried loose a corner of blanket covering her bedroom window and stabbed herself in the chest with a pair of scissors (hide spoiler)]. She climbs in her car and barely watching the road, is able to make her way to Riverbridge, where she's read in the classifieds about a "safe house" opening its doors to strangers. After being pulled inside the door and searched, she opens her eyes.

Malorie's roommates at Riverbridge are Tom, a widowed schoolteacher who lost his 8-year-old daughter. Don, who grows more despondent the longer they stay cooped up. Cheryl, a reactionary. Jules and Felix, not as strong as Tom or Don. They came under the invitation of George, who believed that there were creatures out there, driving people mad at the mere sight of them. His theory that the creatures might be safe to view through the lens of a video recording turned out to be dead wrong.

Bird Box unfolds with two hooks that peeled me to the page and shot me on a rocket to the final page: What happened to Malorie's roommates? What are people seeing outside that's driving them to lose their minds? It would take a rare kind of horror fan to bail out before Malerman answers both questions. This is a quick read, which terse chapters bouncing between the house in Riverbridge and Malorie's journey along the river to sanctuary.

Malerman also does a good job conjuring horror. In one scene, Felix gathers water at the well blindfolded and begins to fear something is not only there with him in the woods, but actually inside the well. Cheryl has a similar freak out on the front porch with something -- a leaf or a creature -- touching her shoulder. Malorie's expedition to a local bar for supplies with her dog Victor taut with suspense as well.

What makes Bird Box difficult to recommend is that strong as Malerman's ideas are, his writing is just as bad. Not much thought seems to have gone in to character. I wanted to know who Malorie was, what she was doing before doomsday and how she survived after the fall. There's not much in the book to indicate how she managed to stay alive. Malerman's prose and dialogue are wretched. For starters, he makes the amateur's mistake of making characters use each others names in their dialogue. Constantly.

"Malorie," he said, as Jules called that he was ready to go, "the house needs all of us."

"Tom."

"Don't let the nerves get to you like they did the last time. Instead, lean on the fact that we came back last time. We'll do it again. And this time, Malorie, act as a leader. Help them when they get scared."

"Tom."

"You need the medicine, Malorie. Sterilization. You're close."

Bird Box contains the worst writing of any book I've read since joining ŷ������ fifteen months ago. The details I savor in a good novel are simply missing here. The political conflict inherit in a group at the end of the world are only broadly sketched, never fully explored. Characters form vague relationships, not quite positive or negative, just occupying the same space together. There's a dog named "Victor" I'm convinced is the blandest, least characteristic name I'd ever heard for a dog. "Dog" would have had more personality.

My friend Carmen rates romance novels on the basis of "romance stars", the idea being that three stars for Wild Holiday Nights is not the same as three stars for Margaret Atwood. Employing her system, I'd grant Bird Box four "horror stars". My gut tells me it simply isn't that good. As a novel that wades into the same waters as The Dog Stars and Station Eleven, the lack of quality in the writing is a real disappointment.