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For a book marketed as horror fiction, this takes itself awfully seriously. The abusive content was over the top, maudlin and shallow in a way - you can tell the author was going for a more literary approach, but there wasn't any depth in the way multiple abuses were portrayed - arbitrary cruelty and pain happened to good, kind people for no apparent reason. While I'm sure this happens in real life, it rang unrealistic on the page.

I was a bit annoyed at the author's stylistic tendency to write emotionally impacting scenes as two-page rambling run-on sentences.

This was a disappointment, because the concept of the monster doll Mr. Hands was what attracted me, and the prologue bit with the weird guy telling his story in the bar seemed promising. I feel like the author wanted to write something 'serious' but use horror marketing to find readership, and while I'm okay with serious writing when I'm in the right mood, I felt a little cheated because I don't read horror for the purpose of moralizing. There's a lot of preachiness here about the politics of child abduction/abuse and it's done in such a way that the characters are used as mouthpieces, rather than the theme being incorporated in a way that feels organic.