Review: Clever Creatures of the Night by Samantha Mabry

Have you ever finished a book, put it down - and then wondered if you actually liked it or not? That was my experience reading Clever Creatures of the Night by Samantha Mabry, and trust me, it is a strange feeling. The book was released on March 5th to mixed reviews, but as I am trying to to be too influenced by ratings, and also because I actually thought the premise of the book sounded really interesting, I decided to pick it up.

The book follows a girl named Case, as she arrives at a somewhat dilapidated house in the middle of nowhere where her best friend Andrea (Drea for short) has lived with her roommates from boarding school ever since a volcano outside of Austin, Texas suddenly erupted, forcing the group to flee their school in a hurry. Even though months have passed by since the eruption the world has yet to return to normal, and Case has not seen Drea since before the world changed.

But when Case arrives at the house at the arranged time, Andrea is nowhere to be found. When questioned about Drea's whereabout, her roommates act all vague and cagey, and seem more concerned with carrying on with their bizarre rural utopian fantasy life than helping Case locate her friend. They also seem to want Case gone sooner rather than later. Case is desperate to figure out what happened to her best friend, and during her twenty-four hour stay she intends to solve the mystery. But there's definitely something strange going on in the house and the surrounding woods, and the more Case looks into Drea's life, the more she is convinced that her roommates had something to do with her disappearance.

I think the reason I can't give the book more than three stars is because I really didn't feel a connection to any of the characters. We are told Case and Drea are the best of friends, but except for a few flashback scenes from their early high school years, there's really not much to indicate that the two are as close as Case claims. Yes, she carries around a bunch of letters sent to her by aspiring writer Drea, but as Case mentions herself, she only wrote Drea back once. And she doesn't even know the names of Drea's new friends/roommates except for one. Wouldn't a best friend have told her everything about them? While reading, I got the feeling the two were pretty estranged, but were essentially told the opposite was true - hence my confusion.

Where the author truly shines is in the overall mood of the book. The rural location, the post-apocalyptic descriptions of the sky and the air and the strange animal phenomenons - all of it made for a pretty unnerving atmosphere. There was this creepy, claustrophobic feel to the mood that I really liked, and the bizarre habits and actions of Drea's roommates only helps elevate that creepy feeling I got while reading. The creepy atmostphere was by far my favorite part of the book.

This book itself takes place over a twenty-four hour period, and for the first half or so of the book nothing major really happens. We follow Case as she looks around the house for clues of Drea's whereabouts, try to speak to Drea's roomies and see Case just chilling with said roommates. The second half is more action-packed, but by that time I had gotten so used to the slower pace of the first half that the sudden switch in pace felt rather jarring. And I kept waiting and waiting for something big to happen - because it honestly felt like it would - but even when we reached end and the big reveal, it all just felt rather... flat.

Don't get me wrong, I had a genuinely good time reading Clever Creatures of the Night. It's just that the story had so much initial potential that I just wanted it to be more.