Amanda and Ed’s lives are going great until, wouldn’t ya know it, she goes and gets possessed by a demon! Now their marriage is going to pot and it’s all the demon’s fault! Time for some magic shampoo to save the day - but is it too late?!/1,
Sara Gran is best known for her Claire DeWitt novels, which I couldn’t get into, but I’m also a sucker for horror so I gave Come Closer a shot - naaah. Gran’s not a terrible writer but her attempt at horror fiction is weak.
You could look at the story in two different ways: take it at face value or see it as an allegory of a failing marriage. Because there’s not much to explain how or why a demon would possess Amanda randomly just as her marriage to Ed is falling apart and what little explanation there is of a motivation mentioned towards the end is feeble at best.
In that regard, I can see it maybe working - if Gran had come up with more interesting scenes for that angle. What we get instead is the usual horror stuff. A dog that used to like her growls at her, she behaves out of character, like being mean to people, starts being a rebel without a cause, etc. There’s nothing standout here and the supernatural demon scenes were cliched and boring.
Little moments here and there are effective like when the doctors seem to know more about her life than what she’s told them - wuh oh is there a demonic conspiracy a la Rosemary’s Baby?! - as are the memory lapses where she blacks out and wakes up possibly having done questionable things. The book isn’t poorly written, it just felt a bit rushed.
But this Goosebumps for adults is mostly really dull, even granting that horror is a difficult genre to get right. Unimpressive stuff, I wouldn’t recommend getting close to Sara Gran’s Come Closer.
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