Under the Bed

by Ethan Chen

Lily is a young teenager who is abused at home by her mother and tormented at school by bullies. Her only close friend is Ava, whom she’s known since childhood. That changes when Lily discovers a small and strange creature hiding under her bed. She names her new friend Spike and the two quickly form a close bond. When Lily’s life is threatened, Spike transforms into a deadly monster who kills to protect her. Lily struggles to keep Spike a secret from Ava while trying to control the violence and chaos erupting around her. As the death toll rises, Lily begins to change into someone she no longer recognizes.

574 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 10, 2024

Reviews

[Meghan Roche · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing!!! So terrifying I peed my pants!!!😱😰😰 highly recommend to any horror fans!

[Chris Merola]

I really enjoyed the concept of this story, Spike's various transformations (and their origins) as well as the core relationship between Lily and Ava + the consistent scaling up of stakes throughout the narrative. That said, there were a few things which hindered my ability to fully connect with the story.

Much like Carrie, which feels like an inspiration, this is a very manichean world - Under the Bed characters are mostly 100% good or whole hog evil to a degree that felt distracting/excessively signalled the hand of the author. Additionally, a large portion of the prose was the statement of subtext, which meant there wasn't a ton for the reader to piece together on their own.

The tail end of the story had some POV switches that I found jarring, and some of the major character changes in the story were a little hard to buy (particularly the move from Lily unintentionally to intentionally killing her bullies). But I think the general structure of this could hold up well if exposition was offered in a more engaging and clever way. This was written with passion and Ethan should keep going, I'm excited to see what's next for him