What a fun, weird, kind of emotionally distressing book--it had it all!

Alice is not well. She's in a very dedicated relationship with Tom, whom she's never met. But she's the maid who cleans his one-bedroom apartment (ok, Tom) and knows things like how many vitamins are left in the jar compared to last week, but not that that's absolutely a red flag. Alice's obsession with Tom grows, along with her own self-hatred, and the list of unhinged things she's done to get close to him is never-ending. 

Alice isn't likable, but she's so entertaining, and I felt very immersed in her POV. To the point that I would be careful reading this is you're feeling low or if characters having body image and eating issues might get to you. I ended up feeling a little more dragged down than I expected to after reading, but it was so well done I couldn't be that upset. I wasn't sure where it was going, or even where I wanted it to go, but what a ride, and the end did not disappoint. If you enjoy weird girl lit fic, short, dark books, satirical humor, and support women being a little delulu, this one's for you. Thanks to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for the advance copy in exchange for my honest review.

Creep is a filthy, funny, and feral novella that follows a young woman spiraling through obsession, humiliation, and bodily chaos. Alice becomes fixated on a man she cleans for, and what follows is a grotesquely intimate unraveling. There’s self-destructive sex, compulsive stalking, and an alarming disregard for hygiene. It’s short, but it lingers like the smell of something rotting under your bed.


WHAT THE FUCK did I just read?!?

Emma van Straaten has written a THE unhinged woman. This book is repulsive, hilarious, and honestly kind of liberating. The narrator is pure chaos. She’s spiraling and nasty and obsessed and just completely feral. I loved her.

Reading this felt like falling face-first into someone’s private, festering diary. I gagged. I laughed out loud. I questioned my own sanity a little. There’s piss, blood, grime, desperate sex, and the kind of oversharing that makes you recoil and then lean in closer. I kept wondering what happened to her to make her this way, and then I kind of didn’t care. She is what she is, and she’s not apologizing.

If you liked Wetlands, My Year of Rest and Relaxation, or anything Ottessa Moshfegh touched while blacked out, this is your next obsession.

Verdict:
Four stars. I don’t know if I need a shower or a tattoo. Maybe both.

Unfortunately, 30% in and I have to put this book down. I was drawn to this book immediately, as I am drawn to stories with unhinged characters, but the writing is overpowering the story. The excessive words and run on sentences are confusing and I’m finding it hard to follow the plot. I wish there was some background on why Alice is the way she is. This story will be perfect for someone, but not for me.

CREEP is an aptly titled, unsettling novel about obsession. It’s a disturbing, meandering narrative of Alice, a woman entirely consumed by her delusions of an intimate relationship with a man whose home she cleans. (Note: she’s not actually a cleaner by profession - not anymore. She has long since moved on to a job as as a paralegal but takes an hour-long break each week to clean his home.) As you might expect, the plot escalates and as she gradually reveals more about the extent of her infatuation, things become blurrier - what’s real? What is imagined?

I actually found the writing style to be quite compelling, despite how unhinged it was to be in Alice’s mind, as I felt as if it mirrored her consciousness. I read it in a sitting - probably ill-advised, given the content. There is a layered commentary here about how callously women’s bodies and minds are analyzed and then how easily dismissed. There’s a cleverness here that I can’t describe.

I am cautious in endorsing any plot that centers around stalking and violent obsession like this - but then I think about Stephen King’s MISERY, the continued success of YOU, and so many more. I suppose sometimes a book isn’t necessarily a read you enjoy and yet you recognize its impact. It feels strange to rate it, really.

This is not a book for every reader. In fact, I might suggest that it’s not a book for most readers. But personally, I will think about it again and again for months to come.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Perennial for the advance copy. All opinions are entirely my own.

Wow. This book surprised the hell out of me! When it began, I was thinking this was going to be a lighthearted yet darkly quirky book about obsession. As you get to know Alice (the book is written with her voice), you realize just how deep her character is, how ill her mind is, and how loneliness can drive people to madness.

Before getting a job as a paralegal, Alice was making ends meet by cleaning houses. Soon after starting to clean Tom’s house, she got rid of her other clients, and she began to crave her Wednesday mornings spent cleaning for the man she has fallen in love with. And he loves her too, she just knows it. They haven’t met, but it’s clear to Alice that every fingerprint was left for her, that his laptop remains unlocked so she can be a witness to his life, and the single toothbrush in his bathroom makes it clear that he only wants one woman - her.

After a year, she decides it’s time to meet him in person. He will be blown away by her beauty and charm, they will eventually marry and have babies, and maybe even move outside of the city as they grow old together. She’s consulted the astrology charts, and has found the perfect Wednesday for them to finally be together. That day didn’t go to plan, but she soon finds out he’s taking a trip to Paris with his mother and sister. All the better - she can meet her new family at the same time, and they will sip champagne and eat chocolate and croissants and start planning for the future.

As Alice becomes more and more unhinged, you get a full picture of how mentally ill she is, and how loneliness and ugliness made her who she is today. She’s quite the sympathetic character, despite her misdeeds, her disordered eating and self-harm. The title of this book is perfect, as this is definitely a creepy love story that gets quite deep into Alice’s psyche. It also has a few surprises, so it’s hard to put this one down! What a great concept and uniquely-written book. 4.5 stars, rounded up for being a debut.

(Thank you to Harper Collins, Emma van Straaten and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my review.)

For a debut novel, Creep is pretty good. As a fan of stalker stories this premise really intrigued me. Execution was okay, I'm hit or miss with stream of consciousness litfic.

Alice was both tragic and extremely unlikable. Her experience of being a woman in this world was understandable and made me feel for her. However she was completely deranged and delusional. While many books leave me believing that most people are terrible Creep was the opposite, where I was struck with the kindness that everyone showed Alice. They tried so hard! And she was so awful!

I've never been a creepy stalker but this felt very… realistic? With someone like Joe Goldberg it's so far fetched that no one noticed him. Alice did her creepy stuff out of sight which was more believable (still unhinged, but believable). The resolution seemed realistic too.

Overall, a decent book that you can finish in a day.

Unfortunately i DNF’d about 10% in, i just couldn’t get into it- it felt like everytime i picked it up, i would just read the same paragraph over and over and finally just decided to call it. Maybe I’ll try it again later? We’ll see!

I'm glad I gave this one a read and it was good, for me I think it just didn't hook me and I wasn't in the domestic thriller reading mood when I did read it. I'll give it another try later in the year.

Creep is a dark, intense debut novel centered around Alice, a deeply flawed young woman struggling with extreme neediness, low self-esteem, and a vivid, delusional fantasy about unrequited love. As the story unfolds, her obsession with a man she cleans for grows disturbingly more intense and unsettling, challenging readers to confront the complexities of self-worth and emotional isolation. Emma Van Straaten crafts a haunting, unforgettable character in Alice, making this a gripping and disturbing read that's hard to put down.

Unfortunately I don’t think the writing style of this one was for me. This started off great but it was extremely descriptive to the point I caught myself feeling impatient which is unusual for me. The prose was more flowery than I tend to prefer although the plot itself was very intriguing. I might try this again in the future. This reminded me of My Husband by Maud Ventura but for some reason I didn’t have these issues with that one. I think My Husband gave more internal monologue and character exploration whereas this one was more so descriptive of her surroundings (tastes, smells, etc). I think I’m more interested in what’s going on in the character’s mind and what made her the way she is. I felt like I was reading The Scarlet Letter again and I didn’t love that. It may have been the wrong time for this one because I just ultimately didn’t have the patience.

This novel got under my skin in a good way. I always appreciate seeing things from the viewpoint of a character whose actions or thoughts would, from the outside, be seen as incomprehensible.

Alice is in love. Tom is an incredible man, everything she ever dreamed of in a partner, and she feels so lucky that he came into her life. The only problem is, Tom doesn’t know she exists – outside of the fact that he has a cleaner named Alice, who tidies his apartment every Wednesday. Alice does other things in his apartment, too, but Tom doesn’t need to know that. And anyway, soon they’ll be together, and it will be her home too.

Creep is one of those uncomfortable, cringe-y character studies featuring a deeply disturbed protagonist, so if you enjoy those, it will definitely be your vibes. It’s told in a stream of consciousness style that keeps the reader unrelentingly in Alice’s head, so we can only watch as her obsession with Tom grows and she becomes increasingly unhinged. It’s claustrophobic and icky, but it’s impossible to look away. The tension in the narrative comes from not knowing just when, and how, Alice will escalate things; she’s unpredictable and undeniably dangerous, but she’s also sympathetic – and all of these elements work together to make for a riveting reading experience.

I don’t know what it says about me that I just love a good obsessive stalker love story character study. But if your tastes run similar to mine, Creep is an excellent example of the genre. Thank you to Harper Perennial for the complimentary reading opportunity.

Creep by Emma Van Straaten puts you directly inside Alice’s mind, and let me tell you—it is uncomfortable. Alice is obsessive, intrusive, and downright creepy in a way that made my skin crawl. I’m usually all for unlikable characters, but this book took it to a whole new level. The secondhand embarrassment was so intense that I actually had to set the book down a few times just to recover.

If you can imagine a character that’s part American Psycho, part Joe from You, and part Helga from Hey Arnold!—all rolled into one messy, unsettling package—that’s Alice. It’s unhinged, it’s awkward, and it’s a masterclass in discomfort. While it wasn’t always an enjoyable experience, it was definitely unforgettable. If you like your characters messy and your reading experiences deeply uncomfortable, this one might be for you.

Wow, this book made me so uncomfortable but also kept me going. I couldn’t wait to see what happened next. It took me a while to get fully invested in these characters, but once I did I couldn’t put it down.

This very much gave me familiar vibes (movies, tv shows, and other books) but it still felt like its own. This will absolutely not be for everyone, but those that like it will be hooked.

The book was okay but felt a little slow and not enough development. DNF at around 40 percent of the novel.

Creep was, well, creepy. It's an interesting premise-a woman who has suffered some trauma in her life and becomes obsessed with a man she's never met-through cleaning his home. She has built up a relationship in her head and convinced herself of their destiny. The prose is more free-flowing, poetic at times and a bit hard to follow when it delves into stream of consciousness. I enjoy psychological thrillers/mysteries and while there is the element of that here it fell a little flat for me. The narrator is unreliable, which can be a great trope, but the reasons behind the obsession and trauma were not well fleshed out and the characters really unlikeable. I enjoyed the premise and the writing in general but the ending fell flat and completely unresolved. 2.5 stars rounded up to 3.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for my honest feedback.

This chilling novel is a compelling story that will get under your skin! I enjoyed the stream of consciousness style of writing and the dark dive into madness but I did find the pace overall a bit slow. I will definitely read more of Emma van Straaten’s work!

One of my most favorites reads of the year. Fits the genre of hot girl lit fic and the messy girl genre that is booking. I enjoyed the writing and the pacing and the characters unreliable!! I loved it all.

4 Stars – Unsettling, Unhinged, and Weird in the Best Way

Alice is not likable at all—she gives the absolute ick and made me openly cringe more times than I can count. That said, from the book description, I knew this would be unhinged, and it absolutely delivered. This is not a love story; it’s an obsessive, self-deprecating spiral into delusion, loneliness, and self-loathing. The writing is sharp, uncomfortable, and darkly compelling, making it impossible to look away even when you want to.

It’s graphic, messy, and what I’d classify as “weird girl lit,” so if that’s not your thing, this book probably isn’t for you. But if you’re into disturbing character studies and narrators who make your skin crawl, Creep is worth the read.

Thank you, NetGalley & Harper Perennial, for the e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Sadly, this was a DNF for me. I’m sure I’m in the minority here but I just couldn’t get into this one. I really wanted to love it. I really like books like You by Caroline Kepnes but this one just fell a little short to me. It just felt overly wordy and just wasn’t very interesting sadly. It didn’t grip me right away from the first page. All thoughts and opinions are solely my own! Thank you so much to Netgalley and the publisher for a copy of the arc in return for an honest review!