Have you ever come across a book that was simultaneously one of the most disturbing and most beautifully written you’ve ever read?

I’ve only felt this way about one other book, and that was Nabokov’s Lolita; and like Lolita, Creep is so much more than it seems on the surface, sharing that same dark vein of satire and caustic examination of capitalism and beauty standards, combined with lush, decadent prose that unspools into ribbony sentences that then fold into these decadent paragraphs with amazing texture and imagery.

Our protagonist, Alice, is a study in displacement. She feels she is not enough of one thing or another–consistently caught in the middle of two worlds in every manner but one–therefore she is no one and nothing. She’s not light-skinned enough to pass for caucasian but not dark enough to pass for being West African. Not poor enough to be considered pitiful and worthy of sympathy but not rich enough to go to a posh school and be popular by virtue of money. Not dumb enough to not work but not smart enough to get an excellent job. Most of all, Alice feels painfully overshadowed by her thin and beautiful sister, who has always excelled at everything Alice fails at.

Alice could be almost anyone working in the gig economy today, and there’s the dark thrill of it all. She could be your DoorDash driver, Uber, dog walker. In Creep, she’s in your home and she’s cleaning your house. She’s lonely, she’s lost, she’s curious about your life, and she can poke and prod through your entire apartment without you knowing what she’s touched. She has the time to make up stories about you based on your social media and what’s on your walls, your fridge. She empties your trash. I can’t think of anything more terrifying, and yet I’ve never felt like someone needed a hug more than Alice. 5⭐️

🩶 What to Expect 🩶

🍒 Erotomania
💣 Delusional protagonist
🍒 Sentences so pretty they might make you cry
💣 She was lit major
🍒 Un coup de coeur
💣 Internalized misogyny
🍒 Eating disorder
💣 Violent thoughts
🍒 Shaping your world around him
💣 You must hide who you are or no one will ever love you
🍒 Imaginary anniversaries
💣 Toxic parenting
🍒 Imagined slights
💣 Really holding a grudge
🍒 Superstitions & magical thinking
💣 Self-harming
🍒 Ingestion of questionable materials
💣 Being tested
🍒 Visiting the old folks home for entirely selfish reasons
💣 Jane Eyre is not the best model for a great romance
🍒 NGL, there is a good bit of grossness
💣 Desiring to be small and stay small
🍒 If I had been less me and more…
💣 Touch starvation
🍒 It was love, don’t you see that?
💣 Oh the possibilities!


I was provided a copy of this title by the author and publisher via Netgalley. All thoughts, opinions, views, and ideas expressed herein are mine and mine alone. Thank you.

File Under: 5 Star Review/Literary Fiction/OwnVoices/Psychological Thriller/Suspense Thriller/Women’s Fiction

This book was so bizarre and disturbing that I could not put it down. There were so many uncomfortable moments that had me saying WTF?! Alice’s thought process was dark and intense, yet also captivating.

When it came to the writing, I found it to be very over-detailed and chaotic, which made it hard to follow the story at times, but in the same breath the writing style made sense considering how unhinged Alice’s state of mind was.

Thank you Harper Collins for sending a free copy!

Thank you so much to Netgalley and Harper Perennial for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

4.75 stars rounded up

CW: disordered eating, suicidal thoughts, stalking

What an insane ride this book was! I absolutely loved it - I was eating this up and left no crumbs (iykyk)! The writing immediately sucked me in. It exemplified so well Alice's obsessive thoughts and how deeply she believed them. The very repetitive prose really did a great job of showing us exactly what it's like in Alice's mind. The opening chapter was incredibly bizarre and creepy in the best way. And the rest of the story followed suit. The author did a great job of making me empathize for a character who is clearly suffering from mental health issues, but was also doing the most unforgiveable things. I also really loved how Alice's relationship with food was portrayed and how it acted as coping mechanism for her.

By the time we reached the midpoint, my jaw was wide open almost the whole time I was reading. It was like watching a trainwreck and being unable to look away. It was dislocated and on the floor by the end of it. I personally LOVED the ending. I think it was incredibly realistic for the way Alice had been portrayed throughout the book. I felt it was inevitable and incredibly satisfying. What a fantastic debut for the author! I can't way to see what they do next.

I wish I could give half star ratings because this book definitely doesn’t deserve a 3 but 4 feels dishonest. Everytime I got comfortable thinking I knew where the story was going, a wild and crazy curveball was thrown. I enjoyed that very much and it kept me on my toes. Between those insane events, things did feel a little monotonous. Stream of consciousness type books aren’t for everyone but I don’t mind them. I just can anticipate that being a point of contention for some.

As for our main character, whew. I feel so many emotions for her. She CLEARLY needs several different doctors and probably a lot of meds. But I did feel sympathy for her though. Maybe that makes me crazy but hey., what can I say? It was fun checking into her brain for a fit and seeing the dichotomy between her REAL thoughts and how she portrayed herself to those around her. The binging and emphasis on food turned me off, but that’s just a personal thing. Nothing against the book.

Hoooboy - if you are looking for a ride in a book, Creep has got you covered. Alice has been cleaning Tom's apartment for a long while now, and she knows everything about him - his smell, his favorite cornichons and wine. She has fallen deeply in love and knows that Tom will be just as struck by her once she arranges their perfect meeting. We follow Alice through Creep in her stream of consciousness as she ignores her sister, her mom, and her work and becomes more and more obsessed with Tom.

This was an excellent book, but you do need to be in the mood to be in the mind of a deeply unlikeable, unreliable narrator. It took me a bit to get through it as a result, and potentially could have been just a bit shorter since it gets to be somewhat repetitive with Alice's obsession and descent into further stalking tendencies. In addition to Alice's desired relationship with Tom, the novel explores her relationship with her body, how she feels inadequate as a paralegal and cleaner, and her jealousy of others around her.

Thank you very much to NetGalley and to Harper Perennial for the advanced copy.

This was really well written but even darker than I anticipated. I still enjoyed it, quite a bit, but the ending left a little to be desired. Still, if you like dark literary fiction and stories about obsession, this book will deliver. I can't wait for more from this author.

Creep: A Love Story comes out next week on February 25, 2025 and you can purchase HERE.

You think you know what love is, I imagine, but you don't. It's not holding hands, and feeling safe, fond smiles and tender kisses, bringing home silk-petalled flowers on a Friday, picking up that green and bone-dry wine you know He likes. I spit on that. Love is this: when it is your greatest desire to slice open His chest and crawl inside Him to rest. A compulsion to drink His blood, great copper gulps of it, to press yourself to Him, limb to limb, palm to palm, so that you might be absorbed. Burrowing inside His bones, becoming His very marrow. It is disappearing entirely into Him. This is the way I love Him, and the way He must surely love me.

I loved the premise but I just couldn't get behind the style of writing. It made it so hard to follow and took me out of the story rather easily.

What goes on in people's heads? What do the inner monologues of others sound like? What lies and affirmations do they tell themselves to get through the day? What do they obsess and ruminate over, spinning the same narrative around and around until it drives them mad?

Author Emma van Straaten can answer those questions for you, or at least in the way they relate to the rambling mind of the unhinged protagonist of her debut novel, Creep.

Alice IS a creep. She doesn't see herself that way, but we, WE can see it quite plainly. What we can also see is that Alice is unwell, which means that we are going to be spending a significant amount of time with the innermost thoughts of a deranged woman as she mulls over her latest obsession - Tom, the man whose home she cleans and for whom she has fallen madly in love.. Alice is convinced that she and Tom are destined for each other. The only problem is that they have never meant. Everything that Alice knows about Tom, she unethically gleaned from cleaning his apartment. Desperate to get closer to her "love," Alice is now resorting to interfering with Tom's life, hoping to get a chance to meet him face-to-face and prove to him that they are destined to be.

As you can imagine, this is not going to go well.

Told in a chaotic stream of consciousness style, Creep is a chilling deep dive into the every waking thought of a fanatical woman's dark and dangerous obsession. This novel is a gripping look into how the neurotic mind works, poring over every detail and moment of one's life, despairingly trying to assemble and reassemble the pieces until they mesh with one's warped perception of the world. Creep is a disorderly race to a disastrous finish, but the journey there is revelatory.

As a fan of the You series, I quite enjoy obsessive stalker stories and don't mind books that creatively take on the second person or stream of consciousness styles of writing. Creep has all three, but while many parts of this book were incredibly intriguing and mind-blowing, others were just too incoherent, winding, and verbose. Perhaps if I didn't have to work as hard to stayed rooted in this storyline, I would have very much loved this book, but as it stands, I found myself easily becoming lost unless I stayed glued to Alice's every maundering thought.

Recommended to readers who enjoy getting into the minds of unhinged characters.

Creep by Emma Van Straaten

Having a hard time landing on a rating for this one. On one hand, once I picked it up and got into the rhythm of the writing, I couldn’t look away - almost like a car crash on the side of the road. On the other hand, if I put it down, I didn’t want to pick it back up.

It was such a polarizing reading experience. It was both overwritten and felt like it was trying too hard while also striking the perfect uncomfortable tension chord. I will be honest - if I never read another menstruation description like what was in this book for as long as I live, that would be perfectly fine. I wished for more character development early on but I also 100% knew Alice was unhinged from the beginning.

This book delivered on an unhinged female main character, a stream of consciousness, over explained all thoughts style, and uncomfortable, secondhand embarrassment inducing situations.

Thanks to NetGalley and Harper Perennial for the eARC.

Unhinged female characters are not always a win for me. Unfortunately, that was the case with Creep. I never really enjoyed the book and found it hard to get through.

me rn and during the entire book: OMG GIRL NOOOOOOOOO

If you’re in the mood for a good cringe sesh and want to channel your anxiety about the current state of the country into something tangible, read this! The amount of secondhand embarrassment/anxiety/ick you’ll experience with this book is off the charts.

That being said, I LOVED IT!!!!

On a surface level, you’ll get the ick, like I said above, but I also appreciated the mental health aspect of the story. Yes, our protagonist is obsessed, but can she really help it?

(Thank you, Harper Perennial and Paperbacks and NetGalley, for the e-ARC and audiobook ARC in exchange for my honest review.)

Quick synopsis: A woman, Alice, has been so in love with Tom for the past year, only one problem: Tom and Alice have never met and Alice cleans Tom’s apartment every Wednesday.

Review: A dark literary fiction about loneliness, obsession, and identity. This book starts off fast and strong in Alice’s mind and already claiming Tom and her are in love, or at least will be, they’re hearts are drawn together, or so Alice believes. Alice refers to Tom as Him or He or His, capitalizing the H to show some sort of god complex she feels toward Tom. If you are a fan of women being obsessive toward strange men and hating themselves this is for you. I personally don’t love these types of stories but I did find myself enveloped in this story and ripping through the pages. Alice is dysphoric about her body and there is a lot of negativity between her body and food which I didn’t love. There seemed to start being some growth toward the end which I appreciated but then it was ripped away just as fast.

This book started out on fire! Very intense and crazy vibes which I loved… Unfortunately, the second half fizzled out! I just wanted so much more from the ending! 3 Stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️!

DNFed at 20%. The premise of this book was so promising and I was so excited to get approved for this ARC but as I was reading I just couldn’t keep my eyes on the page. I love an unhinged FMC and the descriptions of Alice in Tom’s apartment and visiting his grandfather had me cringing in the best way possible, everything else was unfortunately boring. The writing also felt a little juvenile and as much as I want to know what happens when Tom and Alice finally meet I just can’t force myself to get there.

While I have been enjoying books with unhinged women and obsession this book was a miss for me. I was super intrigued by the concept of a cleaner obsessed with the man of the flat she cleans. I really wanted to like this book. I felt like the pace of the book was very slow and unfortunately I did not jive with the authors writing. This combination made the book not very enjoyable for me. I think this is a book you will either really love or not with not much in between

Thank you to Netgally for providing this ARC.

I really enjoyed this one! In Creep, we are introduced to an unhinged narrator, Alice, who is obsessed with the man whose flat she cleans every week. Her character is similar to Martha from Baby Reindeer, or Helga from Hey Arnold if she were an adult lol. The book does not waste time diving into the weird, you immediately know how creepy Alice is from page one.

This book is like reading a 250 page diary of someone’s intrusive thoughts. Not a ton happens plotwise, we are mostly just following Alice’s day to day activities. But I was really invested in finding out how far she would go with her obsession. Others have noted that the writing style is a little much, and it definitely is, but it made sense for the character and theme of the book.

First off, what a perfectly named book. So perfect it makes me smile.
I’d recommend this to fans of ‘my husband.’ Very similar stream of consciousness from a very obsessive main character. But while I felt that book wore out it’s welcome, (I am sorry.) ‘Creep’ kept me fully on the hook. This book depicts obsession, yeah, but most interesting to me was Alice’s loneliness. Raw loneliness, not the melancholy kind but the bitter, rejected and ugly kind. Read this one for downward spirals, violations of privacy, violations in general, self loathing, menstruation, disgust, and judgement. A valentine’s day classic to ME.
Out 2/25. Thank you harper perennial for the arc!

This book was a TRIP. Alice's delusions were truly spectacular and I marveled at the way van Straaten was able to morph and shape every interaction to fit the narrative.

In Creep, we meet Alice who is head over heels, completely, unhealthily obsessed with Tom. Tom is a gentleman for whom Alice cleans his home. She has never actually met Tom and they have never had a real conversation beyond perfunctory notes and thank you's for the cleaning.

The obsession builds and builds throughout the novel and seeing into Alice's mind was at once horrifying and utterly captivating. I loved the morsels we got about Alice's past and the glimpses into her real life apart from her thoughts about Tom.

I listened to this novel on audio and it was done so well. Hanako Footman's delivery was impeccable and I could feel the mania and obsession building with every new scene.

This is a quick and unsettling read. I definitely recommend! Thank you to Harper Perennial and Libro.fm for the copy.

I so badly wanted to love this book. Unhinged female main character? Yes. But this book felt just a big juvenile and underdeveloped.

I loved this book!! It checked every box for what I like in a book. Alice is so unhinged and i HAD to know what she would do next. I could actually see this all really happening, which is terrifying. I highly recommend this book and it exceeded my expectations. The authors writing is so good and I will definitely be checking out more.