DNF'd at 31% - The writing style is too descriptive and meandering for me and I am not intrigued enough by the plot to keep going.

[TW/CW: Language, anxiety, toxic family relationships]

*****SPOILERS*****
About the book:
Alice and Tom are made for each other. Deeply connected, they share a flat in London, go to galleries together, enjoy the same books and wine. They even share a toothbrush. It’s all picture perfect.

Except Alice and Tom have never met.

Alice has been cleaning Tom’s apartment every Wednesday for a year. With every smudge wiped from his coffee cup, every multivitamin counted in the jar, Alice spirals deeper into infatuation, imagining a love so powerful it might erase a lifetime of self-hatred and loneliness.

But as Alice prepares for the moment when she and Tom will finally meet face-to-face, she discovers that love might not be the cure she thought it was. Instead, their coming together sets off a chain of events that shatters everything Alice thought she knew and burns her world to the ground.
Release Date: February 25th, 2025
Genre: Woman's Fiction
Pages: 256
Rating: ⭐

What I Liked:
1. The plot sounded fantastic
2. Alice is certainly unhinged

What I Didn't Like:
1. The writing is absolutely atrocious

Overall Thoughts:
{{Disclaimer: I write my review as I read}}

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.


Okay soooooo this all sounds about right to me. Who doesn't dream of living in the person you loves flesh?

Oh it's one of these books where he/him is He/Him and gets capitals for his importance.

What is our main character even saying. I feel like I understand every third sentence written.

Final Thoughts:
I tried to get jnto this book but the way the author wrote just totally took me out of it. I had no idea what the character was trying to say because there's so much written in between the lines that doesn't matter. I don't need a story to be written straight forward - I actually like a story that takes liberties but this was just like mush mouth. Sometimes an author writes a book and it's so out there that it feels like they're trying so hard to be unique and honestly that's the impression I got of this book.

I did end up having to dnf it because I just could not get through this writing, which sucks because I was absolutely completely excited about this book. It sounded so crazy. What's not to love about a maid that secretly imagines being in love with one of her clients enough to suck on his toothbrush? Unfortunately like I said I just couldn't continue with the writing.

4/5 stars — a cautionary tale about being delulu 🥴 van Straaten’s writing is visceral, for better and for worse: lush food descriptions (and disordered eating), the debilitating longing for an unrequited love, Alice’s self-loathing and self-harm— all are written with a depth you can feel yourself no matter what degree you relate to Alice (hopefully, minimal). I was hooked from the beginning and found this a very captivating read, going from the disturbing to the mundane and back again as Alice strenuously navigates her life. don’t fall into the trap of thinking the title is cheeky. Alice IS a creep, and that’s my warning to you all. finally weird, sad-girl lit where her weirdness and sadness and grossness isn’t glamorized!

thank you to harper perennial & netgalley for an advance copy in exchange for an honest review!

Plot: 4/5
Characters: 4/5
Pacing: 4/5
Writing: 4/5
Enjoyment: 4/5

Alice and Tom are the perfect couple. Tom just doesn't know it yet.

Alice cleans Tom's apartment every Wednesday and has for over a year. She's gotten to know Tom through books, food and art. All of this is perfect, except Alice and Tom have never met.

Creep is Emma van Straaten's version of a romantic Single White Female. Alice is absolutely out of her mind, but...by the end, I just felt sorry for her and sad for her loneliness.

Alice takes everything just a step too far. Sharing a toothbrush? GIRL. Van Straaten is able to capture the absolute insanity of obsession, down to the darkest of feelings.

This is anything but a love story, and that's what makes it so good.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Engaging and entertaining. A a recommended purchase for collections where thriller and stalker stories are popular.

An ominous, steady burn.

A young woman falls in love with the man whose house she cleans, even though they’ve never met.
The title to this novel matches the vibes perfectly. I really enjoy books about obsession so when I read the premise of this one I couldn’t wait to get stuck in. The entire time reading I felt dread, convinced Alice was capable of something depraved. The author did a great job pulling me into Alice’s lonely world, and it was clear there was more going on with her mental health. Although, sometimes her interiority felt overwhelming, causing me to lose touch with the scene, the character’s voice was compelling. The story gripped me throughout, but the pace was on the slower side compared to what I normally read. I wanted more from the plot and this felt more character driven. The scene near the end was disturbing when the truth of what she was capable of was revealed, but I still wanted more. The author’s writing style was elevated and dark; something I enjoy!

3/5⭐️⭐️⭐️
In the vein of I’m a Fan by Sheena Patel, and for readers who enjoy dark literary voices and slow burning suspense.

I was super excited for this tale of obsession gone wrong! Though creepy for sure, I'm not sure it was the kind of disturbing I was expecting (I know, that sounds kind of strange lol). The detailed description of the FMCs thoughts on her period just seemed odd, like it was attempting to shock the reader but didn't really come off quite right.

While I think that different styles of writing help us to grow as readers, I'm not sure I enjoyed this particular poetic sort of writing (though I'm sure that's not the case for others).

I did finish the novel because I wanted to see where it went but I'm not sure that I truly enjoyed it.

Book Review Creep: A Love Story by Emma van Straaten

This is a disturbing and yes, creepy story about a woman, Alice who is obsessed with the man she cleans house for but has never met. She engages in obsessive stalker behaviour and lives in a well developed fantasy world where they are soul mates fated to be together.

Although I didn’t find Alice likeable, I was very saddened by her small world and her overwhelming sense of shame, self loathing and body dysmorphia. She shuns real life interactions out of desperate fear of vulnerability and belief that everyone is constantly laughing at her. She is unable to accurately gauge real attempts to connect with her and spends the vast majority of her time in her fantasy romance fueled by her weekly visits to clean his apartment. Her real interactions frequently result in self harming behaviour.

Maybe it’s the social worker in me but I found myself constantly asking “what happened to you”?The history is provided in little pieces woven throughout the story like her deteriorated relationship with her sister and mother. I’m not sure I ever felt I truly understood how Alice got there but wow she was fascinating in a very deeply depressing way.

If you love messy, unhinged dysfunctional women this is the book for you

3.5⭐️

this follows alice who cleans tom’s apartment every week and has become completely infatuated with him. she imagines how it will be when they finally meet, but when that moment happens it goes nothing like she expected. this is an extremely unsettling, uncomfortable read that has an unreliable, unlikeable protagonist. this definitely isn’t for everyone, but i found it interesting to be inside alice’s mind and experience the world through that lens. however, some parts did get repetitive and felt like they dragged on a bit.

cw: eating disorders, self harm, sexual assault

thanks to netgalley and harper perennial for my advance copy of creep by emma van straaten. all opinions are my own.

I love novels about obsession, so this totally worked for me. Being in the mind of this main character was fascinating and disturbing. I could not look away from this story once I started reading.

This book follows a young woman who cleans a man's apartment every week and becomes increasingly obsessed with him. As she cleans, she begins to invade his privacy—touching his belongings, reading his emails, and crossing other boundaries. The lines she crossed due to her intense obsession became so unsettling that reading it made me feel as though I was losing my grip on reality alongside her.

Whew, Creep was a little too dark and depressing and I had to force myself to finish it. I just don't think this type of genre is for me. Thank you NetGalley and Harper Perennial for this advanced readers copy in exchange for my honest review.

In Creep by Emma van Straaten, we follow Alice who is obsessed with Tom. She cleans his apartment and has a whole plan of what their future life will be when they meet. I appreciated this dark literary piece of fiction that explored the loneliness and obsession of one woman. While I was hoping for a little more, a take that we hadn't seen from similar works, I still enjoyed t he read. However, if you are a fan of unlikelable main characters, Creep will be a great next read.

Alice, go to therapy challenge.

The premise of Creep is fascinating—Alice has been cleaning Tom’s flat for a year and has created an entire imaginary relationship with him, built from crumbs of his daily life.

This book lives up to its name, offering a dark and deeply unsettling look at obsession and loneliness. Alice’s narration is sharp and vividly detailed, which works to draw you into her mindset, but can also make the writing feel overwhelming at times. Especially early on, I found myself losing the thread of individual sentences.

The novel does an incredible job exploring themes of alienation and the stories we tell ourselves to feel connected. But it’s also a slow burn, and I wish there had been earlier hints about Alice’s intentions.

If you’re intrigued by dark, literary character studies and don’t mind unreliable narrators who are as frustrating as they are fascinating, Creep might be worth picking up. does.

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Perennial for the free ARC.

Weird but engaging. Loved the capital H throughout when referencing Tom just felt so right considering she really found him God-like.

I thought this book was honestly just ok, I genuinely wanted to really like it but I found the story to be just be meh sadly

What did I just read? Holy crap, this book left me speechless. Spending time in the absolute batshit insane mind of our main character, Alice, truly made me feel like I was just as crazy as her and I loved every second of it.

If you take Eileen and My Husband and shake it up, you’ll get Creep. Creep takes obsession to a new level as Alice spirals into insanity as her infatuation with Tom, a man whose house she cleans, increases. As her obsession intensifies; so does her self hatred and self harming behavior. This was truly a wild ride.

This book definitely won’t be for everyone but if you love visiting the mind of someone that’s balls to the wall crazy, I think you’ll love Creep.

Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC!

My rating for this book kept getting lower and lower the more that I read. I could not wait for this to be over. It’s such a shame because I was really looking forward to reading this. A unhinged stalker who cleans a man’s home and is obsessed with him although they never met? Say no more sign me up. Unfortunately the synopsis of this book was the most exciting part. This book is SO OVERWRITTEN I mean overwritten in a way where it felt as though the author was trying to hit a word count. Overwritten in a way to sound “literary” without anything actually happening the entire book. There was zero character development or insight as to why this character was unhinged- she just was. The entire book we spend inside her head daydreaming about a man. That’s it. The last 20% was nothing new and nothing we haven’t seen a million times in “unhinged woman” books.

Creep by Emma van Straaten follows Alice, a young woman who prides herself on knowing everything about Tom. She knows what he likes to eat and what medicine he is supposed to take. She knows his schedule. The only thing she doesn’t know is Tom himself because they have never met. Alice is Tom’s house cleaner. She is also obsessed with him.

I really enjoyed a lot about this book. It reminded me a lot of being in Joe Goldberg’s head while reading “You.” The way Alice takes everything and twists it in her mind to think that Tom is in love with her was so interesting.

The writing style is very different. I think it is purposely overwritten so that you really feel like you are in Alice’s mind and I don’t think it will work for everyone. It took me awhile to get used to it but once I did, I was flying through this book.

If you are the kind of reader that needs characters to behave perfectly, this isn’t the book for you. None of the characters are great but to me, that makes the story more compelling.

All in all, I don’t think this will work for everyone, but I know some people will really enjoy it!

Special thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free, electronic ARC of this novel received in exchange for an honest review.
Expected publication date: Feb. 25, 2025
Alice knows how Tom takes his coffee, what medication he takes and what side of the bed he sleeps on. She’s convinced they are soulmates, tied together for life. The only problem? Tom and Alice have never met. For a year, Alice has been cleaning Tom’s apartment, immersing herself in his life and convincing herself daily that they are meant to be together. Alice tells everyone she knows about her “boyfriend Tom”, so convinced in their future, until the day comes when she can finally put her plan into action and help Tom realize that Alice is the one for him.
“Creep” is the debut novel by author Emma van Straaten. Dark, obsessive and addicting, it is the perfect read for fans of Joe (Caroline Kepnes, “You”), with an equally compelling female protagonist.
Alice struggles to make friends, has a sister who, on the surface, is unattainably perfect and works a mediocre job that allows her to clean Tom’s house on Wednesday mornings. Although it is quite obvious from the get-go that her obsession with Tom is not reciprocal and she is more awkward than charming, Alice somehow connects with readers in her struggling, stuttering way.
Alice identifies Tom by name only a few times but, throughout her narration, she labels Tom only as “Him” (capital H), which hammers home the level of obsession Alice has, and how high of a pedestal she has placed her beloved Tom. Alice monitors his emails and copies his appointments into her calendar, all so she can stalk him subtlely, convinced that he is her One and Only. She ignores potential relationships, which had me yelling at her through the pages, all in order to pursue her fantasy.
Van Straaten’s “Creep” flows well, the writing style indicative of Alice’s verbal narration of her thoughts. There are adequate breaks and punctuation (thank Goodness!) making “Creep” an easy-to-read page turner. Although not a completely unique premise, the fact that this is a debut novel makes van Straaten’s “Creep” stand out above the crowd.
The ending itself was believable, and although it tied up all of the loose ends, I was fascinated with Alice and all of her eccentricities and I hope to see her again!