Malorie

Because Tom has been looking for a reason to leave this cabin since the moment she said they wouldn't be leaving it anymore. Because Tom is at that damnable age where he believes he must resist every f*cking thing his mother tells him.

do you really want me to believe only a 16-year old boy thought of an invention that would help the see the creature without going mad?

DNF at about one third of the way in.
Malorie and her kids have to escape the school for the blind and then they spend a good decade in a former summer camp doing not much, until one day a man shows up. He is supposedly a census man, leaves them a book with a bunch of information about other survivors and the things they tried to do to get an explanation to the creatures and to adjust to a new life. This makes the characters want to move, to get to the supposed new civilisation and to see what is going on there.

I don't like Malerman's writing. I didn't like The Bird Box and I don't like this thing. There is nothing satisfying about him going on and on about random things, about what Malorie feels again and again without a conclusion. Without anything every being found out. Just cluelessly wandering around, being scared and being volatile. It feels like this whole thing leads nowhere and we will have another meaningless chapter where the characters go to a freaking well for water and putting on protective gear.
It's trying to be very artistic. It says random things that are supposed to feel like you can connect to the characters and events intimately, while to me they were more like random, useless pieces of information that lead nowhere. Malorie and her sister snuck into an adult movie and her sister fell asleep. That's cool and all, but it says nothing that would add to the development of the story, just Malorie thinking of useless junk.

Tom is the only character who actually wants to be proactive, who wants to develop and do things and Malorie just tells him no. Again, I am sure this was meant to be poignant in some way, but to me it felt frustrating. I'm sure someone will come and explain to me I just don't understand the intricate, deep things about this. But to hell with that, I am not going to try and rationalise the supposed greatness of a book that annoys me and doesn't give me a pleasant reading experience.

I'm admittedly not the hugest horror fan. What I like is building pressure and some sort of a catharsis at the end when either a satisfying conclusion happens or... shit just goes off the rails completely. These books have nothing like that, it just feels like it's slow and dragging and then by the end I want it to end, not because I care all that much, but because I still hope something will be resolved, when it doesn't happen.
It's frustrating, more than anything.

I personally wouldn't recommend these books. I have no clue why they became such hyped things, because I don't find the ideas unique, nor was the way they were handled. I guess they are short and easy to read? I don't know, I don't care at this point.
Doubtful that I will ever feel like reading anything other than this from the author, he is just not to my taste.