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A review by motherhorror
The Bad Seed by William March
5.0
Okay, so you know when you read a book and it just claws its way under your skin? That’s The Bad Seed by William March. This one left me sitting in silence, staring at the wall, questioning EVERYTHING!
The thing about The Bad Seed that really wrecked me—like, kept-me-up-at-night level wrecked—is how it digs into the idea of evil. Is it something you’re born with? Can you inherit it? Or is it society that twists you? March doesn’t give you any easy answers, and that just makes it worse. You’ll find yourself thinking, “What would I do if this was my kid?” I hated feeling like this book was poking at me.
This is also suburban housewife horror. It’s so fake and shiny on the surface—everyone’s polite, everything looks fine—but you know there’s rot under it all. It’s like peeling back the wallpaper in a perfect house and finding mold everywhere. Or eating a pretty cake and finding a long blonde hair. One character sees Rhoda's mother, Christine and asks what's wrong with her, then she says she looks sick, SLOPPY. That word "sloppy" rattled around in my brain!
I can’t even tell you how many times I wanted to scream at the pages. How many times my eyes widened or my mouth dropped open. So much more realistic/brutal than the movie.
Look, if you haven’t read this yet, please do yourself a favor. It’s not just a horror classic—it's the iconic book of a whole sub-genre. This IS THE creepy kid book. Everything else is measured by it.
I was gonna dock a star for the dad, I hated him, but I think I just convinced myself he adds that extra layer of creepy on so thick.
The thing about The Bad Seed that really wrecked me—like, kept-me-up-at-night level wrecked—is how it digs into the idea of evil. Is it something you’re born with? Can you inherit it? Or is it society that twists you? March doesn’t give you any easy answers, and that just makes it worse. You’ll find yourself thinking, “What would I do if this was my kid?” I hated feeling like this book was poking at me.
This is also suburban housewife horror. It’s so fake and shiny on the surface—everyone’s polite, everything looks fine—but you know there’s rot under it all. It’s like peeling back the wallpaper in a perfect house and finding mold everywhere. Or eating a pretty cake and finding a long blonde hair. One character sees Rhoda's mother, Christine and asks what's wrong with her, then she says she looks sick, SLOPPY. That word "sloppy" rattled around in my brain!
I can’t even tell you how many times I wanted to scream at the pages. How many times my eyes widened or my mouth dropped open. So much more realistic/brutal than the movie.
Look, if you haven’t read this yet, please do yourself a favor. It’s not just a horror classic—it's the iconic book of a whole sub-genre. This IS THE creepy kid book. Everything else is measured by it.
I was gonna dock a star for the dad, I hated him, but I think I just convinced myself he adds that extra layer of creepy on so thick.