I Found Puppets Living in My Apartment Walls by Ben Farthing

4/5 stars

I Found Puppets Living in My Apartment Walls was an experience. I can’t say that I’ve ever been concerned about childhood puppets, I do have a very healthy wariness for animationics (thank you, FNAF), but if anything was going to change my mind about them, it would be this book. I was lucky enough to be able to read this one early, and I can’t wait for it to release and be shared with the world!

There’s a game that just came out recently, My Friendly Neighborhood, that deals with puppet survival horror; it’s really nice to see puppets being brought to the genre more. It’s something original, and you don’t really think of it when you think of something scary, but it makes sense that it would be scary. Kind of like mannequins and giant animatronics!

Johnny was a fun character to follow. He was in that in-between stage of adulthood where it’s time to grow up, but it’s scary, so a part of you tries to cling to pieces of your childhood for comfort. His relationship with his grandfather and his desire to see him just one more time was a thing of beauty. Ben wrote the dilemma between rationality and childhood so well.

Ben, you sly man, I really have to give props here because I was completely taken in by the deception. I didn’t suspect a thing until everything was out in the open, and it’s not usually an easy thing to keep me from being suspicious at all. I thought the ending really wrapped things up nicely as well, and I’m very interested in seeing more of this world in the future!