I Am the Monster Under the Bed

By Emily Zinnikas

TIME ONLY MAKES THE NIGHTMARE MORE REAL.

Something lives under Willa's bed. As an adult, her fondest childhood memories are of the invisible entity under her bed who taught her how to read. Now thirty-two, Willa is a reclusive but successful painter until a bombshell news report exposes her identity as the controversial survivor of the unsolved Rapture Mystery Slayings, a small-town tragedy that splashed across headlines during her senior year of high school. Six teenagers died in the woods while Willa walked free, and everyone thinks she killed them.

When an old classmate calls about a funeral, Willa reluctantly travels to her sleepy hometown, where the possessed forest that stole her friends looms. The trees whistle for her attention, but she knows better than to listen. And the unexplained knocking from the shadows in the basement of her decaying childhood home is honestly the least of her problems.

As her past pulls her back to the place where she swore she'd never return, Willa is drawn toward the monster she left behind--and becoming the villain her hometown has always believed her to be.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1250454786
• ISBN13: 9781250454782
• Release Date: September 2026
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Go monsters!

Sometimes you gotta be friends with the monsters to take down the worst monsters! Besides, who could be afraid of a monster under the bed called Elliot? I found that to be quite sweet with Willa reading to him and all. That was probably almost the only sweet part of this dark tale that mixes human monsters with the possible supernatural ones all together in the tiny town of Rapture that contains so much darkness waiting to have a light shone on it and have the truth come out about the mysterious slayings back in Willa's youth. I loved this story! It mixes the horrors of reporters never leaving once they smell blood, predators that don't pay the price, victims not believed and of course, don't forget the supernatural dangers hiding in the forest that no one is supposed to enter. Seeing Willa return to all that, I gotta admire her strength in going back to mourn her beloved teacher that helped her so much during that dark time. Craziness and creepiness abound and there was great atmosphere and a nicely wild ending that I loved. Great book and I am glad I got the chance to read this!