I Am the Monster Under the Bed

I’m a sucker for anything with a classic horror premise, so when I first heard about I Am the Monster Under the Bed by Emily Zinnikas, I was instantly drawn in. As a kid, Willa could see things her parents couldn’t, and her best friend was the invisible monster under her bed. Then, during her senior year of high school, Willa was one of seven teens to go into the woods… but the only one to make it out alive. Everyone thinks she killed them. Fast forward to now: Willa is a successful artist sharing her paintings under a pseudonym. When a reporter exposes her real name, Willa has to face her past. She returns to her hometown, ready to close that chapter for once and for all. But old threats reemerge, and it’s time to finally learn the truth of what happened 15 years ago.

What I Liked:

• Overcoming trauma. Willa was a weird kid that her parents refused to understand. She could see things (ghosts? monsters?), but her parents assumed it was an imaginary friend that outlasted the normal age range. Then Willa was the victim of sexual assault from a teacher. Things only got worse when she was the lone survivor of a teen massacre. Now it’s 15 years later and she’s spent most of her adult life alone. Returning to her hometown, and the house she grew up in, is bringing back all the trauma she’s been running from. Not only are the townspeople cruel and accusing, but the monsters are still lurking. Some passages feel very internal, making it a bit of a psychological thriller. But then there is undeniably something bigger than just Willa’s mind at play.
• Using art to heal. Willa is a talented artist and has made a good career of it. Her morbid style often leaves fans speculating about the inspiration. Despite being a pariah in town, I liked that she also pays it forward by teaching local kids how to paint and express themselves.
• Supernatural thriller. I Am the Monster Under the Bed is more a thriller than a work of horror, but it also incorporates supernatural themes. What exactly lives in Willa’s childhood home? What is lurking in the woods, waiting to be fed? The monsters she knows are contrasted with the spirits that celebrity medium Nathanial Lennox claims to see. Willa asserts that ghosts aren’t real… and yet something out there is, and it’s been haunting Willa for all of her life.

What Didn’t Work for Me:

• Too much going on and loose ends. This book wove together too many themes at the expense of not fully realizing some of them: sexual assault, the murders, a feud with a fake medium, possible stalking. There’s a dual timeline, a possible romance, and home renovations, too. It can be a lot to keep track of. And was the police investigation actually even reopened? Some things seemed to be dropped or glossed over by the end.
• Not enough done with the spooky elements. Who/what is Elliot, though? We never get the full picture. What about the creepy people in the basement? Not much happens there, either. The title of the book established high expectations, but it didn’t fully deliver on them.

Audiobook:

Jenn Lee offers excellent narration on the audiobook for I Am the Monster Under the Bed. She captures Willa’s personality well, including the voice for her younger self. My only critiques are 1) It was often unclear when there were jumps back in time (I suspect this is mostly an audio format issue); and 2) For some parts she got very quiet, to match a character whispering, for example. This is good if you’re listening in a quiet environment, but can make it easy to miss parts if there’s background noise. All in all, though, this was a well produced audiobook.

Final Thoughts

I Am the Monster Under the Bed is a thoughtful and creepy supernatural thriller. It has a slow buildup and a lot of moving parts, but it makes for an intriguing read. This was a great debut, and I’ll be on the lookout for more from Emily Zinnikas.

Special thanks to St. Martin’s Press, Macmillan Audio, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this book!

Get the Book

You can buy I Am the Monster Under the Bed here – it’s available as a hardcover, ebook, and audiobook.

I Am the Monster Under the Bed by Emily Zinnikas
Audiobook Narrator	Jenn Lee
Audience	Adult
Genre	Horror; Thriller
Setting	Maine
Number of Pages	320
Format I Read	Audiobook & Ebook (NetGalley ARCs)
Original Publication Date	September 15, 2026
Publisher	St. Martin’s Press

Official Summary

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.