(this review can be also found on my blog, Coffee, Tea and Books ) 
 Oh. My. God. I'm in a serious need of just sit down and absorb this book. I read it in one day, barely slept - also mainly because I'm really sick, but let's not focus on that - and highlighted so much of the book that I don't even know how I'm supposed to find any of the quotes that I really want to use. But oh well. 
 This book is a world where 
 you can't open your eyes 
 . Because if you do, 
 you might see things 
 . You see, an apocalypse happened, but not the ones we normally expect; there's no zombies, no magma erupting from the cracks that suddenly openned, no catastrophe, nothing that could've 
 be seen. 
 Anyone who actually saw them, went mad. Mad as in, going absolutly insane, consumed by dementia, commiting the most horrible suicides - and, many times, also killing other people. 
 The story is actually divided between the "present", were after four and an half years, she and her kids leave the house were they found shelter and safety; and then the "past", which is everything that happened to Malorie since this catastrophe happened and until where the "present" is. Malorie is just a girl who found out she's pregnant from a one night stand. She's living alone with her sister Shannon - even though all the arguments they have over almost everything - when horrible things start happening, horrible news appear from the most hidden places of the internet, until everyone knows about it. And it starts happening everywhere, and what at first seems like compiracy theories and things only lunatics would believe in, now it's on the news, and everyone is scared. The thing is, what everyone knows, is that it happens when you 
 see something 
 . Then everyone starts walking around with their eyes closed ; everyone starts covering their windows with blankets, nailing the doors shut, not going out of their houses. 
 Everyone becomes blind in the darkness of their blindfold, because everyone is too scared to even see. 
 Malorie goes through a lot; as everyone else we meet. Mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters, family and friends, everyone has someone who died because of this disaster. Malorie sister kills herself with a pair of scissors, on the bathroom of the house they lived in together. Malorie hasn't heard anything from her parents for a while now, as well. The little miracle in the middle of this living hell is the ad she found when this all happened - 
 someone is offering a sanctuary, somewhere where people can hide 
 - and now, it sounds like paradise. Alone, pregnant and scared, this is Malorie's best shot. She eventually travels to where the house is - driving a car with her eyes closed is incredibly dangerous, but somehow she manages to do the trip - and arrives to the house where the owner is already dead, but the people he let in are still alive. Malorie finds herself a new house and, probably, a new family. Even thought not everything is roses and rainbows, she manages to survive with two kids - 
 Boy and Girl. 
 Talking about this briefly, in the house there is Tom, Jules, Don, Felix and Cheryl, each one of them with their own story, their own grieves and nightmares. A couple of months after Malorie arriving to the house, another woman comes asking for help on their door step ; Olympia, and she is also pregnant. They have some good months together, but there are also the things that come from stress and fear. Those bad moments happen in several occasions, but when Gary arrives, it gets worse. I won't spoil anything about him, but let's put this into Malorie's words : 
 "Gary the demon on Don's soft shoulder" 
 . As life is, things couldn't go right forever, not on such circumstances. But Malorie and the two kids, Boy and Girl. Gosh, I hate those names. 
 "As babies, she trained them to wake with their eyes closed. (...) As each woke and opened their eyes, she would smack them hard on the arm. They would cry. Malorie would reach down and close their eyes with her fingers, If they kept their eyes closed, she would lift her shirt and feed them. Reward." 
 Malorie trained her kids, since they were babies, to only listen, and not to see. She trained them to hear every little sound, to not even open their eyes when they woke up. She trained them as well as she could to survive in a world that being able to see was a curse more than a blessing. Sometimes it made me mad, how cold she was with them, how much she seemed to not have that motherly bound with them. But then, I would understand that she was doing what she thought it was the best for them. She suffered, and even felt guilty, that her kids were deprived of a childhood, that they were only 
 " listening machines" 
 . 
 This book doesn't give any type of big answers ; we know that there are some creatures roaming, but we don't know what they are, what they look like, what they want, why they are doing this, anything. Reading a book where the characters don't see more than half of the time is an interesting reading; they hear the sounds, feel the things around them, the wind, the birds, but they can't see them. And when I stop and think about it, I knew why this book was so good. We, as human beings, normally rely so much on our eyes, that although the other sense are important, we neglect them. 
 A 
 nd when we aren't able to see, and we are scared of something, we get paranoid. 
 Even I got paranoid. A sound too close? Or that the characters couldn't tell what it was for sure? Paranoia. It might be a bird, a cat, a bear, for all you know, but when you are too scared to see, you don't know. And not knowing, when we are in danger, drives us mad. It also made me really anxious, but I think of that as a side effect of an amazing book. 
 Also, it showed us how humans get creative when we need to, when the necessity arrises and mainly, when we need to survive. Regardless of the ones who started coming up with theories, the people at Malorie's house came up with pretty good ideas - and for "people" I mean mainly Tom. They wanted to get dogs to guide them and warned them if anything - animal or something else - got too close. Tom also took a box filled with birds that he found, and put them outside. The birds would start to cheep any time someone got too close as well, so both the dogs and the birds worked like alarms. 
 Final Thoughts : 
 This book was a big YAAAAAAAAS. Although I understand it probably made me scared that something like that would happen, and made me a little bit too anxious to be healthy, I don't mind. I like books that make me think so much about them, they actually leave a mark on me. 
 Bird Box 
 is an unique experience, gently playing with fears. Everything has its own pace, there's no overload of information, and we figure everything out at the same time the characters do. Making an horror book with creatures that are not discribed to the reader means leaving the reader to its own imagination to fill the gaps and exagerate the proportions, according to the reader's own fears. It's mainly a book that would make you think. 
 What if we couldn't see, out of fear of what we would see, and what that would do to us? 
 This book also made me think of Blindness, by Jose Saramago. I would vividly recommend reading this book as well. 
 I gave this book 5/5 stars.