Suffer the Children by Craig Dilouie

Rating: 4/5

Spoiler level: Light

So that was something! Something as in some immaculate writing and great depictions of grief that I was not expecting. I listened to the audiobook (obviously by the photo) and let’s say listening to it got difficult at times because of how painful this story is, but what starts with sadness, quickly turns to horror (MY FAVORITE)!

In Suffer the Children, we follow a few POV’s in a world where every child that hasn’t hit puberty yet passes away. At first, there is absolutely no explanation, and the parents are reaching for answers. We follow a couple named Joan and Doug the most it seems, a single mother named Ramona, and a doctor named David and his wife, Nadine. We also get a couple surprise POV’s!

This story was not what I was expecting AT ALL! I refuse to spoil too much for you, but things are not what they seem! At first, with so many children passing, it was difficult listening to the book, but I am HAPPY I continued! What an insane turn of events and showing a depiction of how crazy the world would get in a situation like this was done very well. All our POV’s shared completely different ways of grieving and situation handling and I enjoyed every one of them. Mostly Ramona’s excessiveness…IYKYK.

I do feel like I would have enjoyed this story more if I read the physical book, just because I am picky about the narrators for audiobooks. The man who narrated it definitely wasn’t awful but very monotone at times where it was easy to zone out which WE DO NOT WANT! I CAN NOT MISS ANYTHING!!! He was cracking me up though with the voices for the kids and I think he should be responsible for most kid depictions on audiobooks. He did very well with it! Had my heart joyful and depressed for imaginary children.

Suffer the Children does live up to the title. There are trigger warnings for child loss, suicide, and animal abuse (nothing too crazy). Also, heavy alcohol use (Well yeah, what else do you do when your children die out of nowhere with no explanation?) if that is something you don’t want in your reading material. Thank you for stopping by and I hope you have a FANTASTIC day!

I would say happy reading but this one…was not so…happy…