This book has some Good, Bad, and Ugly, and the Ugly is REEEEEALLY UGLY, which makes this book not worth reading.

The Good:
This book puts center stage the Opioid crisis in America, and one recovering addict's desire for respect, peace, and security. The book never really does enough to make Mallory an unreliable narrator, it doesn't play enough with her struggle for sobriety. But it honors reality: She's a good person trying to turn her life around after a series of bad situations and decisions, and in order for strangers to see the best parts of her she must tell them a curated version of her story. Mallory's hidden depths are the introduction to a running theme in the book: That no one is as they seem on the surface. Hidden pictures, indeed. The book's inclusion of illustrations was smart, creative, and unsettling; something I wish had been done in "The Children on the Hill". A picture/story/person can be misinterpreted many ways; we all have our biases.

The Bad:
There were a bunch of tropes in this book that sapped away any enjoyment I got from trying to solve the whodunnit. The villain monologue. The horny dad molesting the babysitter. The cherubic, imaginative, haunted child. The ghoulish kid's drawings being dismissed as an imaginary friend or "just a phase". The protagonist in a haunting losing time when the haunt happens. Etc.
And there were some things that stuck out as simply bad or awkward writing, things that made it clear that the author was a man and had no idea how to characterize a woman or a child. For example, Mallory, the 21 year old babysitter, gets upset. And her employer, a 53 year old man, who is shirtless from having gone swimming in a pool, gathers her into an embrace to console her. And instead of feeling aaaaaaall the red flags, Mallory leans into it, pressing her face to his chest. I call shenanigans. XD What girl doesn't immediately feel uncomfortable in that situation?! If Mallory's history with addiction, and with behaving submissively to older men in order to get what she wants, were being played up in this scene, maybe, MAYBE it would have worked. But the scene seems to exist in earnest: Mallory needed a hug after fighting with the boss's wife, and accepted a wet, naked one from her boss... So weird... Tropes and awkwardness took me right out of the story.

The Ugly: The villains of this book are liberal yuppies who brainwashed a young child and forced her to transition into a boy. They don't believe in screen time, believe in science over religion, eat kale, and enjoy reading. The protagonist is newly converted to Christianity to help with her sobriety; she feels her religious affiliation is attacked several times by the yuppie parents who don't want to believe in her ghost theory. The way she rescues the not-truly-trans kid is to send her to a farm upstate. BIG OOOOOOOOLD RED FLAGS!!!!!!!!!!! This book lost several stars in its reveal. It tried to save itself, it tried to have a couple lines about "Oh, I don't have a problem with trans people." But it also had lines about yuppie psycho mommy obtaining children's health books to teach tiny Teddy about anal sex and cunnilingus which is just.... NOT A THING!!! This is not a thing! Fear-mongering over trans kids and the "war" on "traditional values" is DANGEROUS and STUPID and UNNECESSARY!!!!

Whatever good storytelling there was about not judging people by appearances, and respecting people who struggle with addiction, was thrown RIGHT OUT THE WINDOW with all the BAD this book does for the trans community.