Our Take

Drews has built a devoted following in YA horror, and You Did Nothing Wrong makes a strong case that the adult transition was the right move. The book operates on two tracks simultaneously: a genuine haunted house mystery with real dread and escalating wrongness, and a deeply psychological portrait of a mother caught between protecting her child and questioning her own perceptions. Neither track undermines the other—they tighten around each other instead.

What elevates this above standard domestic horror is Drews' attention to Jude. The characterization of an autistic child at the center of a horror narrative is handled with unusual care—he's not a prop or a device, but the emotional core of the book, the thing Elodie would destroy anything to protect. That specificity is what makes the horror land.

Readers who loved The Push by Ashley Audrain or Baby Teeth by Zoje Stage—thrillers that weaponize the mother-child relationship—will find You Did Nothing Wrong essential. Don't start it if you have somewhere to be the next morning.