Playmates

Cliche and predictable. I suppose I should not be too harsh as this was written in the 1980s, when this genre was popular, but Andrew Neiderman is no Stephen King. I don't doubt that Stephen King could have written this story in a convincing and genuinely creepy way, but with Neiderman everything is so fucking predictable, including the ending where things are "miraculously" resolved.

There's nothing necessarily wrong with cliches, as long as you're creative and write well. However, Neiderman is not creative, nor does he write well. Still, the stuff he wrote in the 1980s is still way better than the shit he's written in the 2010s and 2020s, so two stars for that.