“You’re a hero and I’m a monster,” she whispered. I am very glad to see we can expect two more books, though, because I still have SO MANY QUESTIONS. I also loved the references to British history and the strong sense of place I got from all the different settings. Different monster families have different powers and discovering them all is an adventure in itself. The stakes were high, the potential losses catastrophic, and the secrets mysterious and exciting. She is forced to travel back in time to try and right some wrongs before they even happen. But there's long been rumours and myths about a hero who will come along and slaughter them, saving humans from their life-sucking powers.Īs luck would have it, it turns out said hero is much closer to Joan than she could ever have guessed, and his presence causes a horrible tragedy that threatens everyone Joan cares about. They can leech time from humans, essentially shortening their lifespan, in order to travel through time themselves. The protagonist, Joan, comes from a family of time-travelling monsters on her mother's side. Maybe this was one of those times.īut Gran’s eyes weren’t shiny with a held-in joke. Gran sometimes told jokes without smiling. “Or like robots.” She’d seen enough cartoons to know. “Monsters look like giant spiders,” Joan said. In this book, you find yourself on the side of the monsters: moral dilemmas, grey areas, and all.

It contains some tropes of the genre- teen girl comes into new powers, hints of a love triangle, heroes vs villains -but it subverts some too.

I burned myself out on YA urban fantasy some years back, but it looks like I'm ready to get back in the game because I inhaled this. then somehow I seem to have ended up here at the end, a little bleary-eyed and disoriented. I was just going to sample the arc, read a few pages, see if it was something that might interest me down the line. I didn't actually mean to read it right now. Only a Monster, as of my writing this, does not release for another five months. He gave her his familiar solemn smile, the one that he’d given her all the time at the house.

Only a monster by vanessa len