Review: Here There Are Monsters by Amelinda Berube

Title: Here There Are Monsters

Author: Amelinda Berube

Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire

Publishing Date: August 6th, 2019

Pages: 352
Audio Length: 9 Hours and 18 Minutes

Genre: YA Horror Mystery
TW: N/A

Series: Standalone

Source: Audio

 

The Blair Witch Project meets Imaginary Girls in this story of codependent sisterhood, the struggle to claim one’s own space, and the power of secrets
Sixteen-year-old Skye is done playing the knight in shining armor for her insufferable younger sister, Deirdre. Moving across the country seems like the perfect chance to start over.
In their isolated new neighborhood, Skye manages to fit in, but Deirdre withdraws from everyone, becoming fixated on the swampy woods behind their house and building monstrous sculptures out of sticks and bones.
Then Deirdre disappears.
And when something awful comes scratching at Skye's window in the middle of the night, claiming she's the only one who can save Deirdre, Skye knows she will stop at nothing to bring her sister home.

This is another one of the books that I was really wanting to like. I fell in love with this cover the moment I saw it. 

From the excerpt I was expecting something creepy and maybe a little different. But it wasn't at all what I was expecting.

I didn't really get scared, I didn't even get a little creeped out.

I felt myself more bored than anything. 

When I say it wasn't what I was expecting it definitely wasn't what I was expecting. 

Good lord that cover is STUNNING. I wanted to read this book from the moment I saw it. 



I feel like the story itself could have been so much more. Like I said up above, I was expecting something creepy and scary and weird.
But it got TOO weird, and I felt like nothing really happened through the whole book. I ended up being bored the whole time and just wanting to hurry up and finish so I could move on.
If I'm being honest this book wasn't even very memorable. I read this quite a while ago, but I'm pretty I didn't even remember the book a few days after I read it.
The big surprises weren't at all surprising, there was no big twist or anything, it was all very predictable. 



So slow. So. Slow. This type of book that says it's supposed to be like Blair Witch should be a constant go go go and should have me on the edge of my seat, and instead I was bored. 




I felt like the author didn't really know anything about mental illnesses or anything of the sort because it all seemed incredibly fake and forced. I've never read anything else by this author, but if any of her others are like this I'm going have to have to take a hard pass. 



The MC is incredibly self absorbed. Her sister is missing but it's almost like she doesn't even care. And I understand that it can be exhausting having a sister like Deirdre. But still, it's your sister, have some compassion.
Then all the sudden she cares, but it all seems fake.
There was zero character growth like you'd hope for in a book like this. You would hope that she'd grow up and start caring but nope.



There was some good parts with a lot of description but for the most part this was another one of those that I couldn't at all picture what was happening in the book. 



Meh. It was okay. 



The narrator was great, she added a great voice to the book. 

“Monsters were way more interesting to Deirdre than animals, even talking ones.”
― Amelinda Bérubé, Here There Are Monsters

I write about ghosts and monsters and other things that go bump in the night. My books tend to include a liberal sprinkling of weird Canadiana and the occasional zombie metaphor.
I am an eternal fangirl for YA and SFF, but any book that makes me laugh, makes me cry, or creeps me out will have my heart forever. My very favorites tend to have a thinky, supernatural flavor and don't explain too much.


In my other lives I'm a public service editor, a mother of two, and a passionate gardener. I live in Ottawa, Canada, in a perpetual whirlwind of unfinished projects and cat hair.