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A review by immovabletype
Delicious Monsters by Liselle Sambury
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
this is YA horror, but even if you don't read YA because you never have or feel like you've outgrown it, I still highly recommend this novel. Daisy shares a lot of traits with your kind of stereotypical YA protagonist—everything happening to her in the present is so much more immediate than her past or future, and she can be such a brat that it made me laugh—but it speaks more to the authenticity to the teenage experience, something to be grown out of rather than a means to wish fulfillment. and then she develops, this slow, meticulous character development, piece by hard-earned piece, and her perspective expands into her past (and the pasts of those around her, because they're inextricable) and questions about the kind of future she sees for herself . . . if she sees one at all.
this book is so damn good. I suspect I will be shoving it into the hands of everyone I've ever met and will ever meet. I've never read anything else quite like it and at the time of this review it's criminally underhyped. it's a long one for the type of book that it is, but that's because it needs the space to tell this story, which is a haunted house mystery full of darkness and real evil, imperfect mothers (if they can be called something so gentle) and generational trauma, forgotten Black girls and the various abuses they've endured, horror and love and family and friendship. are the characters loveable? it's complicated, yet I did love them fully. they burrowed their way into my heart and are welcome to stay there. I wept for them again and again; even the Acknowledgments made me cry. and I will read everything that Liselle Sambury ever writes.
this book is so damn good. I suspect I will be shoving it into the hands of everyone I've ever met and will ever meet. I've never read anything else quite like it and at the time of this review it's criminally underhyped. it's a long one for the type of book that it is, but that's because it needs the space to tell this story, which is a haunted house mystery full of darkness and real evil, imperfect mothers (if they can be called something so gentle) and generational trauma, forgotten Black girls and the various abuses they've endured, horror and love and family and friendship. are the characters loveable? it's complicated, yet I did love them fully. they burrowed their way into my heart and are welcome to stay there. I wept for them again and again; even the Acknowledgments made me cry. and I will read everything that Liselle Sambury ever writes.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Grief, Gaslighting, Abandonment, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Racism, Sexual content, Torture, Murder, and Classism
Minor: Body shaming, Fatphobia, Pregnancy, and Alcohol
This book hinges on CSA , which the author hints at in the intro, but I'm spoiling just in case. This is for the most part not graphic, but the reader sees scenes leading up to it, and one character describes her experience in dialogue that gives some more detail. Implications are prevalent throughout the book, though always handled with care.