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A review by someonetookit
Here There Are Monsters by Amelinda Bérubé
4.0
ACTUAL RATING 3.5 STARS
Where to start with this one. I absolutely adored this cover, its simply divine and I requested solely based on the cover. Well, the cover and kind of the blurb, mostly the cover though.
This tale for the first 40%-ish was really enjoyable; it was spooky and had great ambience with the reader able to guess what was happening but never really knowing what was going on. But then around the half way mark it quickly devolved and turned into an indescribable cacophony of clashing story points. I liked the slow burn, once things started talking to her it got really weird. By the end, I had more or less switched off with the final pages feeling just a little unnecessary – I understand why to include the ambulance but not why the school… A note about pacing too, the blurb says something knocks and asks her for a task – this is almost half way into the novel…
So, the characters were a little loopy and I swear her little sister is one of the most co-dependant characters I have ever read. She doesn’t stop until she disappears (well she disappears and then is dependant but that’s a timeline skipping thing soooo). And Skye is just mean once they move - I had older siblings who didn’t want to play with me, they were never this cruel. At first, I felt a little sorry for her and the backstory helped with this, but by the end, I just thought she was a crazy person and wondered if the whole thing was just a hallucinogenic fever dream.
Now this book wasn’t a complete loss, as I said earlier, the first half did its job in being creepy and atmospheric. The secondary characters all seemed genuinely fearful for their own safety after Psycho Skye arrives and were written in a relatable way. It was a very fast paced novel with a lot happening in a short period of time. I also enjoyed the few background chapters that were included prior to their move. The actual premise of the story was amazing, I just feel like it needed a little bit different execution to make it really hit home
Where to start with this one. I absolutely adored this cover, its simply divine and I requested solely based on the cover. Well, the cover and kind of the blurb, mostly the cover though.
This tale for the first 40%-ish was really enjoyable; it was spooky and had great ambience with the reader able to guess what was happening but never really knowing what was going on. But then around the half way mark it quickly devolved and turned into an indescribable cacophony of clashing story points. I liked the slow burn, once things started talking to her it got really weird. By the end, I had more or less switched off with the final pages feeling just a little unnecessary – I understand why to include the ambulance but not why the school… A note about pacing too, the blurb says something knocks and asks her for a task – this is almost half way into the novel…
So, the characters were a little loopy and I swear her little sister is one of the most co-dependant characters I have ever read. She doesn’t stop until she disappears (well she disappears and then is dependant but that’s a timeline skipping thing soooo). And Skye is just mean once they move - I had older siblings who didn’t want to play with me, they were never this cruel. At first, I felt a little sorry for her and the backstory helped with this, but by the end, I just thought she was a crazy person and wondered if the whole thing was just a hallucinogenic fever dream.
Now this book wasn’t a complete loss, as I said earlier, the first half did its job in being creepy and atmospheric. The secondary characters all seemed genuinely fearful for their own safety after Psycho Skye arrives and were written in a relatable way. It was a very fast paced novel with a lot happening in a short period of time. I also enjoyed the few background chapters that were included prior to their move. The actual premise of the story was amazing, I just feel like it needed a little bit different execution to make it really hit home