A review by relright
Monsters by Emerald Fennell

4.0

So first note - I actually had to get this book delivered from the UK as it does not appear to be available in the USA even in a kindle or audiobook format. It was not difficult or expensive to do so, just an odd note about the book. This story is interesting as it centers a middle school age narrator and honestly uses youthful prose but definitely has very mature themes. It’s like a Roald Dahl book but full of murder, sexual themes, and media criticism. The book is told from the point of view of an unnamed twelve year old girl who is an orphan but spends her summers with her aunt and uncle In the run down hotel they run in a seaside village in England. She is obsessed with true crime and is bored with her routine of exploring the beaches alone until women in town start turning up drowned in the sea. She along with Miles, an odd sheltered boy her age staying with his overbearing mother in the hotel, begin investigating the town to try and find the murderer while playing an increasingly escalating game of play acting murder wherein miles is Increasingly playing the murderer and the narrator the victim - which begins to actually start hurting our narrator. But in the narrator’s desperate attempt to placate the only friend she’s ever had she acquiesces to his schemes. The whole story keeps you guessing until the end but admittedly really rushes the ending after a whole book of lead up. If you like coming of age novels and stories with lots of morally grey characters it Is definitely worth a read however.