Book Review Genre: Thriller/Mystery

Disclaimer: Reading is all about exploring new worlds, but this Book Review does not shy away from spoiling specific scenes as this is more of my free-flowing thoughts about a book.

The Analysis:

This book was a book club pick. This was also the month I realized that I am in too many book clubs. I paired down my choice from like 4 or 5 to 2. Unlike, most creators, I don’t typically read a lot of books in one month. But first, follow me on Goodreads.

Here’s The Blurb:

1978: at her renowned treatment center in picturesque Vermont, the brilliant psychiatrist, Dr. Helen Hildreth, is acclaimed for her compassionate work with the mentally ill. But when she’s home with her cherished grandchildren, Vi and Eric, she’s just Gran—teaching them how to take care of their pets, preparing them home-cooked meals, providing them with care and attention and love.

Then one day Gran brings home a child to stay with the family. Iris—silent, hollow-eyed, skittish, and feral—does not behave like a normal girl.

Still, Violet is thrilled to have a new playmate. She and Eric invite Iris to join their Monster Club, where they catalogue all kinds of monsters and dream up ways to defeat them. Before long, Iris begins to come out of her shell. She and Vi and Eric do everything together: ride their bicycles, go to the drive-in, meet at their clubhouse in secret to hunt monsters. Because, as Vi explains, monsters are everywhere.

2019: Lizzy Shelley, the host of the popular podcast Monsters Among Us, is traveling to Vermont, where a young girl has been abducted, and a monster sighting has the town in an uproar. She’s determined to hunt it down, because Lizzy knows better than anyone that monsters are real—and one of them is her very own sister.

Cover Critique:

It’s a scene from out of the book. But not the most eye-catching. I can’t say I would’ve picked this up if it weren’t for the book club.

Now The Story:

Book Info:
Pages: 349
Author: Jennifer McMahon
Available: Google Play

This book jumps from past to present. Present addresses the heroine’s current mystery and the past explains the heroine’s childhood as a part of the monster club. Which isn’t as dire as it sounds. It’s more like a kid’s treehouse club. There are even chapters about their musings over monsters both on TV and in mythological lore. This section is usually short and dare I say, useless. Theirs also brief chapters from a reporter’s pov about eight or ten years after the heroines past. It does a good job keeping the intrigue going, but as you know, I’m not a filler girl and this two wasn’t necessarily my favorite parts. Thankfully this story is only told through one pov and that’s hers. So no confusion there.

It’s during these pleasant memories of the past that a girl around her same age comes to live with the heroine, her brother, and her grandmother. She appears out of nowhere and has little recollection of her past. But her granny entreats her to take the girl under her wing to be “sisters.” The granny is also a nurse and asks for reports, but it all seems to be with the child’s best interest in mind.

The present sees the heroine as an adult with a strained relationship with her brother. This kid who was innocent, curious, and jovial is now a serious adult. Which sounds normal, but it’s presented in a way like, no, something happened and it killed his spirit and the man he wanted to be. The granny is dead and the “adopted sister” is nowhere to be found. But teenagers are going missing all over the country thanks to “monsters” and the heroine is determined to get to the bottom of why. She runs a monster lore podcast and that’s kinda her excuse for snooping around where she doesn’t belong.

Something she also did as a kid to learn the origin of her sister. I remember thinking, I wish she would just talk to her granny. A woman we haven’t really spent much time with, but everything that I’ve read about her has me picturing Mama from the old 80s tv show, Mama’s Family. But I also had to remind myself that if she is in on anything bad that it would make sense to keep the secret. Still, telling this child her origins without some sort of buffer seemed ill-advised. But for their ages, I guess it made sense. After all, the granny was in on the origins of everyone’s secrets.

Back in the present, the kidnapped girl’s male friend figured it all out. I kinda hate it that everything was written down in the Monster Handbook (the one made in the heroine’s childhood) and that’s how he knows everything. For one, because it’s too easy. Also because it doesn’t feel deserved for a character named skink. I think I would’ve felt better with the easy nature of it all had the heroine found the extra pages and read them herself.

I think where this loses a point is when she teams up with the guy to find the missing girls. Where did this trust in this kid come from?

But then the twist came and it was a head-scratcher in a good way. A bit confusing too. It reminded me of a trick that Bollywood thriller movies often do. You think you are following one pov, but after some camera trickery, it was really someone else. Yeah, those flips get you every time. And this one, just made me sad.

It also made me think of the government experiments on mind control. How if some mad scientist had cracked the code, right now we’d be just hearing about soldiers coming out with the truth. They wanted something like this back during WW2 (I think it was that war). And I could totally see the stories being reminiscent of something like this.

The brother’s reappearance had me questioning whether this was truly a happy ending. I suppose everyone lost. At least, in the past version. It was all very startling.

This is why the ending of the present-day storyline was almost a letdown. I felt like I was truly thinking about the past ending. The present ending was too kumbaya. It also struck me as wishful thinking. Girls go missing all the time and we want to imagine them as married with kids and successful, not trafficked or dead. I just don’t think this is feasible (I guess). And if you wanted to write that story where everything is a HEA, I’m not sure a story about faux monsters and mad scientists was the way to go.

Then boom, another twist, and it’s a doozy. Much better for the present-day storyline. One I think I should’ve guessed at but almost feel bad that I didn’t get (lol). It also leaves some ambiguousness like the past storyline. Is this a happy ending or naw? I loved the theme of what it means to be evil. One could certainly say that the adopted sister turned into the granny, but in a different way.

That being said, there are no real monsters in this book and I’m kinda disappointed. I don’t get to read spooky stories often. So if this had been one, I’d probably have given it a 5. I don’t think the story was properly set up for a normal thriller/mystery as there were frequent hints and mentions of the supernatural. It’s misleading in that way and I think that was done intentionally for the theme’s sake.

Speaking of the theme, references are frequently made to the movie/book Frankenstein. While the theme of that book is definitely that humans can be the true monsters. To give, Frankenstein’s monster a pass for his actions including killing that girl is a mistake. Heck, depending on which movie you’re watching he kills his master and for what, the ills of just being made and abandoned. It would be a lot of human fathers on the chopping block if that’s all it took. So, the analysis for this book was not only childish (arguably because they were children), but I found it lacking on the author’s part to convince me of the theme she was trying to impart.

I enjoyed this immensely. Which is why I don’t think I could go below a 4-star read for this one.

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Book Review At A Glance:

Recommendation:  4 out of 5

Book Cover Appeal (for new cover):

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Story & Narration:

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Romance:

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Character/(s) Personality:

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