#heretherearemonsters

A BookBud Review

By Amelinda Bérubé

Finished 02-07-2020

Genre: YA Horror

Basic Plot: Skye and Diedre find themselves in a new home, and Skye’s ready to to take that as a fresh start to her whole life. She doesn’t want to be Diedre’s protector anymore, and she’s trying to make friends. Diedre however, doesn’t feel the same and she just seems to keep getting weirder, until one day, she disappears somewhere into the woods behind the family’s house. Now it may be back up to Skye once again to pick up her sword, rescue her sister and relive her past, but at what cost to her own future? 

Notable Quote: ‘“I think maybe you’re always alone for the apocalypse.” I kick at a crust of snow. “That’s how you find out who you really are. Survivor or zombie.”'

Overall Rating: ⭐️⭐️

Readability: 3/5

Plot Interest: 1/5

Creativity: 2/5

                       **SPOILER ALERT** 

This book left me feeling...icky. I thought about giving this a one star rating because the characters were annoying, the plot felt forced and that ending, well I personally hated it. But it was written decently enough to be considered an ok novel, plus I realize I may have a little bias from the beginning. I felt the whole withholding secrets of the main character’s past was quite annoying and then when it was actually revealed it turned out to be kind of a let down, nothing surprising based on the foreshadowing given. The characters are also very young so somewhat unrelatable for me, and their immaturity caused all the drama in this novel including the main plot between the sisters. If these had been adult characters, there wouldn't have been a plot.

It only earned 2 out of 5 stars in my eyes. It was book about bad decisions and in the end, it still felt like the main character would continue to make them and had learned nothing. I wanted to enjoy this but it was too immature and frustrating. There was really no point in this narrative that I had my expectations met. That all being said, it was written decently as far as skill goes. It had a few quotable lines but that's really all I enjoyed about this.

Image from publisher’s website

Here There Are Monsters by Amelinda Bérubé

Release: August 1, 2019

Publisher: Sourcebooks Fire

*I received a digital ARC of this title from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.*

I wasn’t sure what to expect with Here There Are Monsters by Amelinda Bérubé but I’ll be up front - I was a tad let down. Was it a horrible book? Of course not! Was it what I was expecting for a novel labeled “horror”? Not particularly. 

Here There Are Monsters starts with Skye and her family grieving over the disappearance of her younger sister, Deirdre. From that point on, the book is focused on Skye’s obsession with finding her even though this leads to some creepy realizations with some magical realism thrown into the mix. 

My friends always tell me that I have a twisted outlook and a weird sense for the macabre, but I wasn’t feeling any of these until the last quarter of the book. And these even felt a bit forced for the an immediate gross factor. I was a tad bit bored with the first three-quarters of the book as it mostly involved Skye wandering around and conjecturing about her sisters’ disappearance and their strained relationship. Little bits and pieces of oddness are thrown in but I didn’t feel them to be creepy or horror filled moments - they fell flat for me. 

Even though the horror was lacking for me, I do think Bérubé did a fantastic job of creating complicated relationships and a protagonist with a lot of inner conflict to work through. Skye has a sordid past and internal struggle that she slowly embraces and accepts throughout the book and Bérubé let this unravel quite nicely. Not to mention the deep relationship with her sister, which also takes a toll on Skye throughout the entire novel.