Monsters comes from Emerald Fennell, the award-winning director of Saltburn (2023). Honestly, I didn’t even know that she was also an author! It seems like she’s done a little bit of everything because she’s also a director!
I actually received this book as a gift but I know if I’d seen it in a bookshop then the amazing cover definitely would’ve drawn me in. Just look at it!
The book is described as a dark tale about 2 children that you would never want to meet. And, that’s a pretty accurate description. These children are … odd, to say the least!
It’s set in the small Cornish town of Fowey, where Daphne du Maurier spent her summers as a child. That’s not really relevant but in the book the town is pretty proud of that fact and it’s brought up a few times.
So, our main character is a 12-year-old unnamed girl who has lived with her grandmother since her parents died when she was 9. However, her grandmother sends her to spend the summers with her aunt and her horrible husband. This summer, the body of a young woman is found tangled up in fishing nets, and then another washes up onshore. Most of the town is horrified… but not the girl. She is fascinated by murder and spends a great deal of time reading and watching all things murder with her grandmother. She becomes interested in trying to find out who has killed these girls and gets help in the form of Miles Giffard, a young boy staying in Fowey for the summer.
I think I knew I was going to enjoy this book from the first line, ‘My parents got smushed to death in a boating accident when I was nine. Don’t worry – I’m not that sad about it.’ I think it immediately tells us what type of main character we’re going to get. She was kind of fascinating. It’s clear right from the beginning that she is a child that has literally never been loved – not by her parents, not by her grandmother, and not by her aunt and uncle. Her aunt and uncle are the owners of a small hotel where the girl is given full access just so they don’t have to worry about what she’s doing and where she is all day. She does a lot of not-very-nice things but you still kind of end up feeling a little bad for her because it is just so obvious how unloved she is.
The girl becomes fast friends with Miles, a young boy staying at the hotel with his overbearing mother that homeschools him, dresses him in clothes fit for a young child, and insists on doing everything with him. However, he gets a little freedom on this holiday and spends his days wandering about with the girl, playing odd games, and attempting to figure out who killed the young women who have been washing up onshore. Miles is, very obviously, a sociopath. He’s a future serial killer in the making if I’ve ever seen one. I mean, the girl is obviously not mentally well either, but he is truly scary. You know, when you see stories about serial killer couples? I always wonder how they find each other. Apparently, you bump into them at the hotel your uncle owns.
The town is full of quirky characters and most of them hate the girl. She’s been staying in Fowey each summer for the past few years so knows quite a bit about them all and she has made enemies of more than one of them. They’re kind of a little bit over-the-top but that’s not really a bad thing. It kind of makes it easier to root for the main character because they all seem to hate her so much. Like, give her a break! She’s a kid!
One thing that was kind of interesting about this book is the time period. Or lack thereof. I couldn’t tell you when this book was set but it definitely feels like it could be from a different era. It doesn’t really say that in the book, but there’s no mention of mobile phones or the internet, and it only costs 50p to get into the local aquarium. And, honestly, I kind of liked that.
The main characters are only 12/12-years-old but this is definitely a book for a bit of an older age range. If you’re going to let someone younger read it then I’d recommend checking it out yourself first to see if you think it will be suitable for them. The book is fairly short and that combined with the fact that I just really needed to know what was going to happen next meant that I read it in only a few hours.
