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| Only a Monster by Vanessa Len |
Only a Monster is the debut of Vanessa Len. It’s YA urban fantasy set in modern London about Joan, sixteen, who is spending summer with her maternal grandmother while volunteering at a manor house turned a museum. She has a huge crush on Nick, a fellow volunteer, but on the day of their first date something odd happens and she loses a whole day in a blink of an eye.
From her grandmother she learns that it’s because her family are monsters, people who can time travel by stealing time from humans. But before Joan can learn anything more, like how to do that and why they exist, the hero of the title butchers her entire family and some other monsters too. (It all happens within the first couple of chapters so it’s not much of a spoiler.)
The only survivors are Joan and Aaron from an enemy family of Joan’s, and she gets a crash-course on being a monster from him, like how the monsters are grouped into families with special abilities, and about safe places for all time travellers that seemed to exist outside time and be undetected by humans, though it wasn’t properly explained.
Since they can travel through time, Joan insists they go back and prevent the deaths from happening, but apparently that isn’t possible. She doesn’t believe Aaron, and sets out to do the impossible.
This was a good book. The idea of monsters was intriguing, though the world could have been explained a lot better. The story flowed in a brisk pace, and while it was highly illogical and at times felt like the author didn’t have a grasp on different timelines and people jumping in from whenever, it wasn’t anything I got stuck with. The narrative was a bit repetitive, some facts were told over and again, while some important plot points seemed to spring from nowhere. Joan was both utterly clueless and seemed to possess information she couldn’t possibly have, as if the author had forgotten that Joan was the narrator and not omniscient.
I did have issues with Joan who was irritating and too stupid to live. We get many hints of a mystery about her dead mother and a recurring nightmare for example, but her character and backstory remained annoyingly vague.
Why wasn’t Joan even a little curious about her family’s special skills? Why was she half-Malaysian, if that had no impact on her life as human or a monster? Couldn’t her unique skill have come from that side, for example? The monster families seemed fairly inbred, so it would’ve made sense, yet the father had been conveniently cleaned away from the story. And if her grandmother knew about her special skill, why had she kept the monsters a secret from her? The explanation about her being a half human wasn’t convincing. I think the story would’ve been stronger if Joan hadn’t been going into it blindly.
The side characters remained vague. I didn’t feel Nick as the love-interest, as Joan’s crush on him had happened before the book began and I only got to witness who he was now. Aaron would’ve had an interesting story that would’ve brought depth to the plot had it been woven into it for Joan’s purposes (couldn’t the prisoner have been the reason he was cast out from his family, for example?) But Joan isn’t even a little curious about him and his role remains that of a reluctant teacher. The pivotal character springs out of nowhere. I can only hope that he has a greater role in the upcoming books, because he was ill-served in this one.
The ending was satisfying and nothing I saw coming, despite the title of the book. It left Joan in a good place, if this remains the sole book in the planned trilogy, but the open questions and especially Aaron are reason enough to continue with the series.
I received a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
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