A review by effy
Only a Monster by Vanessa Len

5.0

 
Len has created a thoroughly unique story with this series and I absolutely ate it up.

Monsters are real and have different powers depending on which family they come from but one thing that they all have in common is their ability to time travel but in order to do that they must steal time from unwitting humans. Our main character has been raised by her father after her mother died when she was only young. She maintains a great relationship with the maternal side of her family and spends summers with her grandmother. Unknown to her, she is half-monster on her mother’s side. She discovers this side of herself after an accident leads to her travelling in the future. Having found out the truth, she must reckon with both sides of her identity.

This was a book that had been somewhat on my radar since I received it in a FairyLoot subscription box but it wasn’t until I watched an interview between Alexis Hall and Vanessa Len that it was bumped-up my TBR. I went into it with pretty high expectations that I would probably like it but nothing could quite prepare me for just how much of a good time I had with this book.

This book is largely exploring themes of identity and grief but it was also just really fun to see these characters trying to get by in a world that they weren’t completely familiar with. I also was really pleasantly surprised by how well it executed a love triangle. Love triangles are usually one of my most hated tropes in books and a large part of that is because the narrative makes it pretty clear who is meant to be endgame but, whilst I have a favourite, I genuinely have no idea who our FMC will end-up with or even if she will end-up with either of them.