Only a Monster audiobook

huh. i dont know how to rate this one. my head says 3 stars but my heart is giving it a 4.on one hand, this was an enjoyable reading experience overall. the pacing is fast, the concept is unique and interesting, i actually didnt mind all of the time travel (which is a plot i generally dont like), and i do feel like i want to continue the series. on the other hand, nothing feels like it lives up to its promise/potential. the romance is a big part of the marketing pitch and it ends up being very underdeveloped, the monsters arent at all as monster-y as i expected them to be, and the ending just feels… convenient? im just left feeling there could have been so much more to this.but i did enjoy it! it was a quick and fun read, so im gonna go ahead and round up.↠ 3.5 stars

*ARC sent by the publisher -Hodder & Stoughton- for review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.* I FOUND IT. I think I found my favorite YA Fantasy of the whole year (slightly ironic since this is releasing Feb 2022 and I'm writing this Oct 2021).I very rarely find myself enjoying YA fantasy recently without being irked by the decisions of the characters but this was an exception.My favorite aspect might be how open to interpretation so many different parts of the story was. If you pull out of context the mechanism of their powers, they don't really seem that bad and worthy to be called "monsters". However, if you actually think about the nature of it and how its meant to work… they definitely are monsters and Vanessa Len does nothing to make it sound right. Which I loved. Because she was still able to humanize the characters without compensating for the fact that what they do is harmful to people who aren't them.To be honest, other books might have given it some redemption arc but VL said: "nope! but I'm gonna make you love them anyway." “Real monsters look like me and you.” This has all of my weaknesses bundled up in one book:Character dynamics that sweep you up? CHECK. Themes about humanity and monsters? CHECK.Magical underworld? CHECK.Time travel and forgotten memories? CHECK.(Enemy) Soulmate trope? CHECK.and This cover? *chef’s kiss*(whoever made this cover captured the essence of the story really well)Also, did I forget to say that this is set in London…Despite the enemy soulmates trope being the main reason I read this, Vanessa Lee was able to perfectly balance both the romance and plot, so if you’re a reader who enjoys that (like me), I think you’ll love this.I'm going to be honest that I still don't know who exactly Vanessa Len is referring to with the "enemy-soulmates" bit. By that I mean I don't which one of the two male leads is actually her soulmate because the "enemy" part can be interpreted in two different ways depending on how you look at it. In my case, I think one of the main reasons the story affected me as much as it did was because I think I assumed the wrong person in the “enemy-soulmate” trope. I only realized it more than half-way through the story and it destroyed me because I think my ship might drown. If you fall in the same hole that I did, you'll probably be destroyed too.Before reading, I was actually really curious to know if they really are monsters or if it meant something else. There is just something so intriguing reading about monsters that might not really be monsters. The fact that it was not explicitly said in the synopsis why they are considered monsters was a very smart and effective move. It made things that more surprising to me, especially given how effectively executed it was for my preferences. (I am a very big fan of fantasy that is borderline dark, is dark, or has dark themes).There are some tropes that we have arguably seen a fair share of in YA but the way VL wrote it made it feel so fresh. There are some things left to be desired in the writing style and I'm not saying it was perfect but, oh, Vanessa Len’s skills in creative writing shows. I can’t pinpoint what exactly it is about her writing style but I was affected more than I thought I would be?? There’s something about this book, I swear, it gets you a certain way. When I know that the same scenes would not have hit as hard if VL’s writing was not what it was. There were just so many parts where I thought to myself that “this could have been a boring” but my intrigued never dwindled.I don’t know what I thought the magic system would be like but it wasn’t what I thought it was gonna be with the title and premise. It was slightly more magical but still had that tinge of dark if you give it more than a second's thought. Given that I’ve read a great deal of fantasy with their fair share of magic systems, I get extra excited whenever one still manages to surprise me, especially in urban fantasy. I do admit that there were times Joan frustrated me and made me want to shake her with her decisions but we're not going to get into that because I was still in love with the character dynamics at play. I also just want Aaron, my cinnamon bun, to be happy. “We believe that if people belonged together...then our timeline tries to repair itself by bringing them together. Over and over and over....”"Like soulmates?""Yes. If you believe in fairy tales," If you’re losing faith in YA Fantasy, I hope this helps give that hope back to you. This was definitely more The Last Magician (another favorite) than Passenger to me though, but it was definitely This Savage Song. I am so destroyed right now. I actually teared up when I finished this T_TI was so affected by this story and it ended on a very destroying, heart-throbbing, and fulfilling note but also, I need the second book, like, yesterday. I have not hyped a YA Fantasy like this in so long but Vanessa Lee honestly deserves all the praise and excitement I can muster.↣ Highly recommended if you want some fun fast-paced YA Time Travel Fantasy with ~maybe morally grey characters~ that is easy to get into but still holds the serotonin rushes that you are craving for. Especially one that holds aspects that are open to interpretation as of this first book. ↢— 4.5 —⇢ content warnings// On and offscreen deaths of parents and guardians, On and offscreen deaths of family members, Threats of violence, Violence, Blood, Murder, Weapon use, Brainwashing, Interrogation, Involuntary drug use, Real-world racist microaggressions, Fantasy xenophobia⇢ representation: diaspora Chinese-English main character, Chinese side characters✧ you can find this review and more on my blog ✧⤜ pre-read review ⤛ "Because in this story . . . she is not the hero" ... hello??there's something about stories about monsters not really being monsters that is so intriguing to readi also hear enemy-soulmates and angst and i am here for it

Whoa! May I announce you a big, a fresh, exciting start of unique fantasy trilogy? A special story makes you root for monsters against humans! Oh my goodness, I devoured each chapter and I don’t know how I can wait at least whole year for a sequel!Joan at age of 16, has no idea what her family keeps hiding from her till she touches an old man and blackouts, losing hours from her life. Her gran confirms what she’s told her when she’s a little girl who wanted to be Superman: she cannot be hero: being hero means denying her true nature: she’s a monster. Only thing she wanted was having breakfast date with the charming and nerdy boy Nick she has longtime crush for who is also her colleague she’s worked at Holland House. When she black outs, she misses her date and when she goes back to museum to make an explanation to him, her entire world changes in the very same day. First the museum gets surrounded from the monsters from Oliver family: the arc enemies of her Hunt family. They intend to kill her and Nick but at the last minute Nick strikes back and kills everyone! Joan finds out from a hard way that there are more dangerous things than rival monsters called monster hunters leading by hero! And unfortunately Nick she adored for a long time is the leader of hunters and destined to kill Joan’s entire family, coming for her to finish his business! Joan finds an ally: youngest child of Oliver family: Aaron who didn’t stop his father to try killing her. First rule of being monster is touching a humans’ neck and stealing days or years from their lives to teleport yourself to another timeline! Now as monster hunters lurking around to kill Joan and Aaron who survived from monster massacre, finding their ways to travel in time. Joan’s mission is going back in time to stop the massacre but she doesn’t have any time there’s a king at the monster court who likes to write the timeline as he pleases.How far she can risk to save her family? How far she put herself in danger to confront with Nick the boy she fell in love even though they are enemies and their love story is doomed to fail? How far she push herself to bring out the secret power she has? I loved the mysterious world building. I’m looking forward to meet more monster families. I loved the love triangle ( I’m on team Aaron) I loved the jaw dropping twist near the end! I cannot wait to read the sequel! This is freaking good and I’m so sure it’s gonna get even better!

A Goodreads Choice nominee in Young Adult Fantasy!! Okay, SO. I have been thinking a lot about Only a Monster for the past week, not least of all because of how explosive the ending was. The journey from what I expected this book to be, to how I felt during the beginning, through to what I thought at the end was quite a ride.This was one of the more imaginative fantasy novels I’ve read recently, even in a year where more of my reading has been magic-adjacent than not. In my opinion, the Goodreads synopsis does not do it justice, so I’ll try to lay it out in a way that doesn’t use the phrase “super cute boy” multiple times. Joan is a teenager living in London with her mom’s side of the family, the Hunts, an quirky group that consists of her grandmother, cousins, aunts and uncles. She spends most of her free time at Holland House, a historical site, and after months of pining after one another her co-worker Nick finally asks her out. But right before meeting up with Nick Joan makes a devastating discovery about her family—that the Hunts are self-identified monsters and potentially dangerous to others. And because the description mentions it I will too: Nick is a much-prophesied monster slayer. Not much of a meet cute!So at this point in the book I was just kind of floating along, expecting the same kind of YA star-crossed-lovers-but-supernatural. Think Scott and Allison from Teen Wolf or Nina and Matthias from Six of Crows, one doomed to hunt the other despite misgivings. And I’m not saying that’s not what happens here, just that it’s not *all* that happens. I was convinced it was going to be dramatic, maybe a little soap-y, and kind of, well, basic.But man, I would never have guessed the thing that made the monsters so……monstrous. I’m gonna put this part in spoiler tags in case people haven’t seen anything about this plot detail yet. (view spoiler)[The time travel and method for doing so was so beyond what I thought this book was going to do. I’m not really a big time travel person, but it was so cleverly incorporated and the other family ‘power’ so minor in comparison. Maybe it’s that we’re so desensitized to time travel as a plot device at this point that I hadn’t considered the ramifications fully of ‘stealing time’ until Vanessa Len laid it all out so clearly.You know, I’m not sure the multiverse/time travel elements completely hold up logistically and scientifically, but that’s not necessarily something I’d ever try to go too deep into. In the end, these monsters operate in a way that’s not too different from previous ones, and that is with a complete disregard for human life. (hide spoiler)]I think I saw someone in an IG story say that Only a Monster reminds them of YA fantasy books they used to read as a teenager, and I absolutely love that idea. You could sit down, inhale this book in one sitting and be immediately desperate for more. The terminology used by Len is simplified, the kind of thing where you don’t need an entire world-specific thesaurus at the end for reference. The magic system itself is straight forward as well, and even though you can tell there’s more intricacies lying underneath that first layer, Len holds back from info-dumping all over the reader. You find out things as you need to, and are allowed to theorize in a way that doesn’t distract from what’s going on in that moment.What was holding me back from immediately stomping onto this site and throwing an easy five stars up is that it’s not a perfect novel. I think it ping-pongs around a little too much and could use some sharper dialogue. But as a debut, as a start of a series and as something new and exciting enough to be appealing to both veterans of the genre and newbies, I’m going to give it the fifth star. Mostly because I want you all to read it too and tell me what you think.*Thanks to Vanessa Len and her editor for the eARC!**For more book talk & reviews, follow me on Instagram at @elle_mentbooks!also I’m obsessed with my Bernie/Only a Monster crossover meme, and I would still like a physical copy so I am not deleting the pic even though I read it lol["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>["br"]>

5 STARSI finished Only a Monster twenty minutes ago and I have just been lying on my bed while staring up at the ceiling, trying to acknowledge what I just read. I have been thinking about this book and it is just completely messing with my mind. It was every bit as amazing and perfect as I had imagined it would be, but I have no idea how to express how exactly I feel about this book. Only a Monster carved a hole deep into my chest and I have no idea how I'm going to be able to wait like TWO YEARS for the next book. SummarySixteen-year-old Joan Chang-Hunt is staying at her eccentric family's house in London for the Summer, and everything finally feels like it's falling into place. When her cute co-worker, Nick, asks her on a date, Joan is ecstatic. But in a twist, Joan and her family are actually monsters and Nick is a legendary monster slayer. She is forced to team up with Aaron Oliver, the cruel heir to the rival family, as they try to save her family, themselves, and the world.CharactersOf course, for me, character's are the most important part of every story. I absolutely loved the characters in Only a Monster. Joan Chang-Hunt is a half-Chinese, half-English, half-monster, half-human teenage girl, and I feel like everyone can see themselves in her. Although her biraciality was not much talked about, I still really enjoyed that addition. I liked the parallels between her monster heritage and her racial heritage. I also really liked that Joan's decisions did not seem reckless or pointless as they often do young adult. As the audience, we can understand and see why Joan does what she does. Aaron Oliver teams up with Joan in this book. I really enjoyed his character also. He was very complex, but not in a typical 'tortured hero' way, but in a way that seems realistic to a teenage boy. Nick Ward is the main antagonist in this story. Again, I like how Len did not use the typical tropes of a villainous love interest, but rather stayed true to his character in a way that made sense. It's literally impossible for me to pick who I loved more between Aaron and Nick, especially since Len had me going back and forth between them the entire book. Some of the other main characters, Ruth, Tom, and Jamie, were also great. I wish Jamie was developed upon a little more, but I still thought all of the characters were given a good amount of attention. Setting/WorldbuildingWhere do I begin? First of all, I am a sucker for books that take place in London, so that already drew me in. I loved the way the setting was incorporated in a really clever way. Magical realism is usually a hit or miss in terms of blending the magical world and the real world, but it was done well here. The worldbuilding is absolutely amazing. It is one of the most unique worlds I have come across. I don't want to spoil too much, but this book involves time traveling, and it is done in such a non-cliche way and it is so creative and ah! this book is just so genius. I loved as the characters traveled in different times and how they adapted and it was just so smart on the author's part. PlotThe plot was constantly moving and action-packed the entirety of the book. I never felt bored when reading it. I ended up devouring this book in one day just because everytime I got to the end of a chapter, I had to know what happened next. The pacing was perfect in this book and the structure kept me entertained the entire way through. ConsThere is very little I disliked about this book. In fact, despite how this was one of my last reads of 2021, it immediately found a way into my top 10. The one thing I would say about this book, though not really a con, is that I have no idea how there are going to be two other books after this. The ending just felt so . . . complete (even though there are some loose ends that I NEED to see wrapped up). I really hope Only a Monster #2 doesn't experience middle book syndrome.Final ThoughtsOH MY GOD THIS BOOK WAS LITERALLY PERFECT AND I AM GOING TO BE THINKING ABOUT THIS FOR THE NEXT COUPLE OF MONTHS UNTIL IT'S PUBLISHED AND I'M GOING TO BE SHOVING IT DOWN EVERYONE'S THROAT. I can't wait to see everyone's reactions when they read this and I NEED THE SEQUEL IMMEDIATELY. I HAVE NO IDEA HOW I CAN WAIT THAT LONG TO READ MORE. Thank you so much to Epic Reads and Harperteen for sending me this physical ARC in exchange for an honest review.- - -THE PUBLISHER JUST EMAILED ME THAT THEY WERE GOING TO SEND ME AN ARC OF ONLY A MONSTER IM SO HAPPY SJDJBSNAHFJDKSKCBC

I'm finding this review very difficult to write without spoilers so I will keep it vague. This book is squarely YA and starts with all the familiar YA tropes - cute boy, star-crossed lovers, etc. But then it takes all of those expectations the reader brings to the text and smashes them. Sorry, reader. Or, rather, lucky reader! This isn't the story you thought it was. It's better. Every time I thought I could predict what came next, Len used it against me to take the story in a different direction with a different outcome. I did think the prose was a bit clunky, particularly at the beginning, but the author did eventually find her footing. And there's time travel which I am sure could probably be scrutinized but I'm ok with authors playing fast and loose generally with time travel. (I'm not there for the physics; I'm there for the feels.) And that ending was, well, a real banger. Could have gone soft. Definitely did not. Kudos to Len on an excellent YA debut.

3.5 ⭐ Wow. I have so much to say, but I have to gather my thoughts first. But this was pretty cool for the most part.❤❤❤

➵ my mind is blown away. someone please tell me why i'm feeling both happy and sad, heartbroken and hopeful, at the end of this. absolutely can't wait for the next book! rtc.27.11.2021 i've been eyeing this book for more than a year since its announcement and now i'll finally be reading it early. tbh, i expect excellence because this sounds amazing. 21.08.2020 a half monster who who wants to be a hero; rival families; a paranormal world hidden within london? okay, so you mean i'm going to love it.

Darkly delicious fun. If you've been looking for your newest YA urban fantasy obsession - you've found it.

Reviewers note: What just happened. Like seriously, I have no clue what just happened. This book was incredible. It EXCEEDED my already SUPER HIGH rating of this book. It’s now one of my favourite books EVER. And I mean EVER. Gosh I love this book. Now I suffer while I wait for the next book.I received an ARC of this book, but it doesn’t affect my review at all! Thank you so much for the ARC!In the fairytales, the hero always defeats the monster. But is this a fairytale or a nightmare?Joan is visiting her mother’s side of the family for the summer, like she always does, in London, England. She’s having a lot of fun. Volunteering at a site of historical significance, hanging out with her weird, but loving, family, and flirting with a cute boy. Perfect right? Until her life turns upside down. Turns out she’s a monster, and the boy she’s been flirting with is a legendary monster slayer. Now she must team up with the heir of a rival monster family, named Aaron Oliver, who is both handsome and clever. The only way to defeat the monster slayer is to embrace the monster side of her, to save herself, her family, and everyone she loves. She’s not the hero of the story, but the monster. Let’s start with how much I love this book. I absolutely LOVED this book. Let me explain how good this book was. It’s one of my most anticipated reads of 2022, and so I had super high expectations. Guess what? It exceeded my extremely high expectations. It was so dark and twisted and it was the darkness that seeped into every single corner that made it truly what it was. Let’s talk about the fact that I, master of figuring out what happens next, even with the most surprising plot twists, couldn’t figure out what was going to happen next, at any point. I am not lying. I had no clue what was going to happen next. There were so many twists and turns and honestly everything was so surprising and honestly just made sense. The author was amazing at this. I really enjoyed the whole aspect about how Joan was troubled by a monsters morals. It showed how there were good and bad monsters, and how every monster had different morals. How she kept thinking about where she should stand and how they were affecting humans themselves. Even though she herself is a monster, she didn’t just decide to change herself to fit their own morals, but her own. I think that’s really important. Let’s talk about how much I love the monster families. They made up this whole society, each of them having their own powers. I really enjoyed this fact, because the author could’ve just said every monster has the same magic or something, but instead they put the hard work into making a whole society. I hope in the next book we get to learn more about the families, especially since we didn’t meet many of them. Something I didn’t realize the author did well was give an amazing cliffhanger. It’s one of those cliffhangers that sneak up on you, and make you realize that you need answers to all your questions. At the end, when I first finished it, I thought it was a pretty good ending, without much of a cliffhanger, but as I’ve been thinking these past couple of hours, I’ve created so many questions in my head that now I don’t know how I’ll wait for the next book. Another thing I absolutely loved about this was all the tropes the author added in the book, but they made it seem like it perfectly fit in. Sometimes I find authors try to put tropes in, and in the end, it doesn’t fit well, and seems kind of weird. I really like how the tropes were woven into the book. There were so many tropes too, which I really enjoyed because most of my favourites were in there. Now it’s time to talk about the characters. It’s what you have all been waiting for, right?Let’s talk about Joan. Joan is our main character, and I’m not going to describe her as a protagonist, because she’s a monster. At the start, I liked her a little bit, but I found she was sort of naïve and at first didn’t love her. I saw her grow little by little, and the changes were so subtle I didn’t notice until the last fifty pages of the book. Honestly, by the end of the book, I’d fallen in love with our morally grey main character. She had a really cool perspective on everything that I really enjoyed. Overall, I found her to be a very interesting main character and a breath of fresh air. Aaron Oliver. Blonde. Morally gray. My newest bookish boyfriend. I absolutely loved his character. I also loved how it showed his vulnerability at points, showing that even though he was a monster he still had emotions. He had so much depth and was such a beautifully written character. I’m swooning, obviously. I liked how he was so mysterious and had his own moral compass. It made the monsters seem somehow human, rather than fully monsters. I can’t wait to learn more about him.What about the hero, the legendary monster slayer, Nick. I absolutely loved his character, and the fact that he wasn’t your typical knight in shining armour. He was dark and twisted and confused and honestly was just messed up. He was a really good character. I loved how he was supposed to be the hero, but in the end, was as dark and twisted as everyone else. And his relationship with Joan was perfection. And also the ending destroyed me. I’ll be waiting for the next book to come out (how I manage to wait over a year for books astonishes me). What’s right, what’s wrong. What’s up, what’s down. Is being a monster truly bad?

Only A Monster pleasantly surprised me with how much it sucked me in. It was thrilling with high stakes, potentially catastrophic losses, and exciting secrets. It contains some of the general tropes of YA urban fantasy – teen girl with newfound powers, hints of a love triangle, heroes vs villains – but it subverts some too with our main character on the side of the “monsters”.Joan comes from a line of time-travelling monsters – they steal time from humans, shortening their lifespan, in order to travel through time themselves. Ever since she was little, Joan has been told stories about a hero who would rise to slaughter all the monsters and save humans from their life-sucking powers. In a twist of fate, it turns out said hero is much closer to Joan than she could have anticipated, and his presence causes a horrible tragedy that threatens everyone Joan cares about. Forced to pair up with Aaron Oliver, a ruthless heir from a monster family that hates hers, she travels back in time to hopefully right some wrongs. The world-building and magic system were well done. I loved the twist on time travel and seeing a different kind of monster. Outside of the main ability of monsters, different monster families have different powers and discovering all of those was an entertaining adventure in itself. All the different settings always gave me a strong sense of place, even when flitting around different cities in different times.However, the magic system had some discrepancies. It was repeatedly stressed that under no circumstances are monsters able to change the future no matter how hard they try. The timeline is supposed to automatically adjust to fix itself. But then, bringing technology back from the future is prohibited because it could cause trouble in the past. See my issue? You said it wasn’t possible to disrupt the timeline, but now you’re telling me technology is dangerous because it could disrupt the timeline. I’m confused. Joan was a pretty likable main character. While she was a bit reckless at times and always seemed to think she knew best, I enjoyed the fresh narrative of a teenage girl who’s blunt and secure in herself. I do wish I’d grown more attached to her, but I see that issue being resolved in the coming sequels.Nick was a weird combination of standard knight in shining armor and merciless assassin. Fun mashup aside, I didn’t really care for him too much up until his past and how he became a monster slayer is revealed, which was a real gut punch that raised so many questions. Aaron is cranky, a bit of a snob, mysterious, but a giant softie underneath it all. Would probably hate him in real life but you can’t give me that combo in a story and not expect me to like him. I’m super interested in seeing his character more fleshed out, especially after the way everything ended. All of the side characters were well-crafted, and I enjoyed seeing their dynamics play out and evolve. The only one of note though is Tom because his story was so moving that I can still recall it months later. While there were some flirty elements, the romance waits in the wings until the very end of the book. I enjoyed it with one character and not with the other. The main relationship – Joan and Nick – relies on the soulmate trope, which I’m impartial to. The problem with it here is that the suddenness ruins any kind of tension – there’s no build up and it essentially forms out of thin air. They may have loved each other forever, but how am I supposed to care when there isn’t any kind of relationship in the present timeline? Nick was absent for the majority of the story – and replaced with another much more interesting boy – so I just didn’t buy their eternal love. Now, the third side of this forming love triangle, Aaron, I could root for because they actually have an evolving relationship. And their last scene in particular? Oof, so much potential. The ending wraps up this chapter, but it’s far from over so I’m very glad to see that there’s going to be at least two more books in this Monsters series.

26.10.21 —Firstly, Thank you to Hodder & Stoughton for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!I was really excited for this book because the pitch WAS AMAZING. Monsters in England?? Time travel?? Enemies to lovers?? Soulmates?? Monster court heists?? Yes!! So I was really happy when I was granted an ARC for this amazing book 💖“Olivers see. Hunts hide. Nowaks live. Patels bind. Portellis open. Hathaways leash. Nightingales Take. Mtawalis keep. Argents sway. Alis seal. Griffiths reveal. But only the Lius remember.”Only a Monster is set in England with aspects such as time travel, monsters, heists and more! I loved everything about this book- I can’t even explain how much I enjoyed reading it!!The writing and plot were PHENOMENAL. The writing was descriptive and rich, the plot was well paced. I love how the author expressed Joan’s biracial identity and drew parallels between her being half Chinese and half British, and her being half human and half monster. Only a Monster expressed a new take on “heroes” and “monsters” and I am here for it! The world building was great and I really enjoyed how different families had different powers, it was super cool!The characters in this book were one of the best I have ever read about. Joan was a great character, she was kind and was willing to do absolutely anything for her loved ones. Aaron was also an amazing character, he was a bit stuck up and entitled, but I really enjoyed his character arc. Nick, well I did enjoy Nick’s character but I was not expecting the outcome that came at the end! I also loved how Joan and Aaron had to work together to survive despite their families having a hatred for each other. In terms of the romance- let’s just say I was not expecting what happened, and while it did leave me a bit confused I do expect more clarity in book two.The various themes explored such as family and identity were extremely interesting to read about, and they were very important too. In conclusion, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I cannot wait to read the next one to see how Joan’s journey continues. Vanessa Len has truly written magic! 💖TL;DR: A magnificent contemporary fantasy debut that explores identity, monsters, heists, family, time travel, and will have any reader screaming for book two!TW: On and offscreen deaths of parents and guardians, on and offscreen deaths of family members, threats of violence, violence, blood, murder, weapon use, brainwashing, interrogation, involuntary drug use, real-world racist micro-aggressions, fantasy xenophobia.18.10.21a moment of silence for my destroyed self. thank you. i dont know what happened, or what this book is laced with??? BUT I LOVED IT, and i need the next book more than air. rtc when i can form coherent thoughts

Happy release day to one of my 2021 favourites! I highly recommend you pick up a copy.Thank you to Hodder & Stoughton for an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!Only a Monster is the start of a new trilogy that deals with time travel, the fear of the other, morality, self-acceptance and so much more. It is a beautiful, fast-paced tale which is a mix of Passenger and This Savage Song, and while I have not read the latter, I do believe it was better than Passenger (which says a lot as I am obsessed with that duology.)Vanessa Len has created such a unique magic system that intertwines with fated soulmates and a battle through time. We are introduced to Joan Chang-Hunt, a half-human, half-monster who volunteers at Holland House with a boy called Nick, a monster hunter. While I am usually not the biggest fan of characters realising they are not human and have powers, Len pulled it off incredibly well. Both of these characters were extremely lovable and so human and it was an emotional read as they battled against one another. We are also introduced to various side characters, such as Aaron Oliver and Ruth Hunt who are equally as lovable people. Everyone feels so human, even though they're not, and they all have wonderful and unique personalities. I appreciate that Len developed her side characters just as well as her main characters as it created a nice atmosphere throughout the book. The world building and magic system was also extremely well done, I enjoyed getting to know the twelve Monster families of London and the various displays of their power. It was also great to see the Monster Court and how it works with time - time is at the forefront of this novel as it deals heavily with time travel, which in turn creates many dilemmas and evokes the main thematic concern of morality and the fear of the other. The book also had many plot twists throughout, many of which were very emotional and shocking. There was also a great deal of subtle foreshadowing involved which was revealed in the end, which made for a very sad ending while leaving plot threads unresolved for the sequel. I have many theories for the rest of the trilogy and I am eager to read the sequels and other books Len releases.This is definitely my favourite YA fantasy/sci-fi of the year - Vanessa Len is a writer to watch. I strongly encourage everyone to pre-order this book before release: February 17th 2022. - 5*

the one that got away meets morally gray time travellers