ARC Review – Only a Monster

From Goodreads:

It should have been the perfect summer. Sent to stay with her late mother’s eccentric family in London, sixteen-year-old Joan is determined to enjoy herself. She loves her nerdy job at the historic Holland House, and when her super cute co-worker Nick asks her on a date, it feels like everything is falling into place.

But she soon learns the truth. Her family aren’t just eccentric: they’re monsters, with terrifying, hidden powers. And Nick isn’t just a cute boy: he’s a legendary monster slayer, who will do anything to bring them down.

As she battles Nick, Joan is forced to work with the beautiful and ruthless Aaron Oliver, heir to a monster family that hates her own. She’ll have to embrace her own monstrousness if she is to save herself, and her family. Because in this story . . .

. . . she is not the hero.

This was a real slump buster for me. This book was certainly not revolutionary on the side of YA fantasy with its naïve Main character, a couple of love triangle hinting hunks and an adventure of discovery of the MC’s own strength. Yet it stood out by having fantastically fast paced and energetic writing style that pulled you in, curious world building and a fun twist of time travelling.

This was just such an easy book to fall into. It is fantastically enjoyable and the writing is so engaging you cant help but turn the page and continue on. I really liked the detail in the world building particularly between the different times that our main characters travelled to. I also genuinely liked the stories of the characters and who they developed over the course of the main plot. I liked the twists on the classic tropes that this book took and how they all played out.

However there was a lot this book set up but never really delivered on. The love-triangle angle never really materialised, no real romance materialized, the big bad was just to conveniently over come that it just didn’t pack the punch I was looking for compared to how powerful a start this book had. I think it just lost its momentum. We didn’t really get to explore enough. The various powers of the characters were eluded to but we didn’t learn very much, a lot of story lines were left unfinished. So the story that excited me at the beginning just sort of petered out. I hope that it if the series does continue that it answers a lot of these questions as overall it was well written and enjoyable.