They can leech time from humans, essentially shortening their lifespan, in order to travel through time themselves. The protagonist, Joan, comes from a family of time-travelling monsters on her mother's side. Maybe this was one of those times.īut Gran’s eyes weren’t shiny with a held-in joke.

Gran sometimes told jokes without smiling. “Or like robots.” She’d seen enough cartoons to know.

“Monsters look like giant spiders,” Joan said. In this book, you find yourself on the side of the monsters: moral dilemmas, grey areas, and all. It contains some tropes of the genre- teen girl comes into new powers, hints of a love triangle, heroes vs villains -but it subverts some too.

I burned myself out on YA urban fantasy some years back, but it looks like I'm ready to get back in the game because I inhaled this. then somehow I seem to have ended up here at the end, a little bleary-eyed and disoriented. I was just going to sample the arc, read a few pages, see if it was something that might interest me down the line. I didn't actually mean to read it right now. Only a Monster, as of my writing this, does not release for another five months. Vanessa Len’s stunning Only a Monster trilogy continues with this second instalment, a thrilling journey where a secret past threatens to unravel everyone's future.He gave her his familiar solemn smile, the one that he’d given her all the time at the house. Torn between love and family and monstrous choices, Joan must find a way to re-gather her old allies to face down the deadliest of enemies, and to save the timeline itself. When a deadly attack forces Joan back into the monster world as a fugitive, she finds herself on the run with Nick – as Aaron closes in.Īs the danger rises – and Nick gets perilously closer to discovering the truth of what Joan did to him – Joan discovers a secret of her own. Only Joan remembers that there is a ruthless and dangerous enemy still out there. And Nick, the boy she loved, is a stranger who doesn’t even know her name. Now, Aaron, her hard-won friend – and maybe more – is an enemy, trying to kill her. She reset the timeline, saved her family – and destroyed the hero, Nick.īut her success has come at a terrible cost. This sequel to the contemporary fantasy Only a Monster will take Joan deeper into the monster world, where treacherous secrets and even more danger await.ĭespite all of the odds, Joan achieved the impossible.

Only a monster vanessa len