Review: LITTLE MONSTERS by Kara Thomas

Little Monsters by Kara Thomas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Kara Thomas is an author who’s been recommended to me a number of times as I’ve been navigating my way through YA thrillers, and I finally had time to read one of her books, Little Monsters.

This story follows the story of Kacey, a girl new to town a year ago, who is now best friends with two girls. These girls definitely have the mean girls vibe present in Dana Mele’s People Like Us, and to some extent the tv show Pretty Little Liars (though Little Monsters has a darker, grittier tone). When Kacey’s best friends go to a party and she’s not invited, she wonders why they’re being distant. And then one of them, Bailey, fails to return home.

All eyes point to Kacey, and then her stepbrother, and the mystery unfolds with plenty of twists. In terms of engagement and pacing, this book started out so good. I was enthralled. The set-up is amazing. And the ending was equally good. For me, the middle felt a little flat. For a long time, the pacing seemed a little bit too slow. There were lots of twists there, don’t get me wrong, but I felt like something was lacking a little, perhaps because it started getting so complicated with more questions being raised and very few answers being given.

Having said that, I loved the characters and the family dynamics in particular. You’ve got the stepmother who’s very welcoming, more so than Kacey’s own father, the absent mother, the stepbrother who is a great friend, and the half-sister who dotes in Kacey. But there’s also something off about her, and it’s here where I got the same vibes as (spoiler alert!) Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects in terms of the little sister.

So let’s talk about the ending and the reveal of Bailey’s murderer. (Spoilers in this paragraph; skip ahead to the next one if you don’t want to know the identity of the murderer!) Given that we have the story told from both Kacey’s POV and the diary extracts of Bailey before she goes missing/is murdered, I felt so sure that the murderer was Jade, the other best friend as it had to be someone close to both of the narrators. But there was also something off about Lauren, the little sister, so to find out I was right about both of them was a great payoff. And it happened so quickly at the end. Suddenly, bam, it was there. And even though I’d worked out who it had to be, by process of deduction, the way the reveal unfurled was still engaging and I couldn’t read fast enough.

The final two lines of the book also provide another twist and make you see things differently, which I particularly loved.

All in all, this is a highly recommend thriller for young adults.

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Review: PRETTY DEAD GIRLS by Monica Murphy

Beautiful. Perfect. Dead.

In the peaceful seaside town of Cape Bonita, wicked secrets and lies are hidden just beneath the surface. But all it takes is one tragedy for them to be exposed.

The most popular girls in school are turning up dead, and Penelope Malone is terrified she's next. All the victims so far have been linked to Penelope—and to a boy from her physics class. The one she's never really noticed before, with the rumored dark past and a brooding stare that cuts right through her.

There's something he isn't telling her. But there's something she's not telling him, either.

Everyone has secrets, and theirs might get them killed.


FIVE STARS

I've been on the look out for amazing YA thrillers recently, and PRETTY DEAD GIRLS by Monica Murphy definitely fits this criteria. In short, this book is amazing. 

I'll be honest, when I started it, I wasn't totally convinced of just how great this story was going to be. I've just started watching Pretty Little Liars on Netflix, and the opening of this book reminded me A LOT of that show. You've got the same set-up: a group of popular high school girls, and one of them has been murdered, with the others looking for the identity of the murderer. PRETTY DEAD GIRLS didn't feel like anything spectacular--until I got to the 30% mark or there about, when I realised that we were also having the odd chapter narrated by the murderer. 

It's all first person narrative with no tags for who is narrating, and there'd been a few instances where I was confused as Penny's narrative style suddenly seemed to change. (Particularly the first chapter where I got very dark vibes and wondered if the narrator was the murderer--but as I read on and learned more about Penny, I doubted she was really the murderer and that the first chapter had been set to throw me off the scent). But at the 30% mark, I realised that some of the chapters weren't narrated by Penny. Instead it really was the murderer, and we see the murderer in the lead-up to the next deaths. 

When Lex is the second girl to die, I felt really invested. This is where this book went from being okay to amazing, and I just couldn't read fast enough. We follow Penny and Cass as they investigate, and as they realise that all the Larks girls are being killed off, one by one. 

What struck me about PRETTY DEAD GIRLS is that I think this is the first murder mystery YA thriller that I've read where I didn't have a clue who the murderer was until the end. Every time I thought I knew, the murderer's own narration would then mention my suspect in a way that made it clear that it wasn't them. And because the murderer never gives us any clues on their identity--other than that they're female--I was so stumped. And, despite this, I was STILL suspecting one of the boys in the story as I just couldn't figure out who it was going to be. 

When the murderer is revealed, it was a tense and well-written scene that brought everything together in a wonderful and concise way. I was very impressed. 

This book definitely seems to be written with teenage readers in mind. I'm in my mid-20s, and I was struck by how often the characters Snapchatted each other and how many selfies they took, but this really helped ground it as a YA novel, and I loved this so much. 

The romance in this book between Penny and Cass is low-key and very much secondary to the who-is-killing-the-girls storyline. That, I really appreciated as it wouldn't have made sense for the romance to be central, given that Penny's friends keep turning up dead and that she's possibly next. 

Penny is a great character. Complex and relatable, likeable and still a bit prickly. Her relationship with Cass is turbulent, with lots of on/off moments that felt very believable. And Cass himself is so well written. He's got just the right amount of intrigue and charm, says some really heart-wrenching lines that make him a perfect brooding YA hero, and has a dark past that links to many of the dead girls. 

In short, I loved this book and highly recommend it.