Thursday, 14 May 2015

Delicate Monsters by Stephanie Kuehn (Pub June 9 2015) IBSN13:9781250063847

*I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange of an honest review*

Delicate MonstersFrom the Morris-Award winning author of Charm & Strange, comes a twisted and haunting tale about three teens uncovering dark secrets and even darker truths about themselves.

When nearly killing a classmate gets seventeen-year-old Sadie Su kicked out of her third boarding school in four years, she returns to her family’s California vineyard estate. Here, she’s meant to stay out of trouble. Here, she’s meant to do a lot of things. But it’s hard. She’s bored. And when Sadie’s bored, the only thing she likes is trouble.


Emerson Tate’s a poor boy living in a rich town, with his widowed mother and strange, haunted little brother. All he wants his senior year is to play basketball and make something happen with the girl of his dreams. That’s why Emerson’s not happy Sadie’s back. An old childhood friend, she knows his worst secrets. The things he longs to forget. The things she won’t ever let him.

Haunted is a good word for fifteen-year-old Miles Tate. Miles can see the future, after all. And he knows his vision of tragic violence at his school will come true, because his visions always do. That’s what he tells the new girl in town. The one who listens to him. The one who recognizes the darkness in his past.

But can Miles stop the violence? Or has the future already been written? Maybe tragedy is his destiny. Maybe it’s all of theirs.

Delicate Monsters by Stephanie Kuehn is an incredibly disturbing yet fantastic psychological thriller. The characters in this novel are all incredibly disturbed and the story isn't one for the light-hearted. I would describe this book as very dark. The book was split into three different view points of Miles, Emerson and Sadie. Each of the characters faced different issues but were all troubled in some way. I really liked each of these characters but my favourite view point was definitely  Emerson's although my favourite character to learn about was Miles. Emerson's view point was definitely the most disturbing out of them all.

The ending to this book was not entirely satisfying and felt slightly rushed to me.If you don't like being left with unanswered questions you may finish this book leaving slightly frustrated. I was kind of frustrated but in a way there was something about the mystery of the ending that I liked. I don't believe that there was enough of a cliff-hanger to make a second book but if one was published I would definitely read it. From the reviews that I have read on Goodreads many found this book incredibly disturbing and for that they gave it less stars. This slightly concerns me because I found it disturbing but enjoyed the darkness in the storyline and the characters.

This is one of my favourite books of the year. It kept me up at night just thinking about it. The novel itself was only about 240 pages in print although it didn't particularly feel like a quick-read.I would really recommend this novel to certain people that I know although you should be careful about reading this if you are easily traumatized or are pretty innocent. I would like to thank NetGalley, Amazon Kindle, St. Martin's Griffin and most of all Stephanie Kuehn for giving me the opportunity to read this amazing book.

I rated this book a 4.5/5.

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