I do love an end of the world, will we survive novel. This hit all the buttons and more. Beautifully written, characters that you can relate to and all in all a great read.

'My Name Is Monster' by Katie Hale is a work of dystopian fiction which uses stark language to convey the desolation of our main characters existence.
'Monster' believes that she is the only surviving human in post-apocalyptic Britain but finds a girl who she becomes something of a mother figure to, the first part of the novel being from Monster's perspective and the second part of the novel being the girls.

While I appreciate the concept and why it is written in such a way, it was a bleak reading experience for me personally, and I feel didn't really cover any new ground within the post-apocalyptic genre.

~ Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to review this title. ~

Haunting and ethereal. Reminded me of The Road in its intensity and sparseness of language. I really enjoyed the switch halfway through and the exploration of motherhood and adoption and childhood and survival. Will stay with me for a long time.

It is always a brave thing to write an entire book from just one or two points of view. No supporting characters, very little supporting action. Just one person and their thoughts. It is particularly brave to make that one central POV character not particularly likable.

The writing itself is simply lovely. Very prettily written and it's so easy to just devour this book in one or two sittings. The atmosphere is fantastic and the psychology is fascinating.

I am a bit of a sucker for post-apocalyptic fiction and this end of the world scenario is particularly juicy. I almost wish we could have seen more of it, rather than just the aftermath. Honestly, this book could have been double the length and I would have been happy for the extra content!

At the end of the book we are left with many unanswered questions and not everything is wrapped up. This is perhaps a little frustrating.

There is one scene in the book that honestly made me feel uncomfortable. There is a rather graphic scene of young Monster masturbating for the first time. We don't know exactly how old Monster is but it's safe to say that she is a child. Although masturbation is absolutely a natural thing, I felt rather uncomfortable reading it from the point of view of a (very innocent) child.

Overall I very much enjoyed this book and couldn't put it down, I just wish there wasn't so many unanswered questions at the end!

Thank you very much to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review

This is Katie Hale’s debut novel and I was so intrigue by the post apocalyptic premise and an original sounding blurb.

I found this to be a wonderfully well written book. The descriptive language drew me in to this emotional, cold and dark world.

This is a post apocalyptic story of a young woman who believes she is the only person left alive after The Sickness. Her name is Monster, a nickname given to her by her parents when she was younger and a bit of a loner.

Monster manages to survive by making a life for herself, away from a nearby city, but close enough to visit it to scavenge, on one of these trips she finds a young girl, who like her is practically feral. She takes her home and gives her the name Monster......and she renames herself Mother.

The book is told from two perspectives, firstly from Mother, then from Monster. It shows how they both see things differently and how Monster grows with her own thoughts and descriptive language.

I didn’t feel there was any particular plot to follow, just a story of life, nature and nurture in a decimated world, beautifully told. I can thoroughly recommend it...

I would like to thank the Author/the Publishers/NetGalley for the opportunity to read this book for free in exchange for a fair and honest review

My Name is Monster is divided into two parts in which two women, both with the name Monster, tell their tale. To describe the book, even only a little, will involve some plot spoiling, so if you don’t want to know, don’t read on.

The Monster of Part 1, has the name as a nickname, given to her by her father. She is a woman who prefers things, mechanics, to people. The novel begins with her walking towards her home having been stranded somewhere on the Scottish coastline after the world wars and the sickness have seemingly wiped out all human life.

She walks towards her parents home because it is as good a direction as any.

Slowly, as she walks, our sense of what happened to the world becomes clearer and we see this new world through the eyes of a person who has never really, until now, missed human contact and always sought solitude.

This part of the book begins with a quotation from Robinson Crusoe. Is being alive when everyone else is dead a blessing or not? Like Robinson Crusoe, Monster focuses on survival rather than blessing (in both books this is perhaps an initial focus) and slowly builds a settlement where she farms both vegetable and animal produce.

On one of her trips to the nearby city, she meets a living girl. Her Friday, a person she saves and teaches to speak. Afraid to name herself Monster in front of the terrified girl, she changes the end of the word from M…onster to M…other. Considering the term Monster a signifier of survival, this is the name she gives the girl and so part 2 gives the narrative to the new monster.

There is a sense in which this brave new world is given a monster of Frankenstein’s invention. A sense in which an obsession with language, ownership, morality, make My Name is Monster influenced by both Robinson Crusoe and Frankenstein, only in this version the monster can make a new world, can force its maker to set it free.

However, and perhaps strangely, I found the first part much more compelling than the second. The first Monster had a character that felt real, not necessarily empathetic, but graspable, tangible. The new Monster really is something intangible to me. This is both impressive and alienating. I cared less about a world that would develop under her guidance, but I’m not really sure why.

There are lots of clever ideas within the name Monster, from the Latin monstrum, an omen or warning from the gods whose root monere means to warn. These monsters are portends of the new world to come.

It’s a clever book with some fun world play and some beautiful passages. I think I wished it had gone somewhere else, but I can’t really say where. It’s hard when there are quite a lot of novels at the moment that look at what might become of this world us humans are running into the ground. How do you take this in a new direction? What do you imagine for a world in which very few of us survive? I believe in the importance of thinking about what happens when we’ve finished our project of destruction, and I enjoyed reading this imagined version as I’m sure many others will too. I’m left wanting more, however, which is mostly a good thing I think. Roll on Katie Hale’s next novel, but don’t forget to read this one when it comes out in June. My Name is Monster is a novel of ideas that reworks old ideas in new and intriguing ways and will certainly get you thinking about how we live now and how we might live differently if given a chance to start again.

Having believed I’d covered most post-apocalyptic themes in fiction, I was caught off guard by how much I enjoyed this book. Hale wisely focuses on the evolving mother-daughter relationship between the two main characters which in turns is compelling, turbulent and oddly touching in places.

Atmospheric and will stay logged in your memory long after its conclusion.

Highly recommended.

I was instantly curious about this book from the ambiguous title and eye catching cover. Having read the synopsis, I knew I was to expect something I didn't usually read but I was too curious to not give it a try.

What I really enjoyed (though perhaps wouldn't have expected) was how few characters there were - in fact there are two, Mother and Monster. I didn't feel a loss for anyone else'. I also loved the author's creativity which really made the scenes, which are set in a post apocalyptic Britain, come to life.

With that said, I found the second half of the book far too repetitive which really stole away the wow factor for me. I was also left with quite a few unanswered questions.

Not a book I would re-read but definitely an author I will look out for.

3 stars. An interesting, well-written, literary post apocalypse novel. It starts strong with Monster/Mother but I felt stalled somewhat with the second POV, which often felt repetitive. The deserted world makes the story feel somewhat low stakes. The author teases that danger is nearby but neither character reacts to it, which I felt was unsatisfying. However I did really enjoy the dynamic between Mother and Monster.

3.5 stars

I felt I'd only really just got a grip on who monster/mother Was,when the pov changed,and I didn't enjoy the second half quite so much.
A survival story of monster,a strange solitary young woman who apparently is the last human alive after sickness and war wipes out the rest of world.
Until she meets a child... and attempts to raise her.
Monsters point of view was a bit repetitive in second half of book... and I felt for a while it wasn't going anywhere... how wrong I was there.

I enjoyed the book... but didn't quite live up to what I'd hoped it would be.

I picked this on NetGalley for the sheer reason that it intrigued me in every way - the cover, the Synopsis and the reviews on GoodReads. It sounded so completely different from anything I had ever read before. This is a debut novel by a acclaimed poet and as soon as you start reading you call tell. This is an exceptionally beautifully written book. The language is incredible, and how things are described had me hooked. I could almost feel the world that she built, the cold, the heat, the wet, the emotions.

This was an apocalyptic story of a young woman who thinks she is the only person left in the world after The Sickness takes over. She is called Monster, a nickname given to her by her parents when she was younger. She grows up as a person who shuns humans and human interaction, a loner. After The Sickness she travels on her own across the UK to return to her parents home. She ends up carving a bit of a life for herself just outside a deserted city. On one of her trips into the City she finds a small girl who has been living feral. Monster decides to take her home. She names her Monster and Monster becomes Mother.

The first half of the book is from Monster (Mother)'s point of view and the 2nd half is from Monster's. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I enjoyed Monster (Mother)'s POV better than Monster's but I think this might be because she was a lot closer to my age. She was intriguing and I felt like i understood her. When we moved on to Monster's POV one thing I did really enjoy was the way that he author described her finding the world, almost how a baby discovers the world. Her learning what things are, how things work, even words for things was so captivating. For example, dewy grass was described as 'Still wet from the morning water' and how a fire starts as 'Because wood has heat stored inside it'. Small changes but really makes you think about the words we use for things.

Overall this wasn't a plot driven book as such , there is actually very little that happens, but its how the story is told that is the beauty of it. I gave this 4/5 stars and I will definitely be recommending this to others!

I absolutely adore this book! I couldn't put it down! The writing is very poignant and the descriptions of nature, the survival instinct and the inner turbulences of the women is very catching!

I loved this book, it has all the feel of John Christopher's Death of the Grass or Wrinkle in the Skin but without the rapeyness. The first part of the book is narrated by Monster a young woman who is better at fixing things than human relationships. The second part is narrated by a girl that Monster adopts after they find each other in an abandoned city.

This is a great addition to apocalyptic fiction and is a more female take on the genre. The book was just the right length and was gripped enough to read it in less than a day.

I felt extra connected to this book because the location sounds like my home town which is near the Scottish Border, on the East Coast and blessed with a large number of bridges.

Following an Extinction Level Event, which she survived hidden in the earth in the Global Seed Bank, deep in the Arctic in Svalbard, the titular Monster emerges to discover she may well be the last person left on earth.
Her homing instincts kick in and she heads back to her home town on a futile quest for answers that don't exist. She then establishes herself in a farm on the outskirts of a big city, heading in on regular forays for supplies, whilst starting to create her own ecosystem on the farm.
During one of her trips into the city, she discovers a young feral girl who she forges an awkward bond with, discovering in the process that she's somewhat lacking in natural maternal instinct. They form an uneasy double act, with strange co-dependencies, with Monster transferring her name to her younger counterpart and assuming the new name of Mother.
As Jurassic Park taught us, life finds a way, and Monster manages to get herself pregnant through artificial self-insemination at one of the clinics in the city (this is where I removed a star for stretching my imagination a little too far beyond the realms of possibility - the kid could barely speak when Mother found her, let alone figure out how to impregnate herself), setting the reader up for an interesting denouement, along with the additional sighting of smoke rising in the distance from another potential camp.
I'm a huge fan of post-apocalyptic fiction, and this book delivered on a lot of fronts. I felt it brought something new to the genre with its all-female cast. Billed as part-Frankenstein, part-Robinson Crusoe, I'd also add part The Road, without quite so much bleakness and violence, but with all the isolation and desolation. While it's by no means a perfect novel, it does have a huge amount going for it, and is well worth checking out. Highly recommended.

Starts well, excellent world building and atmosphere. Lags a little in the second half with the change of focus.

A really interesting exploration of survival, relationships, and the constructs of family in a post-apocalyptic world

An insubstantial story in terms of action, but with surprising depth as the relationship between ‘Mother’ and her protegee ‘Monster’ unfolds. Both have survived the war and sickness that has destroyed practically every human on earth and meet by chance during one of Mother’s forays into the city for supplies. She takes the child back to her farm, nurtures her body back to health and teaches her the skills she needs to survive, many of them hangovers from her own lonely, excluded childhood back in the old days. ‘What I know is this: that survival is not about being stronger than other people. It is about ignoring other people altogether.’

As the years go by, though, and the child grows up, it becomes clear that Mother has no maternal instinct and fails to create any real emotional bond between them. Mother believes that there is safety in solitude while Monster craves more warmth and companionship, and hopes that there may be more survivors out there. There lies their dilemma. In Mother’s experience: ‘Hope is a killer. It puffs you up like a balloon, then turns away as reality jabs like a needle. Hope is no help to a survivor.’ A bleak tale, but not entirely without hope at the end - for Monster at least.

A debut novel, written with sensitivity and insight, that interested me enough to look forward to this author’s future work.

Thanks to Canongate and Netgalley for the Advance Review Copy.

“I think it takes a monster to survive when nobody else can”

This novel is about Monster who becomes Mother when she finds another Monster. Got that? Well buckle in for a wild ride.

The novel is largely set in a post apocalyptic Britain. War and Sickness have killed everyone on earth (as far as we know) and a woman called Monster is the last person left alive. She ekes out an existence at an old farmhouse through scavenging and growing vegetables. On one of her scavenging trips to the ‘City’ she comes across a young girl who she names ‘Monster’ and she then becomes ‘Mother’.

The Mother character was a really fascinating ‘heroine’ to me and the insights into her past and her relationship with her parents helped the reader to understand why she is the way she is. The character of the young girl, Monster was less compelling to me but both characters are well written and credible.

The writer has a way of writing that makes the isolation and horrors of the aftermath of the apocalypse easy to imagine and the book is all the more terrifying for it. Mundane things like a clock, cans of food or batteries become matters of life and death e.g. comparing the finding of a locked storage room in a raided shop to Tutankhamun’s tomb, and there is a real sense of what has been lost. The lyrical writing style really works in this novel and the author’s experience as a poet is obvious.

This novel raises questions throughout and the parallels to potential future realities was unflinching and brutal. It’s not an easy read by any means but it’s a novel about the bonds between women, between mothers and children, survival and hope.

Oh this book! Wow. I loved it. I've always been a fan of survivor stories and this one is set in a post-apocalyptic world, where war and disease have wiped out most of the planet, leaving only a small number of survivors. We only meet two characters, which lends a real intimacy to the text. Even though the book deals with a grand, world event, the story at its heart is about the relationship between the two survivors. It's beautifully written - close and intense, with lovely imagery and well-chosen words. Highly recommend.