This is a strange horror novel with interesting elements of family and mental health issues. I love the story and following the family throughout the years. I did have some issues with formatting during the flashback scenes so I was a little confused in places. I will definitely purchase this book and reread in the future.

4.5 Stars.

Hamill explores the “escape” of the haunted house – and the comfort of monsters.

A Cosmology of Monsters takes pains to warn its readers up-front that “happy endings” and other narrative conventions don’t apply to real life. The novel swerves and ducks reader expectations throughout – sometimes in ways that dazzle, sometimes in ways that are profoundly frustrating. While the book’s headers are taken from Lovecraft, and his influence hovers over the work (including a beautifully-realised eldritch location, the City), Hamill wants to explore the way horror fiction, haunted houses and monsters intersect with family life. It’s a bold mission, and creates a book which I suspect readers will either love or hate.

The book begins with an interesting and only partly successful framing choice: Noah, a seven-year old boy, collects his sister Eunice’s suicide notes. It’s a striking opening image, which is quickly brushed aside as Hamill takes us on a “deep dive” for the next third of the book into his mother Margaret’s 1960s upbringing; college life; meeting his father (Harry); and their early married life in which Harry becomes troubled, obsessively building a haunted house in his backyard. Noah narrates all this; the effect is jarring, particularly as Margaret’s portion of the text is a beautifully pitched narrative about the claustrophobia of her dwindling life options. This is then snatched away as we turn back to six-year-old Noah and the scratching sounds being heard outside his sisters’ windows at night. For the rest of the novel the focus is on Noah, and – Margaret’s story being presented with such aching empathy – it’s hard not to see him as a comparatively uninteresting subject.

Haunted houses are a recurring theme: offering both the illusion of choice and, as characters are herded through them, the horrors of inevitability. This is true of the haunted house which Harry builds (later expanded into a truly magical attraction, the Wandering Dark) and the otherworldly City (seen in vignettes throughout, and later visited by Noah); inevitability also stalks the characters in the real world. Margaret’s narrative is nail-bitingly oppressive, showing her increasingly trapped by the expectations of heteronormativity. The men presented as her “future” are both terrible – Pierce the processed-chicken heir, who her mother tells her to “try” to be in love with – and fast-food worker Harry, who in a less interesting work might be the lovable underdog. But Harry laughs at her first attempt to pronounce Cthulhu; grabs her and kisses her uninvited; and feels so entitled to the fantasy of her that after one date he tells Margaret he’s “not ready to give [her] up yet”. In a dream sequence (surrounded by pulp magazines, typewriters, thousands of books, embodying the stereotype of the nerd misogynist) Harry tells her that “it doesn’t matter what you want”: this sense of Margaret’s powerlessness is absolutely tangible. For me, Margaret’s story was the high point of the novel, offering a very real cosmology of (real-life) monsters – poverty, reluctant motherhood and the subsuming of female dreams.

When the book moves on to Noah, the narrative switches to the nocturnal scratching sounds, the abduction of his sister Sydney (Hamill’s portrayal of this character, her teenage rage and abandonment issues, is absolutely spot-on), and his sister Eunice – the writer in the family – who feels trapped by her body and its own burgeoning same-sex desires. These women get such beautifully drawn portraits (Eunice in particular was absolutely heartbreaking, her depression “tak[ing] up physical space, swell[ing] and seep[ing]under closed doors… like poison gas, settling over the house in a fog”), that I found Noah’s coming-of-age story less interesting and often tonally jarring. The monster is slowly revealed as a large wolf-like and goofy “FRIEND” who takes him on night-time trips around the neighbourhood, but it’s oddly lacking in menace – until its attentions become evidently sinister, including a sexual encounter with a sixteen-year old Noah which was truly horror-inducing. The narrative’s constant shifts in focus made it hard to engage with Noah himself; positioned as an outsider, more comfortable haunting the Wandering Dark in a monster suit than dealing with his family’s issues, that disconnect carried over into scenes which contained real drama and significance.

Noah’s wife eventually tells him he’s “safely trapped in the tower of our marriage”; wanting to convince himself, he says that “love and a simple life… this is the real magic”. But for the majority of A Cosmology of Monsters, it seems everyone marries someone unappealing: Margaret with Harry, Eunice with the disappointing man she picks once she stops writing, and Noah with Megan, whose main appeal is her connection to the world of monsters. The primary moments of joy we see are wholly outside heteronormative family life: Eunice with her first girlfriend, a grown-up Noah with Leannon, the female form of the monster who’s been stalking him since childhood (although this is profoundly tinged with horror for the reader, as Leannon’s interactions with Noah and his family have been largely predatory in nature). I was left with the impression that Hamill has an uncomfortable and uncompromising story to tell about how women and queer-coded characters are railroaded into conformity, but not sure that Noah was the best person to tell it, or that it was combined successfully with the titular monsters. Leannon in particular remained a particularly disturbing enigma, both monster and victim, agent and object, largely overlooked by Noah’s self-absorption: she’s an eldritch creature with immense powers who tortures and abducts humans at the behest of the City, and a beautiful perpetually-naked woman, once human, who lives in an otherworldly house that Noah visits to have sex – as he observes, he has “a monster on booty call”.

Towards the end of the book, Noah regains his “haunted house” with a visit to his old monster scare attraction, telling his companion: “I needed that”. The Wandering Dark – offering some beautiful set pieces, including a memorable The Shining-inspired ballroom that left me just itching to visit – echoes the City’s Lovecraftian otherland, “the world behind the world” and it’s their familiarity with eldritch and fantastical locations which offers the Turner family a chance to break free. In the end, we see the redemptive force offered by the deep dark creative well, and Noah makes some incredibly ugly choices in order to make good on his family’s hereditary familiarity with monsters. The last portion of the book, despite the up-front disclaimer of “no happy endings”, delivers a satisfying one, with a return to the City and the flawed character of Harry, now more sympathetic – or at least more human.

A Cosmology of Monsters is a beautifully-written examination of the darkness of family life: as one character remarks, “adulthood gets us all in the end”. Hamill’s portraits of women struggling with their circumstances are achingly empathetic, and I bled a little for every one of them. However, the passivity of the characters is often incredibly frustrating, as are the tonal shifts between out-and-out supernatural or cosmic “horror”, flights of fairytale-like imagination, and Noah’s disconnected perspective. It’s a compelling debut, and an overwhelmingly promising one, but ultimately I felt it lacked cohesion.

H P Lovecraft’s shadow casts a long one over the horror genre. He developed new types of horrors that reverberate today; psychological and body horror are just two. What has changed is the way that people perceive horror. Whilst once upon a time witnessing the horrors from a different dimension would send you insane, we now question what comes first. Are we in fact already insane and creating these images within our mind? Are the only modern horrors results of mental health? Schizophrenia is a condition that follows the Turner family through generations but are the monsters that they see real?

Noah Turner is the third child of a troubled family. His father died when he was a babe in arms and his two sisters are at war with his mother. Bubbling under the surface is the fact they all have problems fitting into society, probably not the best idea to have a family business of running a Halloween Horror House. Noah’s life is difficult, but it takes on an even stranger bent when he hears something that scratches at the window. Most six years olds would scream but Noah befriends this creature and thus starts an existence like no other.

A Cosmology of Monsters by Shaun Hamill is a modern feeling horror novel that also pays homage to some of the best works of the 1980s. There is no doubt that mental health issues run through the Turner family and how they interact with the world is affected by this. Initially, Hamill treads a line between psychological and physical horror, the reader is unsure of what they are reading as the protagonists are not the most reliable. There is a recap of Noah’s parents' past that creates a base to build the rest of the story upon but not a huge amount happens yet. As soon as Noah takes the main stage, the book takes off.

With such a dysfunctional family, Noah was never going to have it easy. He finds it hard to make friends, so it makes sense that when a creature scratches at the window he decides to build a friendship, rather than recoil. Initially, the book hints at the possibility that Noah has inherited the schizophrenia that has affected others in this family. As a fan of more practical horror I was delighted to see that some things are what they seem. Suddenly the book’s various call-backs to Cthulhu begin to make sense as the book plays with alternative dimensions and things that go bump in the night.

The entire book has a dream like quality to it as it is told to us by Noah. Hamill is not afraid to question what makes a monster; Noah could be as bad as any creature; you must read the book to find out. There are several very satisfying twists in the book and Hamill has created a universe that makes a dark kind of sense. We go from a feeling of unsettling horror to more visceral as the book concludes. Events never become too extreme, but the book is certainly horrific in nature.

I do not want to give too much away with the direction that Cosmology takes but it is safe to say that the nature of the book is different from the start than at the end. For those that may find the family drama a little on the slow and non-horrific side, continue and the book opens and evolves. The middle section is packed with ideas that will resonant with any horror fans, especially of the classic 80s and 90s variety. By blending the concepts of internalised horror with a physical threat, Hamill has created an entertaining and disturbing book that will entertain any fan of the eerie.

My thanks to Titan Books for a digital edition via NetGalley of ‘A Cosmology of Monsters’ by Shaun Hamill in exchange for an honest review. It was published last year in the USA with its U.K. edition published in June, 2020.

“I started collecting my older sister Eunice’s suicide notes when I was seven years old. I still keep them ... They were among the only things I was allowed to bring with me, and I’ve read through them often the last few months, searching for comfort, wisdom, or even just a hint that I’ve made the right choices for all of us.” Noah Turner

So opens this stunning debut novel that combines a multi-generational family drama/coming-of-age story with a Lovecraft-themed literary horror.

Harry Turner has been obsessed with the writings of H.P. Lovecraft for many years. When he is diagnosed with terminal cancer he becomes obsessed with building a complex haunted house - the Wandering Dark. With his bookish wife, Margaret, and daughters, Sydney and Eunice they create a legacy that becomes their family business.

Just before Harry’s death Margaret gives birth to their son, Noah. In the years that follow the family fights their own demons including their grief and poverty. Yet in the shadows the real monsters lurk.

The family doesn’t know that Noah is being visited by a wolfish beast with glowing orange eyes. Yet he considers it his friend.

The publicity describes this novel as “Stephen King’s It meets Stranger Things”, which is a fair comparison though ‘Cosmology’ focuses mainly on Noah’s experiences rather than a group of plucky kids. I don’t want to drift into spoiler territory though there are mysterious disappearances and the like along the way.

Its theme of a young boy befriending something uncanny did also bring to mind Stephen Chbosky’s 2019 horror novel, ‘Imaginary Friend’, that was also also a 5-star read for me.

I found ‘A Cosmology of Monsters’ a very compelling novel. As with the stories of Lovecraft, its horror is subtle, more a sense of creeping dread over shocks. I felt that this restraint was very effective, highlighting its scenes of horror when they occurred. I will note that some of them were quite visceral.

On a side note, I want to acknowledge the excellent cover artwork on the Titan Books U.K. edition.

Monsters are real. They lurk in shadowed corners and are glimpsed outside bedroom windows. For Noah Turner monsters become a fear confronted and a friend found. But this is not the beginning of his tale. His tale begins long before his birth and long before his conception. His tale begins when his parents were as young and as lost and as afraid as he is now...

The story was told in such a unique format. I was momentarily befuddled, upon starting the book, but Hamill quickly alleviated any confusion without ever fully explaining just how the chilling sequence of events would unfold. It was intriguing, complex, and kept me ever unsure what would next occur, and ever willing to progress forward and find out.

The structure of the book was commendable and I did initially enjoy the contents, but found them lacking in the truly horrifying elements I had come looking for. This is definitely a book residing inside the horror genre, but was just not of the type to personally terrify me. However, I respected just how this brand of Lovecraftian horror was repackaged in a modern setting for a modern audience and just how it concluded in a truly chilling and unforeseen fashion.

This book was everything I wanted it to be!

It was dark, twisted, disturbing and so weird!

There is so much content in this book that may put you off (sexual abuse, death, rape, assault, death…the list goes on) but it all contributes in a way that brings the story along well.

It is very well written and I found that I couldn’t put it down.

You’ll have to keep the lights on for this one!!

“skritch-skritch-skritch”

This book is a difficult one for me to review. It’s been on my radar for nearly a year and I loved the writing style and how well I felt I knew many of the characters, but it also had some problematic moments for me.

I loved hearing all about the history of this family, tragedy and all. I liked getting a feel for the dynamics between its members and the ways they individually coped with the pain that they’d experienced. The more I learned about their complexities as individuals and as a whole, the more I wanted to delve deeper. The unlikeable parts of certain characters made them even more real to me.

“How often do I get a chance to live out a true-life nightmare?”

I couldn’t get enough information about the Tomb and The Wandering Dark. I could easily visualise each room and I was eager to experience them for myself. I was even plotting new rooms that I could add to those the family had created and wondered how I could get involved behind the scenes to bring the scares to life.

I even loved it when the monster was introduced. I love monster stories so I was looking forward to getting to know this one but certain aspects of the monster’s behaviour didn’t work for me at all. Now, this is where my review becomes a spoilery rant, so you may want to skip the four paragraphs hidden in the spoiler section. Sorry, my rants get kinda wordy.

Okay, if you’re still with me, I’ll assume you have either read the book already or spoilers don’t bother you. So, the monster. As Noah started spending more time with the monster I wondered about its why, how and what. When some vital information about the monster was revealed my curiosity quickly turned to ‘I no longer want to read this book’ and I would have DNF’ed at this point if I hadn’t committed to reviewing it.

The monster had been grooming Noah since he was six years old. This meant that when they eventually began having sex (apparently fairly regularly), my brain immediately went to ‘ewww!’ and I felt decidedly icky reading about it. If these scenes had involved a female child and male monster/adult, there would likely be an uproar and I don’t see why it should be any less abhorrent because the genders have been switched here. Thankfully, this is eventually called out for what it was by a minor character. Briefly.

Then there was Sydney, who thought she was having a relationship with a man, but there was a huge power imbalance as he was her teacher. Depending on where you live, legally this may or may not be called statutory rape, but even if it isn’t the power balance alone is enough to make alarm bells echo in my head. This whole thing is effectively silenced. Noah keeps the secret. Sydney gets put out that her ‘relationship’ is over. It’s never called out for what is really is. Even near the end of the book it’s described as a man who fell in love with a teenager.

I acknowledge that my experience of sexual assault could be colouring my perceptions of both Noah and Sydney’s experiences to a certain degree, but I still can’t imagine ever being okay with either situation. I do need to say that the minor character naming Noah’s experience redeemed that part of the narrative for me to an extent, although it will never be anything but icky to me. Sydney didn’t have anyone dismantling the truth she’d lived with and that wound up tainting some of my enjoyment of the book as a whole.

“It’s seen us. It has our scent.”

While I don’t generally have a problem with endings where the bows aren’t all tied, I did want to know more about the City and the history of the monsters. I was fine with not knowing exactly what was next for some of the human characters, although I could see the way the story resolved for Noah a mile off.

Loss, grief and the experiences that haunt us are central to this book. In exploring those through Noah’s story, the horror in part becomes about the parts of yourself that you hide and those that feed on your pain. I didn’t have to work at all to get into this book and the characters became real almost immediately. It wasn’t the horror I was expecting but I was sucked in and am interested in reading more books by this author.

“Noah, there is no such thing as a happy ending. There are only good stopping places.”

Content warnings include mention of abortion, cancer, death of loved ones, grooming and sexual assault, homophobia, mental health, suicidal ideation, attempted suicide and death by suicide.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Titan Books for the opportunity to read this book.

John Irving meets Stephen King in a tale that weaves complex family dynamics betwixt monsters and gothic fairytale.

Noah Turner narrates this strange story. His family have been haunted by a strange being with orange eyes. It's there but never acknowledged. But when this being visits Noah, he welcomes it into his life and they firstly become friends and then as he gets older, lovers. His friendship allows the monster to resume her human shape and name, Leannon.

But Noah has too many unanswered questions. His sister Sydney disappeared when he was a child. And he starts to suspect that Leannon knows where she is. As he moves away and tries to live a different life, he is pulled back to Leannon when his mother and other sister also go missing.

What price will he pay to know the whole truth, and to save his family?

This book is hard to define. It is long, complex and requires the reader to embark on a flight of fancy. Themes such as depression, suicide and cancer are interwoven with a wolf that flies with Noah at night, a strange city that feeds on pain, and a haunted house that was Noah's father's legacy. This may divide readers into love or loathe camps but it will certainly get people talking.

Well this book seems to have split the reviewing community, it’s either a love it or hate it scenario. Categorisation may have something to do with this. If you pick up a book labelled Horror or Fantasy your expectations go in a certain direction, if it’s labelled Thriller your expectations go in a different direction. Although labelled as such, this didn’t feel like Horror to me, I didn’t feel scared or even tense to be honest, but gloomy, definitely a gloomy vibe threads throughout.

A Cosmology of Monsters is well written with a great premise but felt disjointed and incomplete. It may have worked better across two books. Not my cup of tea I’m afraid.

Thanks to Netgalley for providing an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

I just didn’t like this book at all I’m afraid. I didn’t particularly care for the characters, they were just all so miserable and uninteresting.

Even the monster and the back story were boring to me.

I’m sorry...this just didn’t hold my attention. As always my thanks to Netgalley and Titan Books for the advance copy.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC! I’m really surprised I didn’t click with this one as much as I thought I would - the word ‘monster’ in the title forebodes good things for me but ultimately I wasn’t really a fan. I loved the lore of the monsters and really wish I had more of that and liked the mixture of sporadic gory scenes with psychological horror which were both exceedingly well done. My issues lie with the portrayals of female characters, gay characters, and the sexual abuse and grooming of children. Without divulging into spoilers all three of these were abhorrent and really detracted from the story for me. Taboo subjects are not unknown to horror but particularly the grooming was not condemned at all and that really didn’t sit right for me. A hit for the atmosphere but a big miss on further inspection of plot and motifs.

I thought this had a great start, creepy and reminding me of more of the classics such as Jackson or Matheson. Unfortunately, once we got to part III/the middle it really slumped and the writing focused on more of the MC(s) which weren't really the creepy part of it all. With the shift in focus, it left me feeling disappointed and the creepiness drained away until I got to about part VI.

The ending saved it for me, bringing back the creepiness and having the sort of open ending I can only expect and love from horror books.

There was overall way too much referring to H.P. Lovecraft and the romance aspect of it didn't suit me, but, overall still an enjoyable and mostly creepy read! Thank you to NetGalley and TitanBooks for the eARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

A Cosmology of Monsters follows the lives of the Turner family. It’s told from the viewpoint of Noah, the youngest of three children, and starts with events before his birth, as they’ve been described to him: his parents’ courtship and marriage, his dad’s lifelong love of horror and sudden personality change that turned out to be a terminal brain tumour, the legendary haunted house the family created for Halloween while Noah’s mum was pregnant - and, just offstage, a dark, wolf-like creature with orange eyes that sometimes scritched on their windows at night.

By the time Noah puts in an appearance, his father (Harry) has just months to live, so he never knows him. Noah grows up in a grieving household: his mother (Margaret) is undemonstrative, his eldest sister Sydney is angry, and his other sister Eunice is the one who reads to him and puts him to bed. Perhaps it’s no wonder, then, that when the monster starts showing up at his window on the regular, he befriends it and invites it in. But what is Noah committing to with this friendship, and what direction will it take as he grows older? And is the mysterious disappearance of local children, including Sydney, something to do with the monster?

A Cosmology of Monsters blends horror and literary fiction in a way that really worked for me. Like Michael Andrew Hurley’s The Loney - another successful hybrid of the two genres - it features a fractured family who don’t communicate about the strange things they’ve seen. Hamill goes beyond thrilling scares to create a moving portrait of people dealing with issues such as money worries, unexpected pregnancies, physical and mental illness, death and disappearance, sexuality, and more. The story left me with a lingering feeling of sadness about some of the characters’ wasted years - whether this happens in a conventional way (spending years in unsuitable marriages or religions instead of facing up to their true selves) or not (I can’t go into that without spoilers!).

Hamill also makes interesting and knowledgeable points about religion, whether it’s the young Margaret’s surprise at the chastity of a college boyfriend (“She’d always assumed that religion was something you did in polite company, not in private. Surely nobody actually believed any of the stuff they agreed to on Sundays.”), the way the scenes in a Christian haunted house visited by Noah are far more disturbing than anything the Turners put on for their guests (it sounds really obvious when I put it like that - you have to read it to get the full effect!), or how being part of a hardline Christian sect makes Eunice’s ex-girlfriend Brin act cruelly and feel afraid of herself (without giving too much away, this mirrors an element of the ‘monster’ storyline).

After the success of Harry’s inaugural haunted house, the Turners start running an attraction each year when Noah is a child, to make much-needed extra money. I’m a huge sucker for stories-within-stories, so I loved how Hamill included the ‘narratives’ for the Turner family’s haunted house rooms. I found them really creative and inspired, and, as someone who was a big writer as a kid, loved how the young Eunice got really into writing them, staying up late typing on her ZX Spectrum. I also never previously gave any thought to how much work would go into creating a coherent and truly creepy haunted house experience!

Other parts of the book, set in a parallel-universe ‘City’ close to where the monster lives, also appealed to me because they were so dream-like. In the City, buildings are never in the same place twice and scenes from the ‘normal world’ take on different dimensions and qualities - current homes lead into previous homes and are furnished with different objects.

This really upped the eerie factor as I’m always having dreams about alternative versions of city/town/shopping centres and houses I’ve known, where shops change places or don’t even exist in real life, rooms expand and sprout further rooms, and those rooms are full of books that don’t exist in real life but look good, contain interesting-looking junk, or something normal is broken. It’s so nice to see someone manage to describe that while preserving the trippy factor (along with horrors I don’t get in my dreams!). I’ve always wanted to put those dreams into words myself but they become too prosaic in my hands!

A Cosmology of Monsters is spooky and sad and wonderful and will definitely stay with me for a while.

This was such a fascinating read, like a dark fairytale with the wolves and the mysterious City that was on the other side like Oz or Wonderland.
It was creepy, intelligent, imaginative and kept me completely hooked.

A Cosmology of Monsters is a story told by Noah Turner, a young boy whose family becomes obsessed with haunted houses. When their terminally ill father constructs his own horror house 'The Wandering Dark', all the family becomes involved in their own way and the fathers last wish becomes the family business.

Noah the youngest of the three siblings grew up without his father and is shielded from the business horrors and the family’s real-life horrors. Slowly the family start to fall apart, each battling their own demons. At first the story follows the family going through a huge loss and then having to deal with their own inner turmoil, and I thought OK maybe this is more of an 'Inner Demon' story-line rather than a physical demon.

But that started to change as Noah began to grow up and he encounters a real monster, a monster he befriends and comes to trust. A monster only he can see, after several unexplained disappearances Noah begins to question the motives of the monster he has let into his home and life.

I was keen to read this as I'm a big fan of the horror genre so the summary of this book definitely had me interested, I also really loved the cover...(I know don't judge a book by its cover)!

As for the horror element, to me it just did not feel like a scary book. There is no gore or real spooky moments, the scariness is more focused on psychological trauma and inner demons, which I was not really expecting. I would say this is more a drama with some supernatural elements thrown in, but that is just my opinion. I have grown up on all thing’s horror, so it takes quite a bit to scare me.

Overall I did enjoy the story and the characters, some parts were a little confusing at first I thought it was because I was reading an ARC and it had a lot of the edits left in, but as I got to the very end of the book I realised that these pieces that had left me confused where actually 'script pieces' which all comes together in the last couple of chapters.

I am interested to see what the author does next.

I didn’t enjoy this book and it was one of those books I had to force myself to read so I could review it. I like the overall idea of the book but I don’t think it was pulled off.
The story jumps a lot which I didn’t enjoy and it felt like there were parts missing. I also wanted to dnf this book but I thought it would get better so I continued on with it. It felt like a long book and I was bored while reading this. The characters were unlikable and I couldn’t care about them which also made me enjoy the book less. I also didn’t enjoy some of the themes in this book and they could be triggering for some. Parts of this book made me uncomfortable when reading and honestly it has really put me off reading anything like this again.
Overall this book wasn’t for me .

This is a story about monsters. It's also a story about obsession, family, friendship and love.

To story is essentially about the Turner family. It begins with Mary, a poor college student trying to make it on her own for the first time. Mary gets married and has children, and the story then picks up with her youngest child, Noah. Noah's father has an obsession with monsters and the macabre. It makes sense, then, that when Noah meets a monster, he is not scared. Instead he is inrtigued, and wants to try to communicate with the monster and understand it.

I don't want to say anything else about the plot as I don't want to give anything away. The story is complex and develops surrounding the lives of the family, especially Noah. However complicated and often bizarre and unsettling, the story is well crafted and strongly character driven. I felt for Noah, who is consistently an outsider throughout his life. I can relate to that, as I'm sure many people can - especially horror fans.

I enjoyed this book right from the start, and all the way through to the finish. It is consistently entertaining and never boring. I could feel the creeping dark of the atmosphere consistently, in a good way. It kept me guessing about a lot of things, even right up to the end. And I still have questions about what happened, but I think that's okay and it was perfectly right to leave some things as a mystery, for the reader to make up their own mind.

This isn't a horror story full of gore, but it definitely has it's fair share of terror. I think mingling that with ordinary life can make it even more terrifying, which is done expertly in this book. Highly recommended to anyone who enjoys horror or dark fantasy.

Like all the best horror/ ghost stories, A Cosmology of Monsters is about the people. In this instance a slightly peculiar family that lives in a haunted house and has a semi symbiotic relationship with something that is distinctly 'other'. This was a fast paced and intelligent journey through the dark creases in the human soul, at once surprising and enthralling.

This was an intriguing and original book especially for those who love horror stories and also the kinds of internal monsters that can attach themselves to us at various times during our lives. I found it quite hard to get into at first but the originality kept me reading, and then further on it became a bit of a challenge, not exactly gripping, more overflowing with characters, their intricate lives and what's going on around them. Not one of my favvourites this year but should be perfect for those who love a bit of horror tinged with comedy and emotion.

I received an ARC of this book thanks to NetGalley and publisher Titan Books in exchange for an honest review.

This is such a hard book to describe. A Cosmology of Monsters is the tale of Noah and his family, a group of people all battling various monsters, both metaphorical and real. This is definitely lighter on the horror elements so don't go into this expecting a particularly scary tale. Instead this is more of focused look at one family with a rather bizarre (not in a bad way) supernatural angle. This is a horror only in so much as there are monsters and various horror elements (a ghost house, HP Lovecraft) are mentioned frequently.

This book has very compelling writing and was easy to follow most of the time. It is split up into parts and in between the parts are short chapters which I found a little odd. These short chapters were the only parts I found hard to follow. My main issue with this book is it felt like it frequently changed plot and then never returned to those elements. We start with Noah's parents and the story of how they met, which is fair enough I suppose. But then we are focused on his older sisters and his parents never receive much attention again. Then it moves onto Noah and, while his sisters remain present, their various plot elements aren't really resolved in a satisfactory way. The writing saved this from being a total disaster but I did feel confused about which parts of the plot were meant to matter, be it thematically or in terms of the actual story being told.

There were also unexpected romance elements in this which were...interesting. I don't want to spoil anything but it caught me off guard and it meant this was a slightly different story than I expected. Again, this was written so well in terms of tone that it didn't matter as much but I still feel it's worth mentioning. This does not have the tone of a horror book and I feel that's important to know going in. It offers an interesting look at how tragedy affects a family, mental health, coming of age and other engaging themes.

Overall, I am unsure what to make of this book. There are parts I really like, parts I can appreciate for what they did and parts that leave me a little disappointed. I think this is definitely a book that will stick with me a long time and one that is certainly worth trying if you're intrigued by the premise. Horror lovers might be left a little wanting by this book but for those who enjoy quiet tales with a focus on theme and character, this is definitely worth a shot.

Overall Rating: 3/5 stars