I absolutely love a good villain story… and even more when you don’t know who the villain really is - is it the monster or the hero?

Vanessa has created a world of time travel, of magic and a myriad of monsters.

I also enjoyed the thought that went into developing the rules of the timelines which is something that is often glossed over in stories like this.

Perfect for fans of VE Schwab - Only A Monster will keep you turning page after page and travelling with the story

Only a Monster is a fun start to a new fantasy series, leading the reader through a London where monsters roam the streets, stealing time from humans.

I really enjoyed the magic system, although time travel isn’t really my thing. I usually end up thinking too much about the logistics and the changes the characters are making to the timeline. Here, there was a clear set of rules and an almost sentient timeline that ensured that there were no major changes caused by the monsters’ jaunts through time which I appreciated. I also enjoyed the moral struggle Joan goes through once she realises how monsters can travel — by stealing time from humans. This led into conversations about morality, what it means to be a monster and how heroes are forged which I found really interesting.

The dynamics between the different monster families were fun and I loved how this played into our main characters’ personalities and perceptions of the others. This book set up some really intriguing politics of this world that I hope will be further explored in the sequel. I enjoyed our main group of characters: Joan; her cousin, Ruth and Aaron, a monster from another family. I also really liked the queer romance that was introduced towards the end of the book, and found myself rooting for those characters and their relationship.

As I sit to write my review a few days after finishing this book, I have to say that I am struggling to remember what actually happened. Which I think is the main reason this book isn’t getting a higher rating from me — it wasn't memorable. It didn’t grip me and refuse to let me go. In fact, it took me a long time to read it as I just wasn’t motivated to pick it up. It was good but not great and hasn’t hooked me enough to make me want to continue the series.

What I was most looking forward to about this book was the romance. I wanted a forbidden romance between monster and monster hunter that drove the plot and characters forward and had me on the edge of my seat. What I got seemed almost half hearted and underdeveloped. There was no chemistry between the main pairing and after the big reveal of their identities at the beginning, there were no more romance centred scenes until near the end when our main character finally remembered that she was meant to have feelings for him. Although, I will say that that scene was really well written and fun to read. It made for an impressive ending. In fact, there was much more chemistry and a compelling relationship between Joan and Aaron and I wonder if that will be explored more in the sequel.

Overall, Only a Monster was a fun read with an interesting magic system that explored morality and heroes vs villains. However, I expected more from it, especially from the romance that dominated the marketing of the book.

Only a Monster is the beginning of a new and interesting world.

PLOT: Only a Monster is a story that shows the monster side of the story, and how they react when attacked by the hero. I found the monster family and the gifts they have are really interesting, as it's a different magic system than I have previously read. The time travel aspect really surprised me, I am interested to see this more.

CHARACTERS: Joan is the leading lady of Only a Monster. I liked Joan she is a nerd, who will do anything for her family. I also enjoyed the other 'monsters' and the way the family acted around each other. Nick as the hero is a good character that I want to know more about.

WRITING STYLE: I found Zen writing style easy to read and engaging the book. I would say the book is medium-paced which has the odd sections that are faster.

OVERALL: Only a Monster is an enjoyable story but I was left wanting a little more.

My rating for Only a Monster is 3.9 out of 5.

I enjoyed this but didn't love ut which was a shame as I'd seen so much hype around it. The storyline was good, just not as exciting as I'd hoped, it fell a bit flat for me unfortunately.

What an absolutely gorgeous book!

On the surface the story is similar to most YA (a girl discovers magical/monster world, goes on a quest, is thorn between two boys, finds her true self) but the author took the familiar tropes and twisted on its head making a truly original work.

This is dark, not bloody or gory but really dark and I was hesitant to pick it because of that (all the red and black on the US cover made think it might not be the book for me) but now I am so glad I trusted my friends who praised it highly and decided to read it.

It's a mesmerizing tale, not so much suspenseful as full of unexpectedness. I could neve predict what will happen next, yet when it did, it all felt natural, fitting to the story and the characters. Masterful writing and plotting, even more impressive considering it is a debut.

I loved the writing and the rich world building, London, where I have never been - modern and old, 90s fashion that I am all too familiar with.

Beside the great plot development, it is the characters that really stood out to me. Morally grey, complex, changing and growing. The story is effortlessly diverse, queer (so happy we got happy gays, and not bury the guys side plot).

Joan is amazing. The story is told from her POV and we really got to experience it all - her confusion, pain and hope and determination. What I loved most about her was her innocence, her naivete of sorts that made her never give up and always look for solutions, helped her see things outside the rules of the monster world.

Aaron and Nick were fantastic characters as well. So were all the side characters. It's one of those stories where readers feel the need to pick teams and I am team Aaron all the way. I understand Nick might be her soulmate and I have all the sympathy for him but Aaron completely won me over. We know less about him, we got only bits from his past and the trauma but he was someone who knew what the consequences would be and still did what he did for Joan. That is jus the ultimate love for me (in books at least).

It's a story about the nature of memories, the process of remembering and forgetting and this led to some powerful scenes that brought tears to my eyes. It's a fast paced adventure, there was no time to feel melancholic or contemplative while reading, I was in a hurry to see what would happen next. After I finished it though, I had all the time to think about my own memories. I love it when a book stays with me like that after I finish it

The story opens with a gentle start and then boom! magic and it's go, go, go from there till the very end. The rare moments of calms were so achingly tender, intimate, I will cherish them forever.

The story is self contained, yet full of possibilities. I have been discussing it with friends and enjoy seeing the different interpretation, details I missed and others saw and vice versa, theories of what might happen next.

In short, this book has been a glorious reading adventure and I highly recommend it to fans of YA Urban fantasy.

CW: murder, violence, blood, imprisonment, torture, brainwashing, death of parents of MCs (in the past)

3.5*

Thank you to Hodder & Stoughton for providing an eARC of this book via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

London. Yes. Monsters. Getting better. Monster and hunter dynamics. Sign me up! I was very excited when I managed to get an ARC of this book. Only a Monster took my expectation from the blurb, screwed it up and gave me something completely different that I ended up enjoying.

Joan was an interesting character who I didn’t always connect with because sometimes her naivety and reckless blended into annoyance when she kept making the same mistakes. However, I thought Joan’s determination was admirable, and her questioning of identity and the strong family element was a particularly intriguing and complex aspect. Admittedly, I did struggle to be invested in the characters because we are expected to care without having much of a setup when certain characters died.

The magic system immediately grabbed my attention, and the conflicting ways that having such an ability can have; I think it was an unique take on monsters, how grey an area such a term can be in this book as well as a look at morality. I thought the premise of the magic system was cleverly done, even though at times I was a little unsure whether it was consistent. It definitely made me want to learn further about the more complex details of the magic system as well as Joan’s own magic as it does seem that we’ve only just been exposed to the first layers of it.

Although love triangles and soulmates isn’t one of my favourite tropes, there was an intriguing twist on the love triangle/soulmates trope that subverted my expectations, and I’m curious how subsequent books in the series will explore this, especially after the events of that ending.

I would have enjoyed learning more about the different monster families because some of them were quickly glanced over, so I felt a little ungrounded on this aspect of the worldbuilding. But I suspect this will be delved into further in subsequent books. I felt immersed in the adventure across the alternate London created. As a Londoner, the 90s was a particular nostalgic trip to my childhood.

Only a Monster is a fast-paced and fun start to this urban fantasy series that introduced a few intriguing new threads for the series, and I look forward to reading the next book in the series to find out how the story pans out.

The perfect summer turned to disaster, Joan’s time in London becomes more than she bargained for. However, after something takes Joan by surprise she finds herself running from people who want her dead. Her family dead. Monsters dead. And the one person she thought would never harm her, seems to be the very being out for her blood.

I'm a bit on the fence with this one.
On one hand the premise is exactly what I love (secret powers, enemies to lovers, time travel), the writing is decent, the book is extremely readable. But on the other hand the magic system is very inconsistent and there is zero build up for the romance plotline, which is more than disappointing.

Only a Monster is a book I never knew I needed. This novel is steeped in a rich, descriptive world with characters that I felt drawn to.

Vanessa Len’s writing is truly something. I really enjoyed this novel and can’t wait to read more of Len’s future works.

This book exceeded all and more of my expectations. Vanessa Len creates a rich and intriguing world which sucks you in from the first sentence. It features some of the most iconic tropes and makes them her own to create a beautiful and exciting story. This first book in a new trilogy is perfect for fans of This Savage Song and is mixed with a little time travel.
Following a world where Monsters exist with human appearances where their power is to travel through time by touching the back of a human’s neck and stealing part of their lifespans. When Joan Chang-Hunt discovers that she is a monster after a horrific event she is forced to ally with Aaron Oliver who is part of a century long feud with the Hunt family. Whilst being hunted by the prophesied hero they are forced to flee to the 1990’s Joan is forced to figure out whether she wants to be part of the world of monsters or not.
One of my favourite parts of this story was the time travel aspect. Len creates a solid structure for her time travel rules as soon as it is introduced making it so easy to understand which shows how much research went into this book. It was so interesting to see the various time eras that the duo travel to and seeing how they changed their clothing and how they interacted with the various people throughout. Len allows you to question the morality of what the monsters do to access their powers yet makes you want to still want them to succeed. It made me want to go and roam around the back streets of London in nineties clothes and explore the back alleys.
The other thing I loved about this book was the romance. I know who I was rooting for and it definitely wasn’t who Joan was rooting for. Aaron Oliver has my heart through and through. The way he grows as a person and learns throughout his experiences throughout the book was so interesting and so lovely to experience. Joan and his relationship growth was the perfect enemies to friends to almost something had me rooting for them the entire time.
This book was everything I wanted and made me fall back in love with the YA genre. The characters, the world building, the romance was all perfection and is perfect to bring you out of the reading slump you may be in. With all of my favourite tropes wrapped in a perfect story with loveable characters I would recommend this book to everyone. The ending left me heartbroken and I can not wait for the rest of the trilogy to be released!

Only a Monster was a refreshing YA read full of twists! I confess I felt somehow tricked in the beginning, misled even: “What’s happening? Why?” (and where’s the romance that I was promised?)

But the more I read, the more I loved it. The book surely didn’t waste any time, you’re thrown into a mix of emotions and events right away. Perfect for mystery-driven and action-packed story lovers!

Here are some things I LOVED about the book:

🧡 The twists
I want to say I love a twist as much as the next person, but most of the time, I feel incredibly disappointed. Not with this book! Not much is revealed right away, but when the plot surprises us, even if it’s something rather unexpected, it still makes sense somehow, it keeps adding to the story. It enrichens it. I was always excited about the big reveals which made me curious to keep reading the book.

🧡 Time travel
So there’s a lot of time travel in sci-fi books, but not as much in fantasy. I thought the concept (without revealing too much) was quite intriguing. Also really liked how it defied the time travel trope by putting a new spin on the whole “butterfly effect” concept.

And this is what I didn’t like as much:

🌧️ Romance, please?

So obviously this is something personal. I love a good romance in a fantasy setting. In my defence, the blurb made it sound as if romance would be an important part of the plot. There’s literally a “soulmates” trope. Not saying romance didn’t play a role here, but it just felt undeveloped (in so many ways). In fact, if it was about the romance aspect, I’d probably feel nothing for the characters. Luckily, there were other things that made up for this. Plus, I’d like to believe this first volume is just the beginning…

Overall I really liked Only a Monster. It was unpredictable, action-packed, entertaining and addicting! Somehow, it felt incomplete, which is understandable, as this is Monsters #1 and it successfully leaves you with a “this is only the beginning” taste.

I’m so torn with this one. I loved the concept. Len managed to find something new in YA fantasy which is no small feat.
However, my initial thoughts after reading were about 3 stars BUT the longer time passes the more I realise how much it’s stuck with me.
The characters were a little cookie cutter like, but they were well done and I found myself loving them
Also the time travel element of this book was just *chefs kiss*
After sitting with this story for a while I’d give it a very solid 3.75 over all (rounded up to a 4) and a 4.5 on concept

Only a Monster ist ein richtig gutes Buch. Ich war gefangen von den Charakteren und der Welt und der Idee, die hinter dem Buch steckt.
Das Konzept der Stehlen von Zeit, etwas das wir auch von Momo kennen, ist hier sehr interessant umgesetzt. Dadurch wirken die Monster auf viele Leser "harmlos", aber wer würde sich Lebenszeit gerne stehlen lassen...
Das Buch ist ein gelungener Auftakt für die Serie, es gab noch nicht zu viel Entwicklung und doch wurde eine tolle Basis für eine noch weitere großartige Geschichte geschaffen.

Only a Monster follows Joan, who is a half-monster, half-human, while she travels through time with Aaron, a monster boy from a rival family, in hopes that they will be able to change the timeline and save their families from being killed by the hero, and Joan's crush, Nick.

This book was definitely one of my most anticipated releases this year and I was so happy that it did not disappoint me at all. I wasn't planning on reading this book this early into the year but it was impossible not to read it right away.

The beginning of this book was really slow and hard to get through but once that part was over the story started to flow naturally and from there on it was so entertaining.

What intrigued me the most about this book is the monster powers. Every monster family has their own unique power which is incorporated into their society. Learning about those powers and what they can be used to accomplish is honestly so fun and I wish we got to see more of that but hopefully in the next book since there are many questions left unanswered.

The plot was also full of twists and turns that were impossible to predict and there is nothing I love more than a good plot twist.

I was not a fan of the romance in this book though and that's because I was promised an enemies-to-lovers relationship but what I got was insta-love or the star-crossed lovers kinda thing. In the beginning I thought that there was a possibility of Joan and Aaron becoming a thing since they were from rivaling families and they hated eachother but throughout the whole book the author was pushing the Nick agenda which I was not there for. There was no passion or chemistry between Joan and Nick and the fact that he's such a boring character doesn't help the case. I am definitely on team Aaron here and I hope we get more of him in the next book.

This was a very action packed book with some amazing characters and I can't wait to read the sequel!

This was enjoyable - but - the romance is looks like it's supposed to be a large part of the story and it ends up being very underdeveloped, the monsters aren't at all as monstery as I expected them to be, and the ending just felt a little too easy. I feel a bit underwhelmed, there could have been so much more done with this.

I honestly requested this one based off the tagline, ‘Only a monster can kill a hero’. I’m a sucker for villainous characters, as you can tell from my reviews of All of Us Villains and Beyond the Ruby Veil. This book wasn’t what I expected, more good-guy-monster than monster-monster, but I had so much fun reading it. Once I got started I read the whole thing in one day, kept entertained enough to chase through each page, though unfortunately the ending didn’t really land with me.

Thanks to Hodder & Stoughton for the eARC of this book. It has not affected my honest review.

I honestly wasn’t expecting to enjoy this as much as I did. I did not expect it to be a wild chase through time – time travelling monsters? genius – and I didn’t expect to have so much fun with a warm-hearted monster girl who was desperate to be good against a villainous hero. The writing is pretty simplistic, but I didn’t mind that. It was easy to read and I had a lot of fun with it. I liked Joan’s character. She’s young and idealistic, coming to terms with her family being completely different from what she believed – and discovering that she is completely different from what she ever believed. That development was amazing, and I was really pleased with the character arc that Joan went through. I also loved the magical worldbuilding. The way that the magical powers work, and the different powers for each family of monsters, was really interesting and I’d love to know more about the different families if we get more books in this universe.

Unfortunately, this book lost a fair amount of points from me in the last few chapters. In vague terms, the ending felt a little cheap and a significant plot point came out of absolutely nowhere. It’s a shame because I would rate the first seventy-five percent of the book four stars but I couldn’t rate the whole book that overall. I will be reading the sequel because I’m intrigued to see where we will go from this ending, but my expectations are a little lower than they could have been.

The next paragraph contains spoilers!

My biggest criticism with this book? Until the very end, the romantic arc felt completely unnecessary. Even now, at the end, the love triangle felt completely pointless. It was very… YA. We’ve got the mean-at-first, grouchy monster boy and the sunshine hero boy. But the hero boy is indirectly responsible for the murder her entire family in like, chapter five, and we’re supposed to believe that the love triangle makes sense? The romance between Aaron and Joan didn’t really feel like it was based on anything, but I liked it a hell of a lot more than the romance between Nick and Joan. I absolutely hate the destined star-crossed lovers thing, and there was a moment where the book said (paraphrased) ‘they say the hero has one weakness. once he was in love with a girl’ and I rolled my eyes so hard that I nearly strained something. I understand why that romantic arc was present by the time we got to the end, but ugh. Aaron forgot her and Nick was ‘unmade’ and I just wanted to see Joan become powerful and confident. I guess to me ‘it never happened’ feels cheap and dissatisfying, and we didn’t get to see what happened to Aaron.

.... Speaking of drama, there’s a full-blown massacre only a few chapters into Vanessa Len’s Only a Monster (Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99). It’s a story that begins with a possibly magical but seemingly normal history-nerd girl on her way to meet a cute boy but then takes a sharp swerve into time travelling.

Sixteen-year-old Joan Chang-Hunt discovers she’s a “monster”, a member of one of the 12 great families of London with particular powers, including the capacity to steal time from humans. And that cute boy, incidentally, is out to kill her – he is the legendary “hero” determined to and prophesied to put an end to all of Joan’s kind.

This is only the beginning of a thrilling adventure that includes venturing into ancient times such as the 1990s (where “the Rachel haircut is a time marker”) and grappling with the seemingly immutable rules of an unfair world. Joan desperately wants to save her murdered family, even as she is told it’s impossible: “Every monster goes up against the timeline...Everyone tries to change something at some point.”

What it means to be a “monster” or a “hero” is interrogated in this immersive tale, moving beyond “good” and “evil” into much murkier, messier, complicated territory. “What kind of person do you want to be in this world?” is another of those big questions we return to over and over again, and it’s played out beautifully here.

When Joan is sent to London, she has no idea what her stay will entail. At first things are going great, she has a cool job at the Holland House and she meets a cute guy who asks her out on a date. She soon finds out that her family is know what she thinks they are and neither is her date. In fact, her family is a family of monsters, each with one single power endowed to them. And Nick is a world famous monster slayer who is about to bring down her family. It’s upto Joan with the help of her new friend, Aaron and the acceptance of her powers to stop Nick from taking down her family.

Each family has a different power and we soon find out that Joan’s family has the ability to take time from others for themselves, shortening their lives. Despite this, I actually found myself routing for them as they fought for their lives. Joan’s family is definitely the kind of family you know you shouldn’t like but can’t help but like anyway.

‘Only a Monster’ is filled with lots of morally grey and kick ass characters. There’s also plenty of action that I literally flew through the pages.

A brilliant and exciting read that had me so gripped I didn’t want to put it down and definitely kept me wanting more! I cannot wait to find out what happens in the next book in the series, an amazing debut from Vanessa Len!

There’s something inherently fascinating about stories from the perspective of the antagonist. They’re never quite the monster (yes, pun intended) that the hero stories make them out to be.

I really enjoyed the world building and the human aspect of Only a Monster. How yes, they’re not the hero, but neither are they Machiavellian villains either. And speaking of the hero, well, heroes aren’t entirely angelic either.

So world building, time travel, the importance of family, and magic are some pretty rocking core ingredients in the mix of this book. Which made it a compelling read.

There are some not so great aspects:
I found the writing to be a little clunky in the beginning, as was the dialogue, and at first I truffled to get into the story as the plot was being set up. This didn’t last long and I was soon captivated.

The love triangle. Or hints thereof.
For the love of all that is holy, human, or monster, I would really love (no pun intended) to pick up a YA sci-fi/fantasy book and NOT have to sit through a blasted love triangle.

In any case, I’ll definitely be looking into the sequel as my enjoyment of the story outweighed my issues with it.

Thank you to Vanessa Len, Hodder & Stoughton, and NetGalley for an arc of this book in exchange for an honest review. I apologise profusely for my tardiness. Life sometimes gets in the way.

The way I screamed when I received the ARC of this book.
The premise was good and the result was even better.
I liked everything, from the plot, to the characters to the writing.
It’s good to finally have some sort of “different” fantasy on the shelves.
Would totally recommend!