The squad you love is out of time. Prepare for the thrilling finale in the epic, best-selling Aurora Cycle series about a band of unlikely heroes who just might be the galaxy’s last hope for survival.
Is this the end? What happens when you ask a bunch of losers, discipline cases, and misfits to save the galaxy from an ancient evil? The ancient evil wins, of course. Wait. . . . Not. So. Fast. When we last saw Squad 312, they were working together seamlessly (aka, freaking out) as an intergalactic battle raged and an ancient superweapon threatened to obliterate Earth. Everything went horribly wrong, naturally. But as it turns out, not all endings are endings, and the team has one last chance to rewrite theirs. Maybe two. It’s complicated. Cue Zila, Fin, and Scarlett (and MAGELLAN!): making friends, making enemies, and making history? Sure, no problem. Cue Tyler, Kal, and Auri: uniting with two of the galaxy’s most hated villains? Um, okay. That, too. Actually saving the galaxy, though? Now that will take a miracle.
Endings are meant to go out with a boom and I do believe Aurora’s End did that, albeit a quieter one than I expected.
I’m not usually much of a sci-fi reader but I’ve come to realize any sci-fi with Amie Kaufman’s name tagged to it works well for my tastes. The world she and Jay Kristoff created here was expansive with the different sentient species coming together, and the whole legacy of the Aurora Legion. I loved that there was still room for world building growth even here in book 3, which is the kind of great storytelling that exists in expansive worlds such as Star Wars. It’s like the world doesn’t revolve around the characters, but the characters revolve around this world that still holds mysteries that we are only getting a taste of.
With the sweeping romance of Passenger and the dark fantasy edge of This Savage Song, this standout YA contemporary fantasy debut from Vanessa Len, is the first in a planned trilogy.
It should have been the perfect summer. Sent to stay with her late mother’s eccentric family in London, sixteen-year-old Joan is determined to enjoy herself. She loves her nerdy job at the historic Holland House, and when her super cute co-worker Nick asks her on a date, it feels like everything is falling into place.
But she soon learns the truth. Her family aren’t just eccentric: they’re monsters, with terrifying, hidden powers. And Nick isn’t just a cute boy: he’s a legendary monster slayer, who will do anything to bring them down.
As she battles Nick, Joan is forced to work with the beautiful and ruthless Aaron Oliver, heir to a monster family that hates her own. She’ll have to embrace her own monstrousness if she is to save herself, and her family. Because in this story . . .
. . . she is not the hero.
**Only A Monster comes out February 22, 2022**
Thank you Edelweiss and the publisher for this copy in exchange for an honest review.
Vanessa Len’s debut with an anti-hero protagonist and a morally good “villain” has my head whirling around for all sorts of reasons. I’ve barely had time to digest everything but I wanted to put all my thoughts down in this post while it’s all super fresh. I will have to be vague to keep anything from becoming spoilers, but I hope you’ll bear with me.
Joan is a monster. Or at least, half-monster since her father’s side of the family, the Asian part of her, is human. But growing up, she thought monsters were just fairy tales. Who wouldn’t? She had wanted to be Superman as a kid (what an irony, am I right?). Her moral compass seemed on the straight and narrow. Which is what drew her to the hero.
Where do I even start with Nick? This star-crossed lovers romance was what I was here for. As Joan realizes more about her monster heritage, is Nick going to be able to differentiate between the parts of herself? Is she truly monstrous? I also thought it’d be like an enemies to lovers kinda thing since, well, he hunts monsters. Doesn’t get more enemy than that. But it didn’t quite feel like that in some ways.
Star-crossed romance…or a love triangle?
I had come in thinking Nick was everything. But he wasn’t – I will get into that in a bit. Due to some really fast paced events that occur LITERALLY right out of the gate, Joan is thrusted into the monster world with, well, another monster. A monster boy named Aaron from a rival stuck-up monster family. Who is exactly the kinda character you can totally see a romance brewing between.
We actually get to know Aaron, dare I say more, than even perhaps Nick because he just has more page time. He goes from a pretentious little bugger to a pretty decent guy (he probably wouldn’t like to be described that way, but oh well) over the course of the misadventures they find themselves on. I don’t normally like love triangles, but there’re certain heartstrings being pulled in his direction.
Nick is also more than he seems. While I would’ve liked to have known him more, there was enough for me at least to start softening to this boy who only fought for what he thought is right. I mean, he has a reason to hate monsters, and a lot of monsters are downright…monstrous. Are his actions justified? I wrestle with that a lot while reading, but I can see where he’s coming from, and more importantly, so could Joan.
However, most of the romance heavy parts are actually at the end of the book and I honestly have no idea what’s to happen next. I’m as stumped as a log and only Vanessa Len knows where she’s going with the romance. And at this point, is it weird to say I actually wouldn’t mind who Joan picks? (The blasphemy!)
Traversingthe plot
This book doesn’t know what a slow start means. It really just GOES from page 1. Joan didn’t really know what monsters are as her mother’s family hid it from her all her life so she (and the rest of us) are quickly thrust into the monster world without knowing the rules or ins and outs of it.
This wasn’t necessarily a bad thing because who loves pages of information dump? I like it when the world is organically built into the story so we learn as we go. Of course, this may mean it’s rather confusing in the beginning, but that’s the payoff.
There’s time travel in this story and the mechanics of such time travel is still a little fuzzy to me. But the rest of the world building was super great. I loved getting to know a little more about the different monster families, their specific powers and the machinations of this hidden monster world among the humans.
As I mentioned, the pacing is just GO GO GO. It definitely helped to keep me reading because Joan and co. Are constantly moving from one thing to another. The start is the rockiest because it threw me off with how much of the synopsis was revealed so quickly, but the story really picks up from there in directions unknown that was exhilarating to find out.
What’s the best part of this?
We don’t get to know many characters in this story well just based on the way the plot goes, but for character-driven lovers, I think we get to know Joan very well and that’s always a highlight for me. She was new to all of this and her heart was always set towards a moral compass that didn’t love the monster side. Seeing her wrestle with literally herself was an interesting take at certain crossroads.
Did she want to be a monster? Could she do what came so easily to her family and was her birthright?
And what would she do about Nick?
That really is the question, right? And with it, the epic ending that I didn’t see coming. I really can’t say much but I’m left with so many questions. I’m glad this is a trilogy because I really do need more. The world building has been a great intro, but I can see the potential for this to continue blooming.
There’s also the matter of the romance and the unknowns of it all. But most importantly, it’s the ramifications of Joan’s actions and who she becomes that intrigues me the most. I like both Nick and Aaron (and the rest of her small gang she meets), but it’s ultimately the decisions this anti-heroine makes that drives this story for me.
I absolutely cannot wait.
Overall Recommendation:
Only A Monster is an exploration into this new and fascinating world of monsters hidden within the human one as we follow anti-hero Joan in her discovery that she is in fact not a hero but a monster. The pacing just hits you from the very start with time travel and fights with the morally good hero, Nick. There is absolutely so much potential for this world to grow, and the knowledge we gain is organic as we learn alongside Joan how the Monster world operates. Romance lovers don’t have to fear because we not only get a star-crossed romance but potentially a love triangle brewing for Joan as monsters and heroes fight to save their own. While it can be rushed at times and more than a little confusing at the beginning, I love this debut by Vanessa Len and the ending makes me want to see more of who Joan is. I highly recommend you check it out (and if you’ve already heard hype, it’s definitely real).
A masterful true crime account of the Golden State Killer—the elusive serial rapist turned murderer who terrorized California for over a decade—from Michelle McNamara, the gifted journalist who died tragically while investigating the case.
“You’ll be silent forever, and I’ll be gone in the dark.”
For more than ten years, a mysterious and violent predator committed fifty sexual assaults in Northern California before moving south, where he perpetrated ten sadistic murders. Then he disappeared, eluding capture by multiple police forces and some of the best detectives in the area.
Three decades later, Michelle McNamara, a true crime journalist who created the popular website TrueCrimeDiary.com, was determined to find the violent psychopath she called “the Golden State Killer.” Michelle pored over police reports, interviewed victims, and embedded herself in the online communities that were as obsessed with the case as she was.
At the time of the crimes, the Golden State Killer was between the ages of eighteen and thirty, Caucasian, and athletic—capable of vaulting tall fences. He always wore a mask. After choosing a victim—he favored suburban couples—he often entered their home when no one was there, studying family pictures, mastering the layout. He attacked while they slept, using a flashlight to awaken and blind them. Though they could not recognize him, his victims recalled his voice: a guttural whisper through clenched teeth, abrupt and threatening.
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark—the masterpiece McNamara was writing at the time of her sudden death—offers an atmospheric snapshot of a moment in American history and a chilling account of a criminal mastermind and the wreckage he left behind. It is also a portrait of a woman’s obsession and her unflagging pursuit of the truth. Framed by an introduction by Gillian Flynn and an afterword by her husband, Patton Oswalt, the book was completed by Michelle’s lead researcher and a close colleague. Utterly original and compelling, it is destined to become a true crime classic—and may at last unmask the Golden State Killer.
I don’t often (or ever, really) foray into true crime because it’s hard to know these are real families’ tragedies and pains that I’m reading about. These are very real people whose lives were upended and very real hurt that may still haunt those that remain to this day.
But I will say that there is a certain appeal to I’ll Be Gone in the Dark that made it such a bestseller when it first came out. I remember seeing it on the shelves at the time as I was still a bookseller then. It drew people in and I couldn’t fathom why. The killer hadn’t even been caught and isn’t that what should matter most? Where is the justice? It’s like a whodunnit story without the ending.
Then I picked up this gem years later and I can totally understand why it drew people as it did. It’s the work of a marvellous writer who not only knew the subject matter of these crimes inside and out, but she cared about the victims and their families too. It wasn’t about the fame or to glorify the inhumane acts done to another human being. It wasn’t even to focus on the killer only.
Because the killer isn’t what maters. It’s the stories of those who were impacted by the actions of such evil.
And that is what makes this a good book. It takes a certain writer to be able to balance the human side of the story without overly emphasizing the horrendous acts alone.
I loved the way we get to read (or hear in my case with the audiobook) the facts around certain crimes (and I do say certain because there were many), and the hunt led by various law enforcement over the decades for a killer that continued to elude them. It painted a picture, but it was also respectful towards the victims and their loved ones. Names were replaced for surviving individuals and there was no particular attention paid towards the gore of the crimes.
The book didn’t go chronologically based on when crimes committed. This made it kind of confusing for me at first but I think I understand why Michelle McNamara (and the people who put this book together afterwards) may have gone this route. Cops didn’t know who was victim 0 or if certain crimes were truly connected at the time across jurisdictional boundaries. It’s not supposed to make sense like a story because this isn’t fiction. Once I tried seeing it this way, I have so much respect for Michelle and the police who spent so many countless hours working through the myriad of information in understanding even a little about this killer.
All of this is to say that I appreciate the breadth of work done here. This was an amazing legacy to leave behind for Michelle McNamara never got to see her work come out before she passed away suddenly. We see her heart in this and for the people impacted. It’s not only a story about the Golden State Killer (a name she coined) and his victims, but more about Michelle herself. And I think this is what made the story all the more compelling.
Whether people debate how much of her work truly influenced the eventual arrest of the Golden State Killer, I think we can see she never wanted (and now never will see) the spotlight but only asked for justice to rain down. And either way, her work helped motivate those wearied from such a cold case and incited fresh inspiration for those who wanted to help in any way they could. That cannot be negated.
So take a look at this book that is unlike many others out there. It doesn’t promise answers or even a resolution. It’s truly just a grab in the dark, hope against hope chronicle of Michelle’s journey to finding the Golden State Killer.
Overall Recommendation:
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark is a testament and legacy of an incredible writer, Michelle McNamara, in her ruthless search for the truth behind so many numerous crimes in California in the 1970s and 80s. The writing is respectful towards the families impacted and doesn’t focus only on the killer. In fact, this book is more unveiling of Michelle’s own character and story as she dives into the work numerous law enforcement officers have tried to piece together throughout the decades. This is a wonderful insight into a cold case that didn’t have resolution nor answer until after its release and the unfortunate passing of the writer. But what a legacy she leaves behind, perhaps inspiring multitudes of others after her.
Down the Rabbit Hole 