Spoiler-Free Review
If you ever wished for a darker, more adult version of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children – you may just love Ordinary Monsters.
Click here for content warnings.
What’s Ordinary Monsters about?
In 1880s Scotland, there is an Institute for children with special magical talents. An evil entity wants to eat these children, and only a select few can stand in its way.
There’s just something about this one that keeps me thinking about it.
As I listened to the audiobook for Ordinary Monsters, I would find myself intrigued by the writing style and the way the narrative would unfold. The characters were interesting and compelling. I didn’t necessarily feel it was breaking any molds, and there were some slow parts here and there…and yet.
There were several cool scenes that I still keep coming back to in my mind. Fights on trains, escapes through windows, creepy monsters and nether realms. It was fun.
It follows a wide variety of characters across many places, including both children and adults. This lends the book a very unique storytelling, because it can feel almost young adult when we follow the children, but dark and grim when we follow the adults. This was a blend I haven’t seen much before, and it created a different sort of atmosphere which I enjoyed. Watching the adults try to do right by these kids, protect them, react to them, and then to see the children as they learn to protect themselves and question authority was great, and the author executed it well. No one felt like a prop.
I also loved the narrator; he did an excellent job with the various accents and intonations, creating a unique voice for each character. Which is hard to do with so many characters!
I will also say, should this story ever get optioned for a show, I think it would be a sick animated series in a style like Arcane. One can only dream.
Should you read Ordinary Monsters?
If dark multi-POV stories with monsters and magical children are your jam, you’ll like this one. Just know it can be on the slower side at times; it takes time setting the stage, introducing characters, and sharing relevant history. We’re not always in the present, as this book will sometimes jump back in time by about ten years.
The sequel, Bringer of Dust, is scheduled to release June of this year. It appears it will be a trilogy.
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2 responses to “Ordinary Monsters (Book 1): For the adults who loved Miss Peregrine’s”
I’ve seen this around and originally thought it would be dark or scary but I might bump it up to read sometime, kinda cool there’s more books coming!
It was dark at times, but I don’t think it was too scary personally! Probably on par with a lot of fantasy, in terms of fantasy violence. Maybe if you check out its content warnings, that’ll give you a better idea