The Monstrumologist by Rick Yancey YP FIC YANCEY

Rick Yancey’s The Monstrumologist grabs you by the throat from Page 1 and doesn’t let go. The more you struggle, the more it gleefully squeezes you deeper into its gruesome clutches. And then it swallows you with a flourish and licks its chops.

That’s how over-the-top shivery and scary this riveting gothic tale is. Do you like monsters? Check. How about violence? Double-check!

You won’t be able to look away! Even when you’re covered in gore!

The Monstrumologist is told through the eyes of 12-year-old Will Henry, who serves as the hapless but ever-stalwart assistant of Dr. Pellinore Warthrop in the New England town of New Jerusalem. Warthrop calls himself a doctor of philosophy, which would be accurate if by “philosophy” you really meant “things that go bump in the night.”

One spring night in 1888, a grave robber deposits a grisly find on the doctor’s doorstep. To say what, exactly, the creature is would be to deprive you of the same shock, horror and disgust that both Will Henry and I felt as it was unveiled. Suffice to say Yancey does not subscribe to the current trend of vampires, werewolves and zombies.

The discovery of the dead creature sets in motion a race against time. Warthrop suspects more of them survive and if so, the people of New Jerusalem are in grave danger. This leads to Warthrop taking drastic measures, including inviting a fellow monstrumologist, John Kearns — though Warthrop’s morals may be questionable at times, we come to learn Kearns is devoid of a moral compass at all. Mayhem and carnage ensue.

Yancey does an excellent job of weaving an atmosphere of tension and dread and then punctuating it with brutal, detailed scenes of bloodshed:

"The massively muscled forearm followed, rotated ninety degrees, and the next second found Burns’s head buried in the grip of the huge claw. With a sickening pop the beast tore his head completely off his shoulders and yanked it back through the hole punched through his heaving gut."

You have to hand it to the man. Yancey’s creative even in his descriptions of butchery.

Those scenes, however, ensure that this book is not for the faint of heart. Better yet, you should probably have a strong stomach, too. As I mentioned in my last post, I’m trying to read all the books on the 2011 Lone Star Reading List. The Monstrumologist is on that list. I definitely have to give props to the Texas Library Association's Young Adult Round Table for putting together such a diverse selection. This novel was my first taste of horror and I find I rather like it.

What I like about this book is that you come to care for its main characters, which ratchets up your fear for their survival amidst such depictions of slaughter. Will Henry is an earnest boy who’s seen far more than any boy — or any man — should have to see. But he remains stubbornly devoted to the doctor, realizing he truly has no one else and that the same case applies to the doctor.

Warthrop, for his part, doesn’t do much to dispel the mad-scientist stereotype. His mania for monsters goes hand-in-hand with his absentmindedness: obsessively focused on his hellish hunt while caring little for the prosaic details of day-to-day life like eating. Even then, we find sympathy for him as we learn a little of his background and the terribly legacy left to him by his monstrumologist father.

The story's most intriguing conflict does not revolve around the monster's rapaciousness but rather the cruelty of man. There are shocking instances of inhumanity and mercilessness among the novel's human characters, requiring readers ask themselves, "Who really is the monster?"

Rosebush by Michele Jaffe YP FIC JAFFE

Jane Freeman wakes up in a rosebush and she can’t move. She also can’t remember anything about what happened at the party the night before, but she needs to. Because she thinks it wasn’t just a hit and run, that someone wants to kill her. As she mends her body in the hospital and tries to piece her fractured memory together, her many friends and well wishers come to see her and tell her as much as they can about the party, but everyone’s story is different. When she begins getting threatening calls no one else is around to hear Jane realizes she has to remember who tried to kill her before they return to finish the job. As memories flood to the surface she uncovers secrets about the people she knows and herself and realizes that her perfect popular life was an illusion. An illusion someone will kill to protect.

This is a very rare find, a thriller that is also a compelling look at love, friendship, and loyalty. It’s a really suspenseful story and the false leads Jane follows in her disjointed memory gives the book plenty of twists that will keep the reader guessing. Jaffe does a good job of making the reader and Jane question her own sanity. I will say that while I like how the mystery developed I found the ending somewhat hard to believe. However, the writing of Jane is so good that I was willing to overlook it. She changes over the book almost entirely by looking back at her life and seeing herself through other’s eyes, which is good, because she’s sort of a brat at first. I guess car accidents are an awesome way to become a better person! Her slow realization of the kind of person she really is and what the people around her are really like is a very effective way to build characterization and allows the reader to follow Jane on her journey If you like mysteries this is one of the best written YA mysteries I have read (even with its lackluster reveal).

The Missing Girl by Norma Fox Mazer YP FIC MAZER

Beauty, Mim, Stevie, Fancy, and Autumn live happy carefree lives, but they shouldn’t. A man is watching them. A man that looks normal and ordinary and safe, but he isn’t. He watches and he waits, but he won’t wait forever. After he stops waiting nothing will eb the same.

This book is creeeeeepy with a capital EW. Reading the thoughts of a deranged man obsessed with children isn’t exactly my idea of a Good Time, but it isn’t meant to be light hearted and fun. It is meant to be disturbing and horrifying, and it is! The alternating points of view between a happy family and their day to day life and a twisted monster are seriously compelling and repellent at the same time. It really works that Mazer addresses the reader as ‘You” when focusing on the different family members points of view, it leaves you guessing as to what will happen next. Mazer shows that you don’t have to be graphic or overly violent to be truly scary. Fair warning, you will not be able to put this book down and it will make you paranoid about strangers for at least a few days. Read it with the lights on and read it fast!

P.S. Even though this doesn’t affect my review at all it has one of the best designed covers I’ve seen in a long time.

Girl, Stolen by April Henry YP FIC HENRY

Sixteen year old Cheyenne Wilder is having a rough day. She’s feeling really sick and her mom was just running into the store to get some medicine when the car she is laying down in is stolen with her stolen along with it. Now a car thief has become a kidnapper and the stakes just became life and death. The one thing that is keeping her alive also keeps her from escaping: Cheyenne is blind. She wants to trust a captor who seems to want to help her, but trust is a deadly luxury. Cheyenne is blind, seriously ill, and running out of time in this nail biting, pulse pounding thriller.

This novel starts tense and ratchets up the suspense quick. The relationship between Cheyenne and her nicest kidnapper Griffin is a great way to keep the conflict fresh. The back and forth between the two of trust and doubt is exciting and moves the dram forward really well. The characters feel like humans that are making horrifically bad decisions driven by greed rather than inhuman villains. This actually makes the book scarier, because you can see how this could happen to anyone in bad enough circumstances. A good thriller, kept from being great by being sort or predictable and having the ending feel rushed, BUT a really fun read for people wanting something fast, fun, and interesting.

The Returners by Gemma Malley YP FIC MALLEY

Will doesn’t know if he has a future. His mom died when he was a boy and his father is a raging bigot that wants to keep England for the English. To make matter worse at night he has horrible dreams of death and carnage. Will just wants to be left alone and ignored. Unfortunately wherever he goes he is watched by strangers, all with the same sad, doomed eyes. No one believes him, and he isn’t sure what he believes himself, but then they make contact. They are the Returners, immortal souls that exist to witness the great atrocities of humanity, only to die horribly and be reborn just in time for new horrors. Will says he isn’t one of them, but how do they know about his nightmares of past genocides? As he runs from them and starts to question his reality he starts remembering things he had blacked out in his own life. And when he learns his destiny as a Returner is different than those who follow them he decides he will reject his fate, but can anyone escape fate? Or is history really doomed to repeat itself forever?

This is a dark and thrilling ride into the mind of a troubled teen with some pretty special problems. What works best about the story though is that many of Will’s problems are very real. His mother died in front of him at a young age, his bouts of rage scare and excite him, and his father’s bigotry repels him but also is somehow appealing. These are all things that happen in the world every day. It shows that history’s monsters and madmen were once just confused spiteful young men and women. It is a much more compelling view of how evil is born than most novels usually take. The novel is set only 7 years in the future in England and the idea that a recession in 2009 could lead to a rise in anti-immigrant sentiment is chillingly realistic. This is a scary and tense read that looks at how evil is formed and what can be done (if anything) to prevent it.

The Dying Breath: A Forensic Mystery by Alane Ferguson YP FIC FERGUSON

Cameryn Mahoney is turning 18 in just a week and can’t wait to begin her life as an adult, but before she can she must solve her deadliest mystery yet. Her ex-boyfriend Kyle O’Neill has come back and says he’ll love her to “her dying breath,” which might be sweet if he wasn’t also a sociopathic murderer leaving a dead body next to a love note. Cameryn will have to use all her skills and knowledge of forensics to stop the killing and find Kyle before he kills her and the man dearest to her.

This is the fourth book in the Forensic Mystery series. It does a really good job of catching the reader up on the backstory, so it’s easy to jump into. There is some pretty creepy and gruesome stuff in these books, but nothing worse than what you’d see on CSI. The characters take center stage in this volume and Cameryn and her maybe-boyfriend Justin are more of a focus sometimes then the mystery itself. I think the characters were interesting, but it would have nice to have more forensic scenes in this volume. However the scenes they do have are top notch and the book is very suspenseful overall. If you are fan of the million or so forensics shows on TV then you really should check this series out. The previous books can also be found in YP FIC FERGUSON.