Review Girls and Monsters by Anne Michaud

Due out, April 30th, this collection of dark novellas for young adult readers is sure to delight and chill! Be sure to check out the goodreads giveaway! http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/45289-girls-monsters You have one week left to enter!

Excerpt:
This dark but uplifting collection of five Young Adult novellas includes:

Death Song: Liz is in love with Joe, but the monster of the lake has other plans for them.

Black Dog: Scarlet is engaged in a struggle for her sanity, but according to the voice in her head, she may be too late.

A Blue Story: When Katherine’s beloved dog goes missing, she fears her strange new neighbor might be involved.

Dust Bunnies: Christiane faces her childhood arachnophobia and ends up confronting even greater fears in this test of sisterhood.

We Left at Night: Brooke and her family must abandon their home and their lives to make it out of a disease-plagued town overrun by zombies.

Girls & Monsters is for everyone who has ever been brave enough to confront their childhood fears…and lived to tell about it.

My Thoughts.
Overall this was a really great, well written anthology. It’s described as dark, and it is. A few of the stories have threads of hope running through them, a couple have very dark endings, but the stories are quite good. All of the main characters are female teens, as you may have guessed from the title.

Death Song is probably one of my favorites. (The other fave is Black Dog.) It’s about a girl and boy, young love, and a lake monster that “protects” a small, prosperous town. It’s a really fun and creepy story, but don’t eat while you’re reading it. Some of the descriptions of the lake monster are so well done they turned my stomach while I was trying to eat dinner.

Black Dog is a powerful story about a girl trying to overcome mental illness on her own. There’s a moment of hope where you think she might make it, and that part of the story makes the rest of it that much more powerful. Being in this character’s head is an interesting ride and to me really captures what it could be like to have schizophrenia.

A Blue Story is probably my least favorite, but it’s still quite good. It’s a terrifying tale of missing pets and the sadistic bastard who is taking them. It has an interesting resolution and the MC kicks butt and takes names. It is horrific and any pet owner dreads the day their beloved one goes missing.

Dust Bunnies… Spiders… big ones… creepy, very creepy, but another interesting story with a really neat twist. It also involves childhood friends who could potentially turn into something more, especially brought together by this creepy frigging spider.

We Left at Night—Zombie apocalypse. This story really captures the terror of not knowing what is going on, having your neighbors and the military turn on you, fleeing in the night, and the loss involved with any sort of apocalypse, leaving things and loved ones behind while you flee to safety and an uncertain future.

I would recommend this to anyone who likes dark tales.

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