Review: Only A Monster ~ Vanessa Len

Image from Goodreads. Click on the image to learn more about this book.

 

Format I Used: Audiobook & E-book
Pages: 416
Running Time: 11h:36m
My Rating: 3.5 stars
Publication Date: February 22, 2022

 

Immediately after finishing the book:

D'you know that feeling you get when you have to sneeze and then you don't? That's how I feel about this book. Will write a real review tomorrow.

After stewing about it for a bit:

I was so into the premise of this book, but also time travel makes my head hurt, so to say I was excited but also nervous for this book is a confusing understatement... I liked the author's take on Time Travel and how it works. I never really thought about it working like that, but you know, it makes sense. equivalent exchange and all that... Like one of my favorite Elric Brothers once said: Humankind (or I guess in this case it's Monsterkind) cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. To obtain, something of equal value must be lost. Add in the fact that it has doomed soulmates and a alternate timeline? Yes please, I'll give it a try.

Right off the bat, there was a lot happening, and I was like, okay okay okay, let's slow down please? Please?! Because less than 20% into the book "monsters" are being massacred by a boy Joan loves? and we've only known for like 5 pages. I wasn't sure how this was going to go, and I was hoping that we'd get an enemies to lovers story where the two are out to kill each other for a while, and then find out some big secret and decide to work together, turning them to tentative allies, then to lovers. But no. What happened was so much better, and so much worse...I really wish we'd gotten to know Nick more before all the drama started happening, because honestly I didn't feel the connection between Joan and Nick. Like... at all. I think if we'd gotten a chance to actually SEE more interactions between the two, I would have felt more betrayed by him and more emotionally invested. Also, did we ever learn how Nick was able to time travel even though he wasn't a monster? I can't remember.

Joan was actually a little annoying. For someone who had absolutely NO prior knowledge of the world of monsters, she sure was heck bent on doing whatever she dang well pleased, without any thought to the butterfly effects she may cause (well, I guess it wouldn't change the future because of the timeline fixing itself) I guess it's more accurate to say that she gave no care to the troubles she was causing in the moment, because she was so one track minded (Which I guess is also okay, because then she never would have been able to actually fix what went wrong...) and then of course we're given a big ol' SURPRISE teaser about Joan and who she actually is or isn't...

And now this takes me to another important member of the group:

Beautiful and Ruthless Blonde boy with a horrible attitude, who dresses in fancy clothes, and has a smug personality and air of superiority...

Aaron Warner is that you?

lol, that's all I could think about while reading this book. I was more interested in Aaron Oliver's background and what was happening with him and how he and Joan were going to make things work out. I ship them. And it actually broke my heart when she left and they had the whole conversation and Aaron told her she needed to stay way far away from him when things were fixed. I enjoyed watching their interactions and how gentle he was with her even though he was this supposedly bad person. I have a feeling I'm not on the right ship and that it's going to sink horribly, but we'll see. I could be surprised.

I'm curious to see how book two is going to go. Especially with how things ended.