My book reviews for the Monsters trilogy by Vanessa Len, including Only a Monster and Never a Hero. Please be aware that reviews for later books contain spoilers.

It should have been the perfect summer. Sent to stay with her eccentric family in London, Joan is determined to enjoy herself. She loves her job at the historic Holland House, and when her co-worker Nick asks her on a date, it feels like everything is falling into place. Then Joan 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.

To save herself and her family, Joan will have to do what she fears most: embrace her own monstrousness. Because in this story . . . she is not the hero.

Dive deep into the world of Only a Monster, where the line between monster and hero is razor thin: hidden worlds dwell in the shadows, beautiful monsters with untold powers walk among humans, and secrets are the most powerful weapon of all.

This book was provided for free by NetGalley and the publishers in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read this book!

Content Warnings:

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Without a doubt, this was another book that drew me in with its glorious cover (how could it not?!), and hooked me with its plot. Only a Monster turns the hero trope upside down in a deliciously dark story that makes us question what exactly a hero is, and what makes someone a monster.

Only a Monster turns the hero genre on its head in so many ways, and goes beyond the simple premise of she’s the monster, he’s a hero, and they’re in love. Way, way beyond. As another review I read stated, this is one of those books that takes a bunch of nice sweet tropes, like star-crossed lovers, and then takes a massive sledgehammer to them. That doesn’t mean there is no happiness or love in this book; it’s just not a fairytale type of book.

Len has woven a masterpiece of fantasy and emotion, taking readers on a journey through time, and this is a love letter to adult YA fans if I ever saw one, especially 90s children like myself. I don’t want to go into too much detail about the powers of the monsters, so I’m just going to leave it as time travel. Naturally, it’s not as simple as that, because why would they be considered monsters and hunted down otherwise?

Joan is forced to use her powers to escape Nick and stay alive, doing the one thing she never wanted to do. She ends up in 1993 with Aaron Oliver, the heir of a monster family that hates her family. Some things are bigger than family feuds, and a legendary hero who can kill monsters as easily as he can is most definitely one of them.

It was so strange for me to read about the 90s from a modern 16-year-old’s perspective, and it was also such a nostalgic moment. The novel is set in London as well, so there were a lot of things that were particularly relevant to my childhood. When Joan was remarking about the London Eye being missing from the skyline, I remember it being built. There was also a nice personal connection for me when a Crystal Palace football kit turned up because I grew up five minutes away from Crystal Palace. That is actually my home team, although, in a fit of teenage rebellion, I always refused to support them along with the rest of the family because “they sucked”.

I struggled to find a rating I was happy with for this one, and I realised that it was wholly dependent on whether Only a Monster was a standalone novel or not. The book ends in a way that it could be either a part of a series or an open-ended standalone. It is the start of the Monsters trilogy, so it’s a solid four stars for me; otherwise, it would have only been a three because it definitely felt like it wasn’t completely wrapped up. I’d have liked to have given it more; however, I don’t feel like everything was as solid as it could have been in a few places.

Despite all of the odds, Joan achieved the impossible. She reset the timeline, saved her family – and destroyed the hero, Nick.

But her success has come at a terrible cost.

She alone remembers what happened. Now, Aaron, her hard-won friend – and maybe more – is an enemy, trying to kill her. And Nick, the boy she loved, is a stranger who doesn’t even know her name. Only Joan remembers that there is a ruthless and dangerous enemy still out there.

When a deadly attack forces Joan back into the monster world as a fugitive, she finds herself on the run with Nick – as Aaron closes in.

As the danger rises – and Nick gets perilously closer to discovering the truth of what Joan did to him – Joan discovers a secret of her own. One that threatens everyone she loves.

Torn between love and family and monstrous choices, Joan must find a way to re-gather her old allies to face down the deadliest of enemies, and to save the timeline itself.

Vanessa Len’s stunning Only a Monster trilogy continues with this second instalment, a thrilling journey where a secret past threatens to unravel everyone's future.

This book was provided for free by NetGalley and the publishers in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to the publisher and the author for the opportunity to read this book!

Content Warnings:

In Never a Hero, Joan is living in a timeline that she created by unmaking the hero, Nick, the boy that she fell in love with. The boy who murdered her family. At the end of Only a Monster we were left wondering what would happen to Nick, and Len doesn’t leave us hanging. He appears on the first page of Never a Hero, having popped back into Joan’s life as a student at her school. His entire history has been remade, his family now alive. What hasn’t changed is Joan’s feelings for him, and once again Nick is drawn to Joan, completely unaware of their history.

When someone attacks Joan at her job at a bakery, they end up stuck together on the run. As they try to work out what is going on and who’s after Joan, the chance that Nick might find out everything is terrifyingly high. As Joan struggles to keep her secrets and stay safe, she gets some help from some familiar faces. But one familiar face isn’t amongst them. Aaron warned her that if they ever met again they would be enemies, and he was right; he’s one of the people hunting her down.

While I enjoyed Never a Hero, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of déjà vu and not in a positive way, because the problem is we’ve been through all this before, dear reader. It’s a slightly different plot, but essentially, book two is a rehash of book one. That’s not to say there are no interesting scenes, and there’s some great dialogue in there. However, as a Doctor Who fan, I’ve been spoiled with some amazing time travel plots, and quite frankly, this just doesn’t cut it for me.

I was also intensely aware that this book was written by a non-British author, which was surprising, as I loved the attention to detail in the first book. The first thing I noticed was the way that Len referred to Nick as captain of the football team, a very American attitude, as captains of our sports teams do not have nearly as much celebrity status in UK school hierarchies. Then, when they were in a historical period, it took Joan a moment to realise that people were staring at her and believed it is because she is mixed race. It felt a little odd that she was so surprised to find racism in a historical period when I’m aware of how racist modern London is, especially post-pandemic. I feel that sometimes people look at the UK and don’t realise that it can be as racist as other countries, just because it’s not talked about as much.

One of the aspects I enjoy about the Monsters series so far is the powers that Len has created for her universe. They are diverse and interesting; however, in Never a Hero, she introduces a new power of one of the families. I’m going to pop this under a spoiler tag before I go any further.

View Spoiler »The Liu family have the power to remember anything perfectly, and in Never a Hero, we gain some more information about how this works exactly. They gather information from any available source, such as phone records, CCTV, social media, drone photos and databases, and they only need to see something once to remember every detail perfectly. It is then added to the memory of the entire Liu family.

It makes sense then that some of them have the ability to remember previous timelines, as those memories would be stored in their collective memories. In Never a Hero, Len introduces an additional power, the ability to remember things that haven’t happened yet. Yes, that is as it sounds; they can see the future timeline. While this makes for an interesting plot, I’m not quite sure how it’s justified in a world-building sense, as we’ve suddenly jumped from perfect memory to clairvoyance, which is a completely different thing. « Hide Spoiler

I did find the big reveal of the big bad to be as tension-filled and thrilling as it should be. I did see some things coming, and then well and truly had the wool pulled over my eyes! It was that ending that saved this book for me, and makes me hopeful for the third (and final?) book. While Never a Hero was rocky in places, I have high hopes for the third book out next year!

The final book in the lauded Only a Monster trilogy is here--where the unstoppable love and high stakes of Divine Rivals meets the propulsive thrills of This Savage Song in a last-ditch, breathless race against time.

Joan has failed to stop Eleanor.

Now Eleanor rules over a cruel new timeline where monsters live openly among humans, preying on them and subjugating them.

Nick--once a hero to humans, and Joan's first love--is tormented by the choice he made to save her over the timeline itself. And Aaron--the ruthless heir to a powerful monster family--now finds himself in a world where monsters have power beyond imagining while his feelings for Joan grow.

Wrenched between love and rivalry, the three of them must negotiate their fractured pasts to survive the new world and restore what was lost. Because only they remember that there was once a better timeline.

But how will they defeat a whole world of monsters with control over time itself?

Review to come in the future!

Thanks for reading my book review for the Monsters trilogy by Vanessa Len!

Don’t forget to check out the rest of my reviews if you’re looking for some more book recommendations 🙂 You can also now sign up for my newsletter to get an email each month with a list of my new reviews!

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