A Monster Calls

It took me a bit to get into this one because I thought it was going to be a lot darker and Conor initially got on my nerves as another whiny child protagonist. However, there's a lot of emotion behind his story and the “monster” was a great way to portray that; it's also a very visual book in both the writing and the enclosed illustrations which is always great with this type of story. While I have no personal experience with cancer or another terminal illness, I really started to feel for the characters and got a bit emotional myself when reaching the climax of the story. My favourite part is probably the illustrations, though. The cover art and the style is what made me pick up this book initially.However, I would say that it's not really for readers like myself that are used to a bit more adult level literary horror. Reading this after finishing the likes of [b:Horns 6587879 Horns Joe Hill https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1400731844s/6587879.jpg 6781405] and [b:The Child Thief 6308379 The Child Thief Brom https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1336347513s/6308379.jpg 6493440], [b:A Monster Calls 8621462 A Monster Calls Patrick Ness https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1387584864s/8621462.jpg 13492114] comes off as a bit juvenile and vapid, but that's probably just me being priggish.