‘A Monster Calls’ by Patrick Ness

‘A Monster Calls’ by Patrick Ness.

Publisher: Walker Books.

Published: August 2016.

Page Count: 225 Pages.

Genre: YA, Fantasy.

ISBN: 9781406365856.

RRP: $19.99 AUS.

Synopsis:

At seven minutes past midnight, thirteen-year-old Conor wakes to find a monster outside his bedroom window. But it isn’t the monster Conor’s been expecting– he’s been expecting the one from his nightmare, the nightmare he’s had nearly every night since his mother started her treatments.

The monster in his backyard is different. It’s ancient. And wild. And it wants something from Conor. Something terrible and dangerous. It wants the truth. From the final idea of award-winning author Siobhan Dowd– whose premature death from cancer prevented her from writing it herself– Patrick Ness has spun a haunting and darkly funny novel of mischief, loss, and monsters both real and imagined.

Review:

“Stories are important, the monster said. They can be more important than anything. If they carry the truth”.

Firstly, we would love to say a huge thank you to Walker Books Australia for sending us this beautiful book to review ❤️.

‘A Monster Calls’ by Patrick Ness has been a book on our wish lists for a while now! We have been looking forward to it as we continue to hear fantastic things about the book from everyone. With it’s release in Australian cinemas coming soon, we knew we just had to start reading it!

We really loved how respectfully Patrick Ness acknowledged Siobhan Dowd who originally began transforming and writing this unique tale.

If we are being completely honest, we really enjoyed this read however, there were some parts of the novel that we found really confusing. For example, the magical realism side to the novel.

The messages that were constantly portrayed in this novel are incredibly powerful and will definitely remain with all readers.

The idea of this novel was such a beautiful idea! It was very simple yet very powerful and surreal at the same time! There were hints of magical realism however, what we really took from this novel would be the stories that the monster shared as they are just so wise, important and relevant. They definitely taught us a lot!

We loved how grief was explored and how you have to learn to process and work through it. There were many times when we found ourselves just tearing up.

Ness really does keep all readers on the edge of their seats. Whether you like or don’t like his writing style, Ness never fails to amaze us. His writing style is just so unique that you never know what’s going to happen next!

We also liked how the author managed to allow the novel to appeal to both adults and children which is often really hard to come by. Ness presented it just amazingly.

Unfortunately, we found that we couldn’t really connect with Conor, the main character. We have been in similar situations before however, it may have been his age and school life that prevented us to really connect to him and find other similarities.

We really did feel so much for Conor. If we could communicate with him through this book, we would just reach in and give him a hug. If we could, we would! Although, this read didn’t live up to the big hype for us, it was just to heartbreaking!

We took away so many life lessons from this novel so we just can’t wait to watch the film! We would definitely recommend this amazing read!

Book Rating: 4/5 Stars ⭐️.

Have you read this book? If so, what are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments!😊