When I attended the Headline Online party so many people told me how good Dan Well's latest book, Mr Monster is. I was lucky enough to get a copy at the party and other bloggers said that I should try and read the first book, I Am Not a Serial Killer at some point but that it wasn't vital before reading Mr Monster. Here's the idea:
My name is John Cleaver. I'm sixteen. I'm a mortician. I'm a sociopath.
But I am not a serial killer. Yet.
It's been almost five months since I first killed someone. Nobody knows it, but I stopped the Clayton Killer- a serial killer who tore his victims to shreds. The other thing nobody knows is that he wasn't even human- he was a monster. Literally a monster. A demon.
Now the only monster left is me- the dark side of me I call Mr Monster. I try to keep him locked up but he's desperate to kill again, and now people are getting suspicious, the FBI is asking questions and corpses are showing up all over and- well, something's gotta give...
The Headline party has really inspired me to explore Young Adult Fiction more as I clearly am missing out on some great books.
Mr Monster is just brilliant but also completely terrifying. Dan Wells takes the reader into the mind of John Cleaver, a sixteen year old sociopath. We read his thoughts and the extreme measures he has to go to in order to control his behaviour. I don't want to give the plot away but Dan Wells does have you on the edge of your seat, especially in the final few chapters.
I must be pretty out of touch with what young adults are reading nowadays (how old do I sound!) as there are some quite disturbing and graphic descriptions in this book. I think that it would suit a reader from about fifteen upwards but I can understand why so many adults love these books too.
Dan Wells packs so much into such a relatively short book that you can't help but keep turning the pages. Mr Monster was a great starting point for me to begin exploring Young Adult fiction again, there will be many more books in this genre going on the Dot Scribbles wish list.