Monster of the Week(ARC Review)

After finishing The Rules and Regulations for Mediating Myths and Magic with a smile on my face, I dove right into Monster of the Week, looking forward to just as much cuteness and humor this time around. 

Monster returns us to Bridger’s world when the ‘Monster of the Week’ TV show comes to film in Midden, putting the local myths and cryptids in danger of being outed. Meanwhile, another less-than-pleasant guest has returned to Bridger’s life…because of course things can’t go right, can they?, even for graduation!

As the second in the series, I expected (hoped) that Monster would take us deeper into the world of myths and find us a conflict with higher stakes now that all the characters have been established. After all, it had been the synopsis for Monster, not Rules, that had originally brought my attention to the series, and made me want to request it on Netgalley so badly.

Unfortunately, I’m no genie (or rather, I don’t have one at my disposal), and my wish did not come true. If anything we get less magic and mythology than we did in the first book and the stakes are the same, if not less tense.

Let’s break this down…

A quarter of the time in this book is spent catching us up on what happened in the first book, including details that we didn’t necessarily need to know. Although helpful for those who, unlike me, had to wait the full year to get back to Midden, it seemed a waste of page time. 

Between these moments, half of the story focused on demonstrating how dang cute Leo and Bridger are together. Look at them be cutesy! Look at them snuggle! Look at them smooch! I for sure ship Leo and Bridger, don’t get me wrong, but it got a bit too mushy for my taste, and although I love to see a happy and healthy relationship (and some messages about communication in relationships that would be great for YA readers!) I wished that there was something that was bringing tension or excitement to the story in these sections. I almost wished they would fight just for a little drama.

The last quarter is the actual guts of the novel. Just like in The Rules there are two conflicts, and just like the first, I found the secondary conflict much more interesting and tense than the main one. Summer Lore, the host of the ‘Monster of the Week’ show is too much of a dedicated-journalist caricature to feel like a real villain. I could never take her dialogue very seriously, partly because of her too-stereotypical mannerisms, and partly because her dialogue just sounded way younger (and whinier) than what I thought would fit her supposed age.

Also…can I just point out that the host of a monster show would probably not be an actual journalist, but an actress? And that whatever moral code she follows and the skills she has are anything but what they teach in journalism school (trust me, I went!). A small aspect, sure, but one that consistently peeved me.

Even if I had thought of Lore as more of a threat,  we end up having to wait for any type of real excitement and action until around Chapter 15, and by then we’re pretty close to the end. 

But to be honest, none of this would have mattered that much to me if I still could have had the narration I liked so much in the first book. At times I got glimpses of that self-hating, sarcastic Bridger voice in between the cheesy God-I-love-Leo stuff, but there wasn’t nearly enough. His narration takes a backseat to a writing style that becomes much more summarizing than it was in The Rules, a choice that ended up being the deciding factor in me really not enjoying this one as much as I wanted or expected to (or as much as The Rules). And I’m pretty sad about it!

I rated Monster of the Week 3 out of 5 stars. 

Thank you to Netgalley and Duet Books for the opportunity to read a digital advanced reader’s copy in exchange for an honest review!