Broken Monsters

by Lauren Beukes

In the city that’s become a symbol for the death of the American dream, a nightmare killer is unravelling reality. The new thriller from Lauren Beukes, author of The Shining Girls.

Detective Gabi Versado has hunted down many monsters during her eight years in Homicide. She’s seen stupidity, corruption and just plain badness. But she’s never seen anything like this.

Clayton Broom is a failed artist, and a broken man. Life destroyed his plans, so he’s found new dreams – of flesh and bone made disturbingly, beautifully real.

Detroit is the decaying corpse of the American Dream. Motor-city. Murder-city. And home to a killer opening doors into the dark heart of humanity.

A killer who wants to make you whole again…

• ISBN13: 9780007464616
• Publish Date: 23 April 2015 (first published 1 January 2014)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Inc
• Imprint: HarperCollins
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 544
• Language: English
• URL: http://harpercollins.co.uk

Reviews

[leahrosereads]

This is my first Lauren Beukes novel, but it definitely won't be my last. She's an incredible author who writes about horrific things beautifully. There are so many sentences and paragraphs that are completely quotable here, that I had a hard time keeping them all to myself. I don't want to accidentally ruin anyone's experience with this book by my adoration of her words.

Unless you like going into books completely, completely blind, you get a sense of what's in the pages from the synopsis on the front flap. However, unlike typical mystery/thrillers where the readers try to figure out the "who done it" part, Broken Monsters is told in several POVs and the who is found out relatively quickly.

But the why, the why's the freaking point of this story. From the commentary added around art, culture, and social media, to the delusions and even the paranormal aspect of this story (came out of left field, and I loved it), everything clicks in the end.

It was horror at its finest, and I'll definitely be checking out Ms. Beukes' other works in the very near future.

[mary]

So this was a very odd read. It is for sure a horror novel and I'm not sure if I was exactly in the mood for what this had in store. Essentially this book is about social media and how much destruction it can bring. So I found that part to be interesting.

There is a lot of horrific and violent murders in this book, but nothing too out there. I did find the characters to all be very similar where they stood a fine line between being flawed and dysfunctional. However, I wasn't that invested in any of them. So that is why it was difficult for me to get through this book at times.

Now the ending was bizarre. I was not expecting anything of the sort and this is where the book went downhill for me. I wasn't shocked or appalled by the last scene, I was just very disappointed. At times this book felt like a detective story hunting a serial killer (which the reader already knows about), but at other times it just gets odd. Especially the chapters that show the mindset of the killer. I would have given this book more stars, just the ending personally was not something I enjoyed.

[Leah]

When I spotted Lauren Beukes’ new thriller Broken Monsters on Netgalley, I desperately wanted to read it – Lauren is a very popular author since the release of her novel The Shining Girls last year and I kinda wanted to see what all the fuss was about. The reviews on GoodReads promised a scary book, possibly leading to nightmares and I was intrigued. I don’t read as many thrillers as I would like to, and when I do, I never find them scary. It’s just not in my DNA. And while Broken Monsters wasn’t overly scary, it did have my pulse going a few times…

It took me a long time to get into Broken Monsters. There are various points of view in the novel – the detective handling the case, her daughter, a fella named Clayton, a homeless man and a hipster who I loved but ended up hating and for ages the varying POVs circle each other without there being any clear reasons why – it seemed random, a bit forced to have so much going on, when really all I wanted to do was solve the case of the half-boy, half-deer that Gabi was investigating. The rest was all waffle, because it was this bizarre ritualistic killing that piqued my interest.

In the end, the novel does explode with the kind of stuff that keeps you turning the pages, and it gets a bit freaky. So freaky in fact that I’m not entirely sure what happened the last 10%. I found it baffling, and I could do with someone patiently explaining it to me in simple terms, because it was seriously freaky, seriously effed up. I probably would have preferred a regular serial killer story, if I’m honest if only because I hate finishing a novel and feeling so baffled and stupid. I feel like I missed the point, but it’s hard to discuss without spoiling it.

I am really glad I read the novel, it wasn’t as scary as expected and it took a while to take off, but it did and although a few plot points were superfluous (I’m looking at you, Jonno, you douche) and the ending was beyond confusing, it was a fascinating read. Beuekes has a freaky imagination, I’ll say that much, and I might just have to re-read it at some point to perhaps take in some of the finer details I may have missed first time around. Although, I was peeved at what she did to Sparkles, that was way cruel. I look forward to reading The Shining Girls and seeing if it’s as crazy as Broken Monsters, I’ll say one thing – it’s unforgettable!