Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes

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…

Reviewed by mary on

2 of 5 stars

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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.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 5 June, 2015: Finished reading
  • 5 June, 2015: Reviewed