All These Monsters is this fascinating sounding story about a girl that goes off to fight monsters that started popping up all over the world years before, literally popping up out of the ground and killing humans. The US seem to have them under control and haven't experienced an attack in years, while in other countries in Europe and the UK for example, the monsters are everywhere and people die every day.
This whole concept for the story sounded so exciting to me. I love monster fighting stories, zombie stories are my favourite, so I was hoping to get that kind of vibe from this story.
The main character in All These Monsters, Clara, is from a family with an abusive father. Her mother is loving and kind but is stuck in a cycle of returning to Clara's father whenever they are in desperate need of money to survive. The way Tintera dealt with this relationship and topic felt very sensitive to me, my heart broke for them all and the situation. It was because of this situation that Clara ran away from home to fight monsters in Europe, it was her way of escaping. Life was so horrid for her that she would rather risk dying by monsters than staying home, and potentially dying at the hand of her father.
Throughout the story Clara grows and develops a sense of self-worth that she didn't have before. She realises what it's like to be around people that actually care about her wellbeing, she allows herself to care for them back and to open up to them. Although there is one relationship that screams insta-love to me and never felt good from the start. However, I can see how and why the relationship happens.
My main loves and enjoyments from this book was the story as a whole, I really liked the concept of it, monster hunting and learning to fight and stand up for yourself. The way it was told, I was on the edge of my seat wanting to find out what was going to happen next, I flew through this book in days. And that there was more to the story than just the top-level plot, I really liked how Clara had high stakes that drove her to making the decisions she did. This added a layer to the story that had me invested.
The monster fighting part of the story was the fun part. Although for me, it was a little unbelievable, and I couldn't suspend my sense of belief for it. This is the main reason I couldn't rate the story higher. The timeframe in which these kids have to train and then are sent over to Europe to fight monsters is unbelievably short and doesn't convince me that they would be able to survive. In this kind of end of world, live-or-die situation I would genuinely think you would train day in and day out for months if not a full year. So I was pretty disappointed when they started fighting monsters after one week. Who knows, I feel like there's more to this, and we might find out in a later book.
Another thing that I found odd was how apparently life hadn't changed too much in big cities like London and Paris where the monsters were everywhere and attacking all the time. These monsters could pop out from under the ground whenever and wherever, yet the cities sounded like they were normal cities. People casually walking down the streets shopping without protective gear on let alone carrying a weapon. People stayed in the city when I would've thought, in this kind of world, a city would have been deserted. Granted the monsters were drawn to densely populated areas, so it wouldn't have mattered if the people lived out of the cities.
Still, I would've expected children to be growing up learning how to fight and defend themselves and being more proficient in this than the adults, technology to be a bit more advanced on the side of self-protection (on this note, there was some advanced technology, but I would've expected more), people never walking down the street alone etc. There wasn't the sense of fear-for-your-life hanging in the air like you would expect. I was expecting a more advanced world, like the world in Feed by Mira Grant had completely changed in reaction to the zombie virus. This kind of world in All These Monsters just didn't quiteeee make sense to me.
It was really hard for me to figure out how I felt with this book. I've found that books I read from Amy Tintera are a hit or miss. Lots of the reasons are the same as well, so I believe it's Tintera's storytelling style that I don't really gel with. It's a mix of the characters feeling unkillable, meaning I am never convinced they are in any kind of danger, and they always feel like a hero when I want them to be more down to earth. And the way I can never fully be immersed in the world because something unbelievable pulls me out, like the timeframe of this book doesn't work for me and the world building seems a bit off.
Overall though, All These Monsters was an enjoyable story and if you're able to push past the things I've mentioned, I think you'd enjoy it a lot. I really enjoyed if for what it was and despite having the few disappointments, I devoured this book in days. It was very readable and the cliffhangers kept me wanting to read through the night.