Broken Monsters really did start off promising. In the end, it wasn't for me and I had to DNF it.



Detective Gabriella Versado has seen a lot of bodies, but this one is unique even by Detroit's standards: half boy, half deer, somehow fused together. As stranger and more disturbing bodies are discovered, how can the city hold on to a reality that is already tearing at its seams? If you're Detective Versado's geeky teenage daughter, Layla, you commence a dangerous flirtation with a potential predator online. If you're desperate freelance journalist Jonno, you do whatever it takes to get the exclusive on a horrific story. If you're Thomas Keen, known on the street as TK, you'll do what you can to keep your homeless family safe--and find the monster who is possessed by the dream of violently remaking the world.

If Lauren Beukes's internationally bestselling The Shining Girls was a time-jumping thrill ride through the past, her Broken Monsters is a genre-redefining thriller about broken cities, broken dreams, and broken people trying to put themselves back together again.


All right, Broken Monsters, I am going to have to admit defeat. Alas, this was another DNF.

Broken Monsters has been on my TBR for years and years. And my copy has been hanging around since its initial publication. In the years since, I have picked it up a dozen times only to set it aside in something like frustration and boredom. Which is unfortunate, because it started off so good!

The first quarter of this novel was compulsively interesting. Lauren Beukes had me hooked in a swirl of delectable writing and potential. H*ll, she hooked me from the premise. Talk about a chillingly unique mystery!

In the end, it wasn't my cup of tea. Eventually, my engagement dropped off and I found my interest drifting. Somehow I went from possibilities and intrigue, to an underwhelming ache in my mind. It was like an instant shift and suddenly I was disconnected, and indifferent, towards everything in its pages. Broken Monsters just wasn't for me and I had to finally admit that it was never going to be finished.