The Monsters We Deserve

Written by Marcus Sedgwick

Narrated by Alan Irving

'Do monsters always stay in the book where they were born? Are they content to live out their lives on paper, and never step foot into the real world?'

The Villa Diodati, on the shore of Lake Geneva, 1816: the Year without Summer.

As Byron, Polidori, and Mr and Mrs Shelley shelter from the unexpected weather, old ghost stories are read and new ghost stories imagined. Born by the twin brains of the Shelleys is Frankenstein, one of the most influential tales of horror of all time.

In a remote mountain house, high in the French Alps, an author broods on Shelley's creation. Reality and perception merge, fuelled by poisoned thoughts. Humankind makes monsters; but who really creates who? This is a book about reason, imagination, and the creative act of reading and writing.

Marcus Sedgwick's ghostly, menacing novel celebrates the legacy of Mary Shelley's literary debut in its bicentenary year.

Marcus Sedgwick was the bestselling author of over thirty books. He was shortlisted seven times for the Carnegie Medal, and in 2014, he received the eminent Printz Award for his novel 'Midwinterblood'. Marcus also received two Printz Honors, for 'Revolver' in 2011 and 'The Ghosts of Heaven' in 2016.

• Language: English
• Publisher: SAGA Egmont
• Release date: Sep 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9788728286302

Marcus Sedgwick

Marcus Sedgwick was one of this generation’s most lauded and highly regarded writers for children and young people, having published over forty books including acclaimed Midwinterblood and The Monsters We Deserve. He won multiple prestigious awards, most notably the Michael L. Printz Award, the Branford Boase Award, the BookTrust Teenage Prize and the Blue Peter Book Award.

Reviews for The Monsters We Deserve

[Kim Entre Letras ✿ · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

One of my quick reads. I really don't know how to review it or give my opinion; it's a book that has no foundation or at least that’s how I feel. It's a book that focuses on a single person, a horror writer who is in a cabin in the Alps. What is he doing there? Studying the well-known work Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, a work he hates by the way and questions how it became so famous. As the story progresses, fear or suspense takes over the place, there are footprints in the snow, he feels heavy breaths, there is a place he has never seen that guides him to a "trap." But whose trap? He is alone in the middle of nowhere.

As we move forward, the presence of the one who wrote the book he hates the most becomes apparent, along with the character Victor Frankenstein, who here hates being what Mary created him to be.

Mary tasks him with changing the world's perception of her book, as well as the meaning it holds in these times.

The writing or the way it's narrated is like that of a scared man, a man who knows that his success from his horror novel is a vile lie he has created, and who knows that he wasn’t careful with the creations he made. He feels like a man on the edge of madness; there are so many words that are repeated, that he repeats, that at times it becomes incoherent.

It’s the first time I read this author, and I did it because the cover caught my attention, but I’m not sure if I was disappointed; it wasn’t what I was really expecting.

Still, I hope you give it a chance. I liked it because it makes you think about being careful with what we create, whether it's a lie, a work, music, a hug, a kiss, anything we produce can either end us or help us move forward.

For my part, it gets 3/5 ⭐.

Thank you very much for reading me! ??

6/29/2021 (Translated from Spanish)