"Of all the things aspiring artist Haven Marbury expected to find while clearing out her late father’s remote seaside house, Bedtime Stories for Monsters was not on the list. This secret handwritten manuscript is disturbingly different from his Pulitzer-winning works: its interweaving short stories crawl with horrific monsters and enigmatic humans that exist somewhere between this world and the next. The stories unsettle but also entice Haven, practically compelling her to illustrate them while she stays in the house that her father warned her was haunted. Clearly just dementia whispering in his ear . . . right?
Reeling from a failed marriage, Haven hopes an illustrated Bedtime Stories can be the lucrative posthumous father-daughter collaboration she desperately needs to jump-start her art career. However, everyone in the nearby vacation town wants a piece of the manuscript: her father’s obsessive literary salon members, the Ink Drinkers; her mysterious yet charming neighbor, who has a tendency toward three a.m. bonfires; a young barista with a literary forgery business; and of course, whoever keeps trying to break into her house. But when a monstrous creature appears under Haven’s bed right as grisly deaths are reported in the nearby woods, she must race to uncover dark, otherworldly family secrets―completely rewriting everything she ever knew about herself in the process."
What Worked for Me:
The characters in this were absolutely fantastic. Haven was a really interesting character to follow as much as she was frustrating at times. I think she had a good balance of being frustrated with the choices she was making but also intrigued with how everything was going to turn out. The side characters were developed just enough for us to get a sense of them, but they were a little flexible enough that when Haven starts questioning everyone around her, we can also be reasonably suspicious of everyone which made for a fun read.
The world building - both the physical world and imaginary world - was spot on. The setting of this small town on an isolated island was very eerie and atmospheric. Plus, we have an old, abandoned house that hold far more secrets than Haven could ever imagine. The world building in the Bedtime Stories for Monsters was also really well developed and I loved that we would get a little snippet of a story at the beginning of each chapter. Since these stories became so important to the overall plot, it was really nice to have such a good feel of these spooky characters and what they are capable of.
Speaking of the monsters, they perfectly rode the line between scary and intriguing. They really felt like The Brothers Grimm fairytale level of scary and, at times, grotesque. We get a lot of interesting relationships between the different characters and stories which makes everything feel more cohesive. Right around the middle of the book, I was getting spooked just enough that I couldn't read this book after dark. Shepherd does a great job with her descriptions of the creatures and atmosphere that really got under my skin.
What Didn't Work for Me:
I didn't know that this was book 1 in a series when I requested the ARC so I wasn't expecting the type of 'open door' ending we got. I generally am not a series reader so this was a little bit of a downer for me. However, I did appreciate that we get answers to most of the questions posed throughout the book and I think if you stopped here, it was still a satisfying read. It sort of felt like a detective fiction series in that way, we get most of our answers in this book but there is just enough left over to encourage continuing on - which I will be doing.
Overall, this was a super fun and spooky read with great characters, scares, and world building.
Thanks to NetGalley and Hyperion Avenue for the ARC. Publication date was October 4, 2022
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