Thursday, October 20, 2022

Book Review: "A Cosmology of Monsters" by Shaun Hamill

A Cosmology of Monsters is powerful, emotional, and creepy.

“Life makes monsters of everyone, but it’s always possible to come back. Pain and death are real, but so are love, and family, and forgiveness.”

As some of you may know, I record a monthly podcast called “Fully Booked” with my dearest friend Amy for her Patreon (www.patreon.com/momadvice). At some point late last year, she raved about this book. It sounded intriguing but I usually avoid dark and creepy books, so I added it to my TBR and moved on.

But I got tired of being the one person who keeps saying “I don’t read creepy or spooky stuff,” so I decided to give this a shot. This was so unlike anything I expected and it honestly blew me away. It’s as much a story of family, grief, longing, resentment, love, and forgiveness as it is a creepy story. (Trigger warnings abound so please reach out if you’re curious.)

This is a difficult story to describe, but at its core it’s about the Turners, a family we follow from the strange courtship of the parents, Margaret and Harry, to Harry’s obsession with building a haunted house on their property, from the birth of their three children to their middle age. Oh, and Noah, the youngest, has a friendship with a monster. But it’s not what it appears.

The beauty of this book for me was letting the story unfold knowing very little. It’s not a book for everyone but boy, it was a book for me. Unforgettable.

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