Len juggles it well, though, and the complexity comes off as fascinating rather than confusing.

If the magic system sounds a little crowded, well, it is. Nick and Joan's paths are destined to cross again, tangling them both in a storyline that's part fairy tale, part legend, and brings them to the heart of the mysterious Monster Court and the foundational truths underpinning this secret world. Stuck in the 1990s, Joan still can't stop thinking back to the present day and to Nick, the boy from her summer job who wasn't the normal human he appeared to be. The only person who can help her is Aaron Oliver, the disgraced scion of a rival monster family whose own motivations are shady at best.Īaron and Joan travel back through time and search for a way to undo what happened, even though messing with the timeline is strictly forbidden. It's a betrayal Joan can barely even process before a horrific tragedy strikes, dumping her into a monster world she knows almost nothing about. What's worse, her whole family - the strange, funny people she loves - have been doing this all their lives, poaching years from the unsuspecting humans around them. That summer, though, Joan accidentally discovers what she truly is: half-human, half-monster, a creature with the ability to travel through time by stealing it from humans and shortening the human's lifespan as a result. Joan loves them, but she doesn't exactly fit in: she's half-Chinese, she lives with her dad most of the time, and she's pretty ordinary apart from a more-passionate-than-usual obsession with history. Joan spends every summer wedged into the large London home of her grandmother, cousins, aunts, and uncles, who are known for their eccentric fashion tastes and habit of discussing art heists over breakfast. The life of 16-year-old Joan Chang-Hunt, the protagonist of Vanessa Len's young-adult fantasy 'Only a Monster,' isn't exactly normal, but it's really her family's fault.

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