Book Review: Summer of the Monsters by David Sodergren
Title: Summer of the Monsters
Author: David Sodergren
Release date: December 5th, 2024
*Huge thanks to David for sending me a digital ARC of this one!*
Ahhhh…
The old days. Like six years ago.
When David released his first novel, ‘The Forgotten Island,’ and people were like, ‘hey, not bad.’ Fast forward to the present day and over a dozen releases between his own work and his pseudonym releases as Carl John Lee and David’s become a full-time writer, having left his job recently to focus on his books. I have to say, I’m super proud of what he’s accomplished and his writing and journey inspires me everyday. I’m proud to call him a friend and I’m so thankful he helps me with my books.
Saying that, his newest, ‘Summer of the Monsters’ really pisses me off.
It does.
Why?
Because how in the fuck does he keep getting better and better and better and better and giving us these amazing characters and settings and stories. It’s infuriating, but – I am Canadian after all – it’s also so wonderful to see.
With this book, Sodergren takes the heart of ‘The Haar’ and adds in the claustrophobic atmosphere of ‘The Forgotten Island’ while also giving us a bit of that anxiousness that ‘Rotten Tommy’ created. And he does so splendidly.
What I liked: The story initially begins in modern day, with our M/C, Lucy, going to see her dad. She’s avoided him for years, every since the events of that summer on the late 90’s, and with that, David jumps us back in time thirty years, where Lucy and her father, a failed author, have to move to a run down house in the country side. What they don’t know, is that monsters exist, and they live in the forest beside them.
Sodergren sets the stage well, having Lucy arrive at her new school, frustrated over the move, and still upset over her mother having passed away a few years prior. Her dad hasn’t been able to write since the death and as such, funds have dried up and the move was forced. Lucy is a fish out of water, immediately singled out and bullied. Which forces her into the woods unexpectedly, where she has an encounter and we get the age old subplot of ‘is this thing a monster or not.’
David works that angle perfectly, showing disconnect between what Lucy meets and befriends and the rumors that the locals push about what lives in the trees.
The heart and soul of this story is Lucy’s relationship with this creature that she befriends and names. It works as a sounding board, therapist, grounding aspect for our character. She’s navigating tough waters – a teenaged girl now without her mom and her dad disillusioned and vacant. Even when she meets someone she thinks she can trust, she’s tentative about opening up and throughout, Sodergren infuses the story with little footnotes of details that remind those of us who lived during those halcyon days of the late 90’s what life was like. Mixed tapes and NIN and baggy jeans and alternative music festivals.
The ending absolutely gutted me. Just a powerful, poignant final chapter with an equally emotional final paragraph and closing line. When I was done, I messaged Sodergren and told him to prepare for the onslaught of fan drawings about this one, and I hold steady with that prediction.
What I didn’t like: As this acted as an early look/beta read as well as a read for review, a couple of my minor things might’ve been adjusted already.
The first was that I struggled to really have a sense of the time frame of this taking place. It felt like it happened over a few weeks, but it was only a few days.
The second was that I wasn’t fully onboard with the way Lucy reacted in some moments. Saying that, this is fiction and I am VERY far from remembering what being sixteen was like and I never experienced it as a sixteen-year-old girl, nor one who has lost a parent. So, while at times Lucy annoyed the snot out of me, her character felt very real, very true and one that I wanted to root for.
Why you should buy this: Written without care for subgenre classification has made this perhaps one of the best YA books I’ve ever read that isn’t really a YA book. It reminded me a lot of ‘The Book of the Baku’ by R.L. Boyle it tone and pacing, but wholeheartedly a Sodergren book. His narrative prose style has become his own, which he fully owns and much like my favorite authors – Andrew Pyper and Adam Nevill – I immediately knew I was in a Sodergren book with the way it was written.
Sodergren has forged a path ahead as a total Indie Author, bucking the desire to query, be represented and be traditionally published and it’s books like this, that showcase why he’s become so successful, so widely read and so widely celebrated. I didn’t know if he could top ‘Rotten Tommy,’ yet here we are, not even seven months later and he’s left the brilliance of that novel in the dust.
The best novel he’s released yet, Sodergren proves why he’s a must-read author and why so many people love his work.
A magical gem.
5/5
