“You do not write your life with words, the monster said. You write it with actions. What you think is not important. It is only important what you do.”

A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

Friends, this book was SO GOOD! I was crying at the end of A Monster Calls, which was not ideal because I was on a bus while on a school trip (it’s okay, it was dark by then so I’m pretty sure no one saw me get emotional over a book).

A Monster Calls is a story about grief, stories, and truth. Connor’s mum is dying, he’s being bullied, and there’s a monster that wakes him up at night to tell him stories. As you can guess by the quote from the monster, the stories have a purpose. They’re stories with a twist, where the ending is not what you expect, but they’re all related to Connor’s situation and they’re all there to help him get ready for the final story, the one that he has to tell.

Do you know who I thought of while reading this? Wataru from Brave Story by Miyauki Miyabe. There are some superficial similarities, like the way their fathers both left them, but more than that, both Connor and Wataru feel helpless and alone, and both of them require some magic/fantasy to help them work through their real-world issues. The main differences are that A Monster Calls is a lot shorter than Brave Story and it doesn’t have a quest-structure.

Anyway, I’m going to keep my review short because A Monster Calls is a pretty short book and I don’t want to spoil it. I’ll just say that if you’re looking for a book that talks about stories, grief, and the truth, this is a book that I’d highly recommend you pick up.

“Stories are the wildest things of all, the monster rumbled. Stories chase and bite and hunt.”