Delicate Monsters is a very interesting, eerie, bizarre, dark story exploring themes of Necrophilia, death and mental health. The setting takes place mostly at school. It follows 3 main characters, Sadie Su, Emerson Tate and his younger brother Miles Tate. They all have strange behaviours and are different in their own ways. Sadie doesn’t seem “normal”, she is a mischievous, disobedient , Cruel teenager. She likes to mess with people and seems not to care about anyone’s feelings. She nearly killed someone at her last school, so she has to attend a public school. The next Character is Emerson Tate. He is Sadie’s classmate but dosent really like her because of how cruel she is. He just wants to have a good school year, playing sports and fall in love with the girl of his dreams, but what happens is the opposite of what he wanted. he has a secret, he is attracted to dead animals/things. His life is actually completely stressful and frustrating when everyday he has to deal with the death of his dad and how it negatively affects his Mom, and his younger Brother who always gets hurt and goes missing. The last main character is Miles Tate who is Emerson’s younger brother. Miles has physic visions, he is very mentally unstable, his visions makes him very sick, but his family dosent understand why. Delicate Monsters follows the lives of these 3 troubled teens, and it is safe to say they all have mental illness or social issues in their life. What I liked about the book, was how each character connected with each other in different ways. I liked how the author was not scared to “cross the line” by going into graphic details and saying exactly what the character is thinking even if it’s really bad, showing there true personality. I think the ideas in the book are nicely transitioned by having one page with a quote on it for each part of the book. What I didn’t like about the book was that each chapter is told from 3 points of view, and you have to read 2 more chapters to get to the same character which can be hard to follow and remember what happened from character to character. I like the endings of book and movies to be a happy ending or easy to understand, so I do not like the ending of Delicate Monsters because it does not have a clear ending of what really happened, you have to understand it for yourself. Overall, I would give the book 4/5 stars, I like the themes in the story, and how all the foreshadowing and symbols earlier On in the book connects at the end, deeper and deeper you get into the book the more the characters all start to discover dark truths and secrets about themselves. this book shows a dark side to human nature, I would definitely recommend this book to people who like reading twisted and weird stories, that show a dark personality to human nature.

This is the second Kuehn book I've read. When I first became interested in it, I didn't realize it was the same author who did "A Smaller Evil" and I really wasn't a fan of that book when I read it last year. In fact, if I had made the connection, I might have not picked up "When I Am Through With You." However, while I am starting to believe she has a "definite type" when it comes to plots and their characters, I did like this book considerably more. 

The story is told from the MC Ben's POV and pretty early on the reader discovers Ben in sitting in jail and that some people have ended up dead. The tale then backtracks and we find out what exactly happened to Ben. Ben has not had the easiest childhood. His mother will not win any parent of the year awards and his father is absent. Ben ends up dating Rose, a fellow high school student and right away, it seems Rose is in charge of the relationship. In fact, they end up dating because Rose tells him he's going to be her boyfriend. Ben ends up joining a hiking club at school, despite the fact that he has numerous health problems, and one weekend, his teacher and a ragtag group of students leave their home county to hike up some California mountain. Trouble ensues and death soon follows.

I actually thought I would hate Ben throughout the entire book but actually ended up disliking Rose and her twin brother much more. There were times I really felt for Ben and wished like hell that he would stop putting himself in horrible situations. Even when Ben tries to take charge, he pretty much fails. This book was somewhat thrilling in that there are several twists and turns along the way and as a reader, I was constantly guessing about what was happening and I'm sure I had a "WTF" look on my face during the last 100 pages or so. I had the look a lot longer when reading "A Smaller Evil.:

I am glad I read this book and my opinion on Kuehn has changed somewhat. I know a lot of bloggers who love her work so I'm glad I'm no longer basing my not-so-glowing previous opinion on just one book. If you like YA, thrillers and unreliable characters, you will find it all in "When I Am Through With You."

I received this book from Penguin First to Read in exchange for an honest review.  

This book will count as my "Diverse Voice" block for my Halloween Bingo due to the author's heritage as well as the ethnicity of several of the primary characters in the book.

So I managed to get this one started last night and left off as a pretty good part.  Just found out the narrator is sitting in jail...now to learn why?

This review can also be found at Carole's Random Life in Books.

I liked this book a lot. The story grabbed me right away and I was completely hooked. This is the first time that I have read anything by Stephanie Kuehn but I quickly found that she is a fabulous storyteller. I ended up reading this book over two nights and really never wanted to put it down because I had to know what happened. I had a lot of fun reading this book.

This story is told by Ben. I really liked the way the story unfolded through Ben's recollection after the event. From the book's summary, we know that Ben does something to Rose but as I read the story I just couldn't figure it out. Ben is really a likeable guy. He's not perfect and doesn't always know the answers but I just couldn't see him causing harm to anyone. So I had to keep reading to find out what really happened.

The book takes Ben, his teacher, and a few more high school students on an overnight hiking trip. I was a little surprised by how much this group of kids got away with on the trip. Ben is the teacher's assistant for the trip so he has a bit of responsibility but he doesn't hesitate to have a little fun himself. There is a bit of high school drama which I really didn't mind in this story. It felt realistic and really helped show who each of the characters really were.

There are a few surprising twists in the story and a whole lot of excitement before everything is over. I really had no idea what was going to happen to everyone as the story moved along. I ended up feeling for these kids as they tried to figure out how to handle the situation they found themselves in. 

I would recommend this book to others. It was a really exciting story that was really hard to put down. I definitely plan to read more of Stephanie Kuehn's work in the future.

I received an advance reader edition of this book from Dutton Books for Young Readers via First to Read.

Initial Thoughts
This book really surprised me. When I first downloaded this book from First to Read, it kept freezing my tablet up and just giving me an all around rough time. I decided to see if it was behaving any better last night and while the file was still a bit temperamental, I was willing to fight my way through the book because the story completely grabbed me. I loved Ben's voice in this book and was never really sure what would happen next.