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.

MAJOR content/trigger warning for this book: Animal abuse/animal death. Several animals die/are mistreated. It makes me sick when animals are harmed in a book, especially needlessly. That definitely made me feel uncomfortable and repulsed, and I feel obligated to warn everyone that there are quite a few scenes where animals are mistreated.

I'm still trying to figure out how I feel about Delicate Monsters. I can't say I enjoyed it, per se, but I kept reading due to some sick fascination with the characters and the story.

Miles, Sadie and Emerson are all very twisted, fucked up kids who do twisted, fucked up things. None of them are very likable, but they are certainly enthralling. Definitely anti heroes.

The ending is very open ended and frustrating for me, as I like closure. I like answers. If you're like me in that way, I think the ending will frustrate you. But if you like loose ends, questions unanswered, I think you'll like the ending.

The main problem I have with Delicate Monsters is that there isn't much of a plot. The story is propelled mainly by its characters, who are fascinating and interesting, but there's not much action.

Also, I'm still confused by what the blurb means by "Miles can see the future". Can he really? Is there supposed to be a supernatural aspect, or is it all in Miles' head?

Tl;dr version: Overall, Delicate Monsters is a book I feel very ambiguous about. It's pretty short, plus the characters are so compelling to read about, so I went through this all in one day. But I feel that its plot is lacking a bit, and the open ending frustrated and confused me. I definitely recommend giving this one a try, but I have a feeling it's not for everyone.

I'm sat here with my mouth open wondering what the heck just happened.

Yep this one has that power.

I'm not sure how to describe the central plot so I won't bother trying - but never, ever in my life have I met such a bunch of completely screwed up characters. For different reasons, for a myriad of choices they have made, for whatever reasons come to light during the reading of this one, these guys are SCREWED.

In "Delicate Monsters" Stephanie Kuehn once more takes on mental illness as a central theme, giving us a character piece that pulls no punches and peels layer after layer away from her main protagonists until they are laid bare before us - with a terrifically practical touch to the prose, she tells it how it is, there is no attempt to necessarily give us redeeming features, although there is a kind of redemptive feel throughout.

I find this author unique in her ambience - this is now my third novel from her (Complicity and Charm and Strange having come before it) and with each one she has stopped me in my tracks for very different reasons. I've come out the other side of all her novels feeling emotionally wrung out and completely mentally exhausted - in the very best way possible. Because these are stories where you feel all the feelings.

The writing is sublime, dark and unrelenting but utterly delicious, I am hard put to explain why that is, it just simply IS.

Delicate Monsters is a powerhouse of a novel, with an ending that will shock you and drive you utterly crazy and a beginning and a middle that do much the same thing. What just happened? You tell me. Whatever it was it was completely brilliant.

Highly Recommended.

***This review has also been posted on The Social Potato

HOLY FUCKING CRAP
OMG
I DONT EVEN KNOW WHAT I FEEL RIGHT NOW.
WHAT IS THIS BOOK?
WHAT IS LIFE?

DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME? I AM WRITING THIS IN ALL CAPS. MY EMOTIONS ARE A MESS.

A couple days later, I am no longer as much of a mess. I feel slightly more normal and am more capable of putting together my thoughts regarding this piece of work.

BUT SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE FUCK?

This was my first novel by Kuehn and I KNOW I am coming back for more.

I think what really interests me about this novel is how it is totally a 'mind-fuck' novel but not in a way that completely twists your mind into a pretzel. The mind-fuckery is more toned down in a way that makes it so that you don’t even see it coming and when it does, you’re just left standing there, in the rain, all by yourself, contemplating life and what this book has made of it.

This book is the also looks at mental illnesses in a very interesting manner. It’s not the lighter, fluffier ways of dealing with mental illness that I am used to. This book looks at the dark and depressing side of mental illnesses.

One of the best things about this book is the characters and the detail Kuehn puts into developing their characters (or rather unfolding their fucked-up-ness.)

My only real complaint is that while I did enjoy the vague bits in the novel, I also thought the novel could be a little too vague at some points. To the point where it had me questioning what was going on in the novel, but not in a good way.

This is a beautifully, well written book that I would definitely recommend to those who are fans of mind-fuck books that will leave them questioning everything they read.