Everyday Monsters by Travis Betz

I received this book for free from NetGalley to facilitate my review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Derek Stabbers wants revenge. He’s been planning to get it ever since his parents were convicted of the brutal murders of several neighbors. The state blamed mental illness; Derek blames monsters.

Paxton Hellswood wants to be left alone. She’s barely made it out of the house in the hundred years since she was reborn from the dead, and that’s just fine by her. She’ll take the comfortable embrace of her couch over human interaction any day.

After a series of violent misfortunes, Paxton’s incorporeal form becomes stuck inside Derek, forcing the two enemies to begrudgingly share a body.

Together (as one), they embark on a hilarious and poignant journey that ultimately proves there’s no such thing as monsters—just a world full of terrified creatures all hungry for a connection.

Everyday Monsters is a cute, OK read, in my opinion. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible either. Allow me to explain: I’m going to deviate from the way I’ve done the last few reviews because, well, there’s a lot going on.

For one, there are just too many characters that end up being central to the story to sit here and try to tell you a bit about each one and whether or not I liked them. I’m not used to seeing so many characters that are not only central to the story, but are the main featured character when a scene changes.

Everyday Monsters is written in the third person, which is a good thing, since the scene changes don’t always happen at chapter changes – or even with a dividing line¹Please note that this could have been changed when the book was fully formatted for print and eBook, but in my copy, there were several scene changes that weren’t properly separated.. Unfortunately, the amount of scene changes in the book make it slightly difficult to follow – at least I had a hard time keeping up with what was going on at times.

There doesn’t seem to be just one plot going here either. We have Derek’s desire for revenge, Pax’s problems, Axe’s issues, and the whole issue with Humans Against Inhumans. I’d almost rather have seen each plotline have its own book and had this be a series than to deal with them all in one book. However, I can also see as to how it would be difficult to make each of these plot points its own separate story.

Again, the book wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great. I enjoyed a lot of the scenes as they were happening, but I really just wasn’t too impressed with the book as a whole. I’d recommend it more for the funny parts (which aren’t all that memorable as I can’t even think of any off the top of my head) than for anything else.