I was introduced to Emerald Fennell’s Monsters when my colleague Dani came in and asked me what I was doing later that night. Before I could answer, she told me that the correct answer was reading this book – the one with the pleasant pastel cover told from the point of view of a sociopath. Dani had been up all night reading it and was so disturbed that, in her words, she needed to debrief.

‘Have you ever heard Nick Cave’s Murder Ballads album?’ she asked. ‘If this book was a song, it would totally be on that album.’

So I went home and read Monsters. I read into the small hours of the morning, fell asleep, had troubling dreams, and then I woke up and finished it. When I finished the last page, I completely understood why Dani needed to debrief.

Holly: So…
Dani: So…
Holly: Monsters huh? Wow.
Dani: Yeah. I told you. Didn’t I tell you?

Dani had warned me that Monsters now held pride of place as the most messed up book in her house – this was in fact, one of the things that originally sold me on the thing – but I hadn’t been prepared for the levels of messed-up-edness the story would reach.

Monsters opens with the unnamed twelve-year-old narrator telling us in a very matter-of-fact way that her parents were chopped up in the propeller of a cruise ship. It reminded me a lot of Camus’ opening line in The Stranger: Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can’t be sure. And just like The Stranger, Monsters also revolves around a murder on a beach. Or, rather, a series of murders in the sleepy seaside Cornish town of Fowsey where the narrator spends her summers after being shuffled around from one reluctant caretaker to the next. Her aunt and uncle who own a hotel in town barely seem to tolerate her presence, so she wanders around being a general nuisance to the lollyshop owner and the man who runs the aquarium.

When the body of a woman is fished out of the ocean, the narrator becomes obsessed with what is soon revealed to have been a murder. She’s not the only child who shares the obsession. Staying in the hotel is thirteen-year-old Miles with long golden hair that reminds our narrator of Goldilocks. Miles is there with his overbearing mother who barely lets him out of her sight, and dresses him in the same clothes he wore as a small child that she has recreated in larger sizes. But despite his angelic appearance and simpering tone when he speaks to his mother, the girl recognises a kindred spirit in Miles, somebody else who is just as much an outsider as she is.

‘I don’t go to school,’ he said. ‘I’m home-schooled.’
‘But how do you make friends?’ I asked.
‘I don’t really have any friends,’ he replied, tugging at his fingers even harder.
‘Me either. But I kind of hate everyone, so it doesn’t really matter.’

The pair begin an ‘adventure’ of sorts across Fowey. As more bodies start piling up and the small town turns into a media circus, Miles and the girl launch their own investigation. But while they badger the town’s citizens in the hopes of finding the killer, their true fascination lies with the act of murder itself, and in particular, who the victims will be.

Make no mistake, this is an unsettling read. I asked Dani to sum it up in a word, and the word she used was ‘disturbing’. I don’t disagree. But the word ‘fascinating’ comes in a close second for me. For three hundred odd pages we are plunged into the mind of a sociopath, a young one who is learning to navigate a world she doesn’t belong in. It’s a brilliant book that you’ll want to finish in one sitting, and it might just be my top read for 2015.

But is it young adult?

The publisher thinks so. The protagonist is twelve, going on thirteen. There are the usual YA themes of not fitting in, of first love, of summer holidays and social embarrassment. But this is unlike any other YA I’ve ever read. It’s more like Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, or Iain Banks’ The Wasp Factory. On the one hand, I’d hesitate to give it to a fifteen-year-old without getting a written waiver from their legal guardian. But on the other, it’s such a compelling page-turner of a novel that I do think teens (and adults) should appreciate Fennell’s craft.

I asked Dani who she thought the book was aimed at, and I think her answer was perfect: ‘If a customer came in, and I felt this was the perfect kind of book for them, I’d feel inclined to call the police.’

While we promise not to have you arrested if you pick up a copy of Monsters, we do promise that you will be utterly gripped by this unusual novel.

Holly Harper