Here There Are Monsters by Amelinda Bérubé

Here There Are Monsters, from Ottawa’s own Amelinda Bérubé, is a 2019 YA Horror novel, which was shortlisted for a Bram Stoker in the YA category. In Here There Are Monsters, we follow Skye, a young high schooler with a seriously weird sister, Deirdre. Shortly after moving to a new town, Skye tries to start over with new friends and a new persona, leaving her sister Deirdre behind. Not long after, Deirdre goes missing, and Skye will need to drudge up the past she sought to escape in order to save her sister from the monsters that live in the woods.

Here There Are Monsters is the Young Adult Horror novel equivalent of Quiet Horror. Most of the Horror comes from the tension Bérubé is able to build in a way that won’t go over young readers’ heads but is also creepily accessible. Though there is indeed creepy imagery and real supernatural threats, the impending dread is what makes the scares so effective. Here There Are Monsters is a fantastic “gateway” Horror novel to expose younger Horror readers to the world of Quiet Horror, and on to things like Paul Tremblay’s Head Full of Ghosts or Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle. 

One of the most difficult things about writing YA is capturing the teenage voice in a way that is both realistic but doesn’t make too much fun of teenagers to the point where they feel targeted. Teenagers can be quite annoying, and that’s coming from someone who’s chosen a career working with them! And then there’s the problem of using current slang which might become passé by the next year. While Bérubé doesn’t quite nail the teenager voice tone 100% of the time, this is one of the best representations I’ve seen in modern YA fiction. 

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Rating: 4 monsters made of roadkill, bed sheets, and hatred out of 5

Ian A. Bain lives in Muskoka, Ontario, and writes about the things that go bump in the night. Ian can be stalked on Twitter at @bainwrites. 

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