The Monsters We Make

Paperboys are going missing: two in the last two years, working their route and then never seen again. Crystal hears the about the most recent on the police scanner and immediately is concerned for her brother, Sammy who is a paperboy. She finds him, but something isn’t quite right with him. Crystal pursues this story as she sees the makings of an award-winning article, one that will help her win a scholarship to college. As she digs deeper into the secrets her brother is hiding and what could have happened to those other boys, she learns that sometimes we see only what we want to believe. We ignore warning signs and people become The Monsters We Make.

This is a gut-wrenching novel, even more so knowing how realistic it is, despite it being a fictional story. This story will have you super emotional, especially if you have little boys like I do. I hugged them a little bit tighter after. What a powerfully poignant display of the differences between generations. I’ve grown up in the “don’t ever talk to strangers or be unsupervised” generation, completely different from when my parents were children, and the rules for my kids are even more strict. While it was sad and scary, this was a great novel portraying how many secrets we keep from each other and even our selves in order to survive. I hope that it will also encourage anyone reading it to have the courage to speak up and protect those we love.