Here There Are Monsters

When Skye and her family move across the country, it seems like a perfect chance to start over. At 16, she’s tired of playing noble knight in the imaginary kingdoms of her irritating younger sister, Deirdre. She’s also tired of being called “Psycho Skye” at school where she has to defend the prickly Deirdre against bullies.

At last, in her new home, Skye can be ordinary – make friends, go to parties, have a romance. But Deirdre withdraws even more, fixated on the swampy woods behind their house and building monstrous sculptures out of sticks and bones. Skye knows something is wrong, but she’s left her old life behind. She’s tired of being the protector and ignores all of Deirdre’s warning signs.

Then Deirdre disappears, and the family’s life is turned upside down. Skye blames herself, because she was asleep when her sister vanished. Then something comes scratching at her window in the middle of the night, telling Skye that only she can save her sister. Pulled by terrifying forces she can’t understand but must believe, Skye has to decide whom to trust and what she will sacrifice to bring her sister home.

In Here There are Monsters, Amelinda Bérubé brings us a spine-chilling Canadian gothic horror story. The forest behind the house is not only wilderness – it is home to a limitless terror that thrives on secrets and demands unquestioning obedience. Skye’s parallel experience in school is full of everyday adolescent drama, with friendship conflicts, popularity races, romance and a buzzing social life. Its very normality makes the dark side of her life even more creepy.

To add to the shivers down the reader’s back, the story gradually reveals that the forces of evil are not limited to the swampy, dark woods. They lie hidden deep within Skye and her missing sister. As Skye and her devoted boyfriend, William, venture further along their own dark paths as part of a bargain for Deirdre’s return, buried secrets emerge. In a final clash, the reader understands with horror what an ordinary person is capable of when pushed to the edge.

Teens with a taste for horror and suspense will gobble up Here There are Monsters, and the evocative Canadian setting will make it even more real and scary.