Oh damn. This has been such an amazing ride. I’m so stunned. I had this book on my list for over a year because of the movie which I had seen a year ago. And this book is perfect. I think the pacing is just right, the story is incredible!! And I cried so so many times. In the first half I was just excited to read and couldn’t take it down and in the second half I just cried every few chapters… it physically hurt because the emotions and the way they re described is just so relatable. For everyone! the ending is just perfect in my opinion and I’m so so happy I’ve read this.

I can't call this a beautiful story because it isn't. But rather true to life. It really is mercilessly honest. I'm not sure whether young adults are actually truly able to reflect what this story is about. Putting the nice package aside. But I loved the way Patrick Ness approached it. Eventhough I cried by the end I'd pick it up again and again, thanks to the wonderful telling.

Holy smokes, I'm SO GLAD I finally decided to read this beautiful book. Thanks to all my friends for "pushing" me to give it a try, it was well worth it! This is actually the first book I read by Patrick Ness but definitely won't be the last one. His writing style is incredibly addictive and so, so beautiful. I just fell in love with it and couldn't get my eyes off the pages the whole time. "If you speak the truth, the monster whispered in his ear, you will be able to face whatever comes." I don't want to tell you what this book is about. Not even a little bit because ... I think it's best if you go into this without an idea. Without any expectations. That's what I did and I loved it. Also, can I just quote the synopsis? "It's something different. Something wild." - for me it's the perfect way to describe this gorgeous books ... it plays with you, plants thoughts in your head and lets them all loose. It makes you emotional and will let you think about a lot of things, whether you like it or not. The book is shelfed as Horror on Goodreads and I kind of agree. It didn't really scare me - not in the usual way, at least - but since it's a middle grade story I can imagine it to be scary to younger readers. And if it's not the monster itself, the topic definitely is. There's so much truth in this book and I adored every little second of it! The illustrations were amazing - they add so much to the story! It's one of the most beautiful books I own ... I don't know if they're in the paperback version as well but the hardcover is worth its price! "You do not write your life with words...You write it with actions. What you think is not important. It is only important what you do." God, I don't even know if this review makes any sense but I'm still not 100% able to form coherent thoughts and write them down. I finished A Monster Calls within a day, in one sitting even, and have been listening to the sound of rain and thunder along with an orchestra from an app which made this whole adventure even more perfect! If you can, read this on a rainy day and make sure you have nothing planned so you can dedicate yourself completely to the story. And have tissues by your side! 100% recommended! www.aworldbetweenfoldedpages.blogspot.com ______________________ February 6th: Wow. Honestly, I'm speechless right now and don't even know what to say. I guess I need to think about this before I can bring it into words how much I loved this book - it's so beautiful, heartbreaking and real at the same time. Oh my god. It has all these 5 star ratings for a reason - definitely belongs to my favorites now! <3

You do not write your life with words. You write it with actions. What you think is not important. It is only important what you do. This book was a quick read, yet nothing I will remember. The illustrations were great but the story itself didn’t make me feel anything for the characters. My expectations were probably too high because I expected something extraordinary and touching. Sure, it deals with loss and grief in an interesting way. The book was okay but all in all, it didn’t work for me.

read my complete review: http://isabellsbooks.blogspot.com/ Instagram: isleepnaked BOOK VS MOVIE REVIEW MY THOUGHTS ON THE BOOK I wanted to read this book for a long time and now finally decided to because it felt like a very fitting book for October. Before I bought it I debated between the edition that I now own and that you can see in the pictures and the edition with Jim Kay's illustrations in it. I eventually chose this version without the illustrations because I preferred the cover - but after having read the book and watched the movie I now think that I would actually recommend to buy the illustrated version. Starting a new book is always an exciting thing to do - it's a fresh start, possibly the entry to a brand new world - and this excitement of starting something new really stayed with me during the first 100 pages of this book. It was just so interesting to read and I therefore really enjoyed reading it a lot. Since it's a very short book with very little writing on each page, it could easily be read in a day or two, but because my new semester at university has just started it did take me a lot longer. This really is a perfect book to read in autumn because it is set in October and just has this spooky element to it and is just a great book to read while cuddling yourself in. This is also why it didn't feel right to read the book outside as it got warmer again - well, I suppose the best time to read this would be around midnight, as its German title suggests which translates to "Seven minutes after midnight". After having read the book I must say that I do actually prefer the German title to the English one, especially because the English title seems to contradict what the monster is trying to make Connor understand - that it got called and didn't call itself. The chapters of this book are incredibly short and really keep you reading on and on and on because you always think "just another chapter" and then that chapter is already over again and you think "well, just another one" and so on. I really loved that because that way the book always kept me craving for more. Although Harry Potter is my favourite book series of all time, I normally don't read a lot of fantasy books and I must admit that I had thought that this book would also turn out to be not actually about a real monster but just about something that would eventually turn into reality through a plot twist or something. Obviously you could argue that the Monster was just in Conor's head but the book and the movie don't really portray it that way so I would still argue that this is a fantasy story. But that didn't bother me because I found it very fitting for October/Halloween month and also because the Monster was a really fascinating character. It had this wise, "old-man-telling-a-fairytale-story"-vibe to it that I really enjoyed. The Monster's stories were very interesting, smart, unpredictable and therefore challenging for both Conor and the reader. I really loved their twists and turns and they really got me thinking. Since I loved the depth of the first two stories I was a bit disappointed by the shortness of the third one which didn't really reach me. Besides the twists of these stories, I got also surprised by one thing that Conor did before and during the telling of the second story. The satisfaction of destroying something was so incredibly well described and written that it woke the urge in me to destroy something valuable as well. I imagine that this passage was also very satisfying to write for the author. Every time something modern like Skype got mentioned in the story, it through me off completely because it just didn't seem to fit into the book since the story just didn't feel modern to me but had this timeless fairytale vibe to it. The story of this book was totally different from what I had expected it to be from what little I knew beforehand about it. I had hoped for more of a plottwist to be honest, not necessarily to explain the Monster in a realistic way but just .. something more. It also felt like the book ended way too early in Conor's story and that there would have been the need to tell the story a bit longer and shine a light on what happens next. I must also admit that although I always pitied and felt sorry for Connor, I never (except for the destruction part) really related to him because he hadn't a lot of depth to him. And his nightmare which is treated as this huge thing in the story was something that I had already expected fairly from the beginning and that just wasn't that big of a deal for me. The scene in which the Monster forced Conor to speak his truth was very powerful and the message of the book/the Monster is really important but I just wasn't satisfied with the amount of hype the book created for the build up of this "speaking his truth" because the climax of that arc of suspense felt rather anticlimactic to me. And so the book left me longing for more. MY THOUGHTS ON THE MOVIE I was very interested in the movie adaption of the book after having finished reading the book and I watched it on the evening of the day that I had finished the book. Already the opening of the movie blew me away because it was just so insanely beautifully made with the delicate images of colouring, painting, drawing and the wonderful use of watercolouring. This element of creating art gets revisited many times throughout the movie and also gave Conor more depth because his mother and he now had this shared connection through their passion for art. I already knew the story through the book so the movie couldn't disappoint me in that regard but I must say that it did touch me way more than the book did. The movie made me so much more emotional than the book and also managed to make me cry, while the book just left me unsatisfied. Since I had just finished the book the same day, I still had most of the book's lines in my head and was really amazed to find that the movie stayed so close and true to the book (which is probably thanks to Patrick Ness, the author of the book, writing the screenplay for the movie). Most of the dialogue was taken straight out of the book and everything that wasn't in the book but got added to the screenplay gave the story and the characters a lot more depth - something that the book would also have greatly profited from. Although I've seen posters of the movie before, I had still envisioned the Monster to look different while reading. The Monster in the movie had a lot of resemblance to Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy and it took me some time to warm up to it. And I really didn't like the red glowing of the Monster when it first came to life and was glad that they didn't keep that element afterwards. The opening titles of the movie already give away that Liam Neeson speaks the Monster and that bothered me a bit at first because I then always thought of him when the Monster spoke - but then the movie included such a beautiful twist that I loved so much and that made the movie 100% deeper and more emotional for me. A lot of people who watch the movie might not even realise that and the ones who do might not want to know it beforehand so they can experience the same wonderful and emotional moment of realisation as I did. (Check out my blog to read what I'm referring to.) Since I loved the scenes of painting, drawing and colouring so much in the movie I thought that the book edition with the illustrations in it might have added a bit of that art factor to the book aswell. CONCLUSION I really loved reading the book during the first 100 pages and it was just the perfect book to read in October/Halloween month because of the Monster and the storytelling aspect to it. It is very easy to read and the story captivated me right from the start and always made me want to read more and more and more although I really needed to sleep. The Monster's stories really got me thinking because they were so smart and unpredictable and I just enjoyed them a lot. The fairy tale-aspect of them gave the book even more of an autumnal vibe. I had expected some big twist or turn in the whole story as there was in the first two stories that the Monster told and had already predicted Conor's nightmare's truth from the beginning so that twist wasn't really one for me. The book also ended too early in Conor's story for me and therefore the book left me rather unsatisfied. The movie amazed me through its incredibly beautiful use of scenes of colouring and drawing and just added more layers to Conor and was just a visual masterpiece. The cinematography of the stories that the Monster told were just a feast for the eyes. I loved that the movie stayed so close to the book but must say that the movie did make me far more emotional than the book because it touched me a lot more. And it also felt important to me that the movie did not end at the same point as the book did but added a bit more afterwards. The movie left me emotional while the book left me unsatisfied so I actually prefer the movie to the book. RATING I award this book 3,5 out of 5 stars. I award this movie 4 out of 5 stars.

There are two ways of dying which must be most terrifying and angst-inducing for mothers: Having to see your child die before you leave this earth yourself, or dying in front of your little child's eyes ... the eyes of a kid, a young human being who should have been led on his way to adolescence by his mother. Both of these ways are portrayed in this book. And it's done by Patrick Ness in what may be the best way it could be done in. It's nearly impossible to review "A Monster Calls" because it feels so unique, so heart-breaking, so terrifying. Combining strong subjects like bullying, death-struggle, childhood fears and coming of age, Patrick Ness is able to carry his reader off on a tumultuous ride through the darkness of childhood. “Don't think you haven't lived long enough to have a story to tell.” The writing might perhaps be the best thing about "A Monster Calls". Patrick Ness is a master when it comes to combining words and wringing emotions out of them. It's easy to compare his style to [a:Neil Gaiman|1221698|Neil Gaiman|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1234150163p2/1221698.jpg]'s - gripping and abducting you into the realms of his story. In the beginning, there might have been passages which felt ridiculous to me, and while I always connected to the story and to what was happening to the characters, the characters themselves felt sometimes alienating to me. But that's nothing to criticize this book for. It might be considered to be heart-breaking, to be a page-turner, but first of all, it is a book you definitely should not miss reading.

That's the review by my dad, he read it from my kindle and it's gone. Anyway you can see how fantastic it is by just that line ------------------------------------------ Wow! Great read! My daughter almost forced me to read this book. First couple of chapters needed effort but then as I got the hang of it, I just couldn't leave it. And then I cried.