My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Vol. 1

My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Vol. 1 by Emil Ferris
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Such a gorgeous, inventive, intriguing book! It book's styling made it really look like a notebook, complete with realistic-seeming paper clipped in notes. In addition to the intriguing story and characters, there were page after page of gorgeous sketch recreations of famous art. I could spend hours just looking at those.

Karen, an outcast, monster-crazed girl, becomes more and more obsessed with solving her neighbor's murder as her findings become increasingly weird. It doesn't help that she's dealing with not only bullying at school, but her mother's cancer diagnosis. The sicker Karen's mother gets, the more obsessed she becomes with Anka's story and figuring out what really happened to her. The monsters are another way to escape from reality - Karen hates herself, so she would rather be monster. Then, monsters become a way to save her mom and family - if she can turn them all into something like a vampire.

Over the course of her investigation, Karen ends up uncovering a lot of secrets, including ones she'd probably rather not know. There are too many secrets, and eventually Karen gets frustrated and blows up at her brother - in the end, hiding the truth doesn't help anyone. Karen ends up keeping some secrets of her own, though. She finally comes to terms and accepts the fact that she is gay, and tells her brother. Deeze's reaction was not what I expected - although he accepts her, he also cautions her to keep it a secret from others. Deeze seems to have more secrets than anyone. There is this big mysterious thing hanging over their past that no one will talk about - is it their brother Victor, whom Deeze somehow killed? And how was it that only Anka was "there for him" during that time?

Anka's story is both fascinating and truly heartbreaking - growing up poor and abused in Germany, then eventually escaping the WWII death camps because of her connection to child prostitution. It's a messed up story, but it was a messed up world. I can only imagine what more we're going to find of her past in the next volume.

Another character I'm curious to know more about is Karen's "friend" Sandy - that little girl that no one else could see. Who is that supposed to represent? Is she a ghost? Her hugs are cold. She's always hungry, skin and bones, lives in abandoned apartment, floats down hallway... Seems like a ghost to me, but she has to represent something.

I'm definitely looking forward to the fall when volume 2 comes out! Hopefully my questions will be answered!

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