Dark Fantasy Books Where You Can’t Be Sure Who the Monster Is
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There are stories where it is clear who the monster is. You know from chapter one what to fear and where the danger lives.
Then there are stories that make you wonder who the monster really is. They make you question what exactly is happening, how everyone got here, and whether the person experiencing the story can even be trusted to know the difference.
Sometimes the monster is obvious. Sometimes everyone has a case against them.
Dark Fantasy Books Where You Can’t Be Sure Who the Monster Is
When We Were Monsters by Jennifer Niven
Eight students are selected for an exclusive storytelling workshop at an elite boarding school. For sixteen days, they will live together in the isolated estate of the school’s founder, surrounded by snowy woods and a storm-tossed sea. Only one will leave with the opportunity to make their creative dreams a reality.
But their teacher’s unorthodox methods begin pushing the students past their breaking points, exposing secrets, encouraging dangerous risks, and turning them against one another.
Then their teacher ends up dead.
Everyone has secrets. Everyone has a motive. And when the person manipulating everyone becomes the victim, deciding who deserves to be called the monster gets complicated.
Add this one to your shelves through Better World Books or Amazon.
Immortal Dark by Tigest Girma
Kidan infiltrates the elite Uxlay University looking for her missing sister and answers about the vampire she suspects is responsible for her disappearance.
That means living with Susenyos, surviving his attempts to drive her away, and resisting a darkness in him that speaks a little too easily to her own violent nature.
Kidan believes she knows which one of them is the monster. The closer she gets to Susenyos, the harder that becomes to believe.
Add this one to your shelves through Better World Books or Amazon.
Those Fatal Flowers by Shannon Ives
Cursed into becoming a siren, Thelia has spent years luring humans to their deaths while waiting for the chance to regain her freedom.
Then, just as time begins running out, she hears the voice of Proserpina offering what may be a path toward freedom and forgiveness. What follows is a dangerous quest shaped by everything Thelia has done, everything that’s been done to her, and the monstrous power she carries within herself.
When the monster is also the one trapped inside the curse, the line between creature and victim becomes much harder to draw.
Add this one to your shelves through Better World Books or Amazon.
Motheater by Linda H. Codega
Motheater cannot remember her true name or how she ended up inside the mountain. She knows only that she is an Appalachian witch bound to Kire Mountain—and that the choices and broken promises of her past have followed her 150 years into the future.
Now, alongside Bennie, she has to confront a history she cannot fully remember and make choices that could change the town forever.
It’s difficult to judge the monster in a story when even she doesn’t know everything she’s done.
Add this one to your shelves through Better World Books or Amazon.
Monsters are easy to recognize when they’re standing on the other side of the story. These books are interested in what happens when the line isn’t nearly that clear.
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