Delicious Monsters
by Liselle Sambury
The (a) story follows Daisy, a young woman who just happens to have the ability to see dead people. Keeping this ability on the down-low in the crowded city of Toronto is a difficult task, but it is one she has learned to handle well enough over the years. And when her mother inherits the old family mansion in northern Ontario, it looks like Daisy is finally on the path to freedom and independence, and maybe even the pursuit of a somewhat normal life. Unfortunately, her mother is full of secrets, and their arrival at the mansion only unearths more. And once these secrets finally begin to unravel, Daisy will come to realize there are far more sinister things at play than just the dead lurking within the mansion’s halls.
Ten years later, Brittney longs to solve the mystery of what happened to a young black girl in the so-called “Miracle Mansion” where her mother claimed to see the light and leave behind her abusive ways. Determined to prove both the healing properties of the mansion and her best-selling author mother as the frauds they are, and with the help of a mysterious source, Brittney tracks down the colorful cast of characters involved in the mystery one by one, working to expose all their truths and their lies through her web series, Haunted.
As their two timelines collide, both Daisy and Brittney will encounter monsters of all different kinds. But which ones are worse: the ones that haunt us in our nightmares, or the ones we live with day-to-day?
The (A) story is about mothers and daughters, and the ties that bind (or strangle) them. It is about the various types of traumas and abuses that can be passed on from one generation to the next, specifically during child and young adulthood. But it is also very much about healing from those traumas and moving forward toward a brighter future.
And it is about forgotten people. Specifically, it is about young black girls who so frequently end up dismissed by the same society that failed them in the first place.
I honestly wasn’t sure how I felt about this book for a good portion of it. There were a few things that ground my “editor” gears in spite of myself—particularly a feeling of too much feet-dragging when it came to answering my questions as a reader—and I initially wasn’t sure if I even liked the characters, which is a very important factor for me when it comes to dedicating my time to a story. However, it was too intriguing to put down. I really wanted to know where things were going and how they all fit together—which, ultimately, is the basis of good storytelling.
Then, I found myself unexpectedly touched by the ending, in a way that I would not have imagined when I first picked up the book. The way things did come together in the end and the messages conveyed by the characters through their arcs made me really appreciate the overall story and made me glad that it kept my interest enough to read it in its entirety.
I still don’t think it’s a new favorite, but I would love to read it again with my added appreciation and see how the earlier chapters look in a different light.
