Our Thoughts Precisely: We Shall Be Monsters by Alyssa Wees

Title: We Shall Be Monsters

Series: n/a
Author: Alyssa Wees
Source/Format: NetGalley; eARC
More Details: Fantasy
Publisher/Publication Date: Del Rey; November 12, 2024

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Synopsis from Goodreads...

A dark, lyrical fantasy blending the world of the Fae with the stories mothers tell to keep their daughters safe - and the consequences of disregarding the truth, no matter how sinister.

Gemma lives with her mother in an isolated antique shop in Michigan, near a small patch of woods that conceals an enchanted gateway to fairyland. She knows she's not supposed to go into the woods - her mother Virginia has warned her multiple times about the monsters that lurk there - and yet defiantly, curiously, she goes anyway. Virginia understands her daughter's defiance. She knows the lure of the woods all too well. Her own mother warned her about the monsters that resided there, and she also did not listen. Until a witch cursed her true love, Ash - Gemma's father - into the form of a beast in the days before Gemma's birth. And if Virginia cannot break the curse before her daughter turns fifteen, Ash will eat Virginia's heart and Gemma will belong to the witch. So Virginia will do whatever she can to protect her daughter - even if it means stealing Gemma's memories away. But everything changes when Gemma inadvertently gets too close to the truth, and the witch steals Virginia away instead. Now it is up to Gemma to venture deep into Fae lands to try and rescue her mother and break the curse.

Told in alternating viewpoints between Gemma and Virginia, this lyrical novel is not only a tale of a girl's fantastical quest through a darkly magical fairyland, but also an examination of the complex bonds of love and resentment that lie between parents and their children.

Some of my favorite fantasy tropes include fairies (or fey equivalent) and woods that may or may not be friendly. Novik’s Uprooted and Spinning Silver come to mind, as well as Ava Reid’s A Study in Drowning, which is why I was drawn to the new Alyssa Wees novel, We Shall Be Monsters.

We Shall Be Monsters had fairies, monsters, and an antique shop wrapped up in a story about mothers and daughters and the three generations that have lived next to and seen the good as well as the worst the nearby woods have to offer. Oh, and the breaking of curses and the unraveling of long held secrets. So when the synopsis called this book a “dark, lyrical fantasy,” that description is accurate. We Shall Be Monsters has its whimsical and magical moments, but it was, at its heart, a darker story that, at times, felt much closer to horror. The woods were eerie, dangerous, and inhabited by fairies and other creatures, some friendly, some who offered dubious ties, or even those that were entirely driven by appetite or greed. There was also imagery of body related horror. However, those aspects worked well, since part of what the book tackled overall was the question of what truly makes a monster; and explored the divide between a hero and a killer. The characters made mistakes and payed for them, but they also learned from them. In that regard, We Shall Be Monsters is a nuanced story, and the characters that inhabited the pages were just as complicated.

Generally, I liked how Wees handled the viewpoints. It was first person, but Gemma and her mother, Virginia, each had quirks in the way they were written, which made it easy to tell them apart.

Gemma, like her mother and grandmother before her, was fascinated by the woods and didn’t recognize the danger posed by it, before she was confronted with the truth and tasked with a dangerous quest. Virginia was stuck in the past, figuratively and literally. Her history had everything to do with the issues that arose in the current timeline of the book, affecting not only her, but her daughter as well.

We Shall Be Monsters was, at the end of the day, right up my alley, and I recommend it to anyone looking for a dark fantasy story.

About the author....

Alyssa Wees is the acclaimed author of The Waking Forest and Nocturne. She grew up writing stories about her Beanie Babies in between ballet lessons. She earned a BA in English from Creighton University and an MFA in fiction writing from Columbia College Chicago. Currently she works as an assistant librarian in youth services at an awesome public library. She lives in the Chicagoland area with her husband and their two cats.

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