Even More Magical Cuteness: A Review of Monster of the Week

Monster of the Week (2019)
Written By: F.T. Lukens
Genre: Young Adult Urban Fantasy
Pages: 316 pages (Kindle)
Series: Book 2 of The Rules
Publisher: Duet Books

Why I Chose It: The first one was a fast, fun read that left the characters in an interesting spot, and I really wanted to see where the story went from there.

The premise:

Spring semester of Bridger Whitt’s senior year of high school is looking great. He has the perfect boyfriend, a stellar best friend, and an acceptance letter to college. He also has this incredible job as an assistant to Pavel Chudinov, an intermediary tasked with helping cryptids navigate the modern world. His days are filled with kisses, laughs, pixies, and the occasional unicorn. Life is awesome. But as graduation draws near, Bridger’s perfect life begins to unravel. Uncertainties about his future surface, his estranged dad shows up out of nowhere, and, perhaps worst of all, a monster-hunting television show arrives in town to investigate the series of strange events from last fall. The show’s intrepid host will not be deterred, and Bridger finds himself trapped in a game of cat and mouse that could very well put the myth world at risk. Again.

Minor Spoilers for the first book in the series.

Discussion: Ugh, the cute. I just can’t even.

Okay, fine, I’ll use my words. This really was just a continuation of the immensely amusing romp started in The Rules and Regulations for Mediating Myths and Magic, with some important differences.

The first being Leo and Bridger’s relationship. I love a good romance as much as the next person, seeing how two people eventually come together while the sparks fly. And the first book really delivered on that. But what I loved most about Monster of the Week is that we’re dealing with an established relationship. Bridger and Leo are secure in their feelings for each other (at least as secure as they can be when one of them has anxiety issues), and now we get to see their relationship grow through the ups and downs of any new love, with some unique challenges from the myth world thrown in. How awesome is it to see two teenagers engage in mature conversations about sex and expectations without having to deal with any of the “omg, he won’t like me anymore if I don’t put out,” dread?

And it was the same with Bridger and Astrid’s friendship. I think the conflict between them in the first book was completely natural and a product of their personalities and situation. But now they are a united front, solid in a way they hadn’t been before, and that was refreshing. Lukens didn’t feel the need to throw in any unnecessary drama to up the stakes. The antagonist did that plenty.

While a lot of the conflict in the first book came from within Bridger’s relationships and the myth world itself, this book had a sharper focus, presenting a challenge from outside. An actual threat to the world of myth and magic. A monster hunting show host might not seem very unique in an urban fantasy, but I actually found Summer Lore an excellent bad guy. Her stubborn persistence alone bothered me (in an “argh I love to hate her” kind of way). Add to that her ruthlessness in pursuing Bridger and his friends, and I was righteously angry with her constant interference and dogmatic pursuit of ratings. This made her ultimate defeat seem very clever and well-deserved. Very satisfying. Well-done, Lukens.

And lastly, as a proponent of disability and mental illness in fiction, especially science fiction and fantasy, I was really impressed with the portrayal of anxiety in this sequel. In the first book, Bridger’s worries always seemed like a minor character quirk, but here Lukens brought it out onto the stage, addressing it as part of Bridger’s reality. Again, I was very impressed, both with Bridger’s self-awareness in how he approached his own mental state and in how his friends and boyfriend handled things like his constant worries and a pretty intense panic attack.

In Conclusion: A good sequel always makes me want to reread the first one again, and this was no exception. In fact, I think I’ll be grabbing the paperbacks just so I can flip through them whenever I want. I really hope this series gets another book, and I don’t say that lightly. I’d really like to see what the myth world has in store for Bridger’s college years.