The Monsters We Make Review: It Started With a Boy and a Wagon

The Monsters We Make is fantastic, with a great cast of characters, and an incredibly realistic plot.

What Happens in The Monsters We Make?

The Monsters We Make begins on a summer morning in July 1982. Matthew Klein, a young boy delivering the newspaper down his street, suddenly disappeared. The only thing that remained was his wagon full of undelivered newspapers.

The story then skips two years into the future where we meet Sam Cox, a twelve-year-old delivering newspapers near the area where Matthew Klein was abducted two years prior. On his paper route, Sam is attacked by a regular assailant and hides in a church. When the coast was clear, he was able to escape home through an alternate path. Unbeknownst to Sam as he runs home, another kidnapping occurs just blocks away from Sam’s current location.

At home, Crystal Cox, Sam’s older sister hears police chatter over a police scanner in the house reporting a kidnapping. Fueled by journalistic curiosity, Crystal makes her way toward the scene of the crime, partly to find her little brother and partly to investigate a news story for her school paper.

Sergeant Dale Goodkind was working the night shift and was waiting to be relieved from duty by a fellow officer. Before the other officer could relieve Goodkind of his duties, Goodkind was tasked with the case of the kidnapped child, much like the unsolved Klein case Goodklind worked on two years ago.

This is the story of a community and the hidden monsters within this respectful community. Whereas If It Bleeds explored hidden monsters with a fantasy lens, The Monsters We Make stares directly into the ugly eye of society.

Who Are The Characters in The Monsters We Make?

The Monsters We Make by Kali White contains three main characters:

Sammy Cox is a young paper boy. He is a scared kid who became a misfit at school after spending a few weeks at home sick, putting on some weight in the process. As a result, he doesn’t really have any friends.

Crystal Cox is Sammy’s older sister. She is super ambitious, and she has big dreams and goals. She loves investigative journalism and wants to pursue it at the University of Miami. She is a senior with quite a bit on her plate. 

Dale Goodkind is a sergeant with the Des Moines Police Department. He was in charge of the Matt Klein case, and he is the sergeant assigned to the Chris Stewart case as well. He is a reserved man with a good heart, but his past clouds his judgment. His past experiences have worn down his mental state.

The Monsters We Make Review

 The Monsters We Make is a dark, disturbing, and thrilling novel that I loved every minute of. This book moves at a very fast pace and there are many plot points thrown at you from the very start.  The novel does a terrific job of foreshadowing future events that come into play later and weaving the character’s storylines so they have connections. 

The book fits nicely in the crime genre but the added bonus of having many of the crimes be based on true crimes adds to the drama and makes it feel all the more real. The novel’s narrative grabs you and never lets you go.

One of the first things I liked from the beginning was the use of three different perspectives. Although I have read many books that have multiple perspective characters, it was interesting how it was used inside of this book.  Each character has a very unique perspective with the biggest difference between the three being the age range.

Sammy Cox, Crystal Cox, and Sergeant Dale Goodkind each have distinct and unique perspectives that give us different pieces of the story.  Each character adds to the story in a meaningful and interesting way and throughout I was hoping that all three would make it out all right from the mess of the crime.

Another part of the novel that I enjoyed was the story itself. Of course, being based on true events helps make it feel more frightening. Author Kali White crafts a deeply disturbing plot that is not hard to follow, but has its complex moments and made me feel a need to continue what I was reading. The structure was also well done with multiple instances where right before something big is about to be revealed, we flash to another perspective which only builds the suspense of the story.

This story will stay with me for many reasons but one of the big reasons is the truth behind its message. Now it isn’t like a big preachy message or anything but the message is in the title The Monsters We Make.

The story explores how criminals and these terrible people are not fictional monsters, but just everyday people that could be living in our cities. It’s not something new per se but it’s not something I have thought about too often and it has since stayed with me. Sometimes when something stays with me it isn’t a positive but, in this case, I would definitely consider it just a well-thought-out and well-presented idea within the novel.

All in all, this was a fantastic and thrilling book that had me flipping the page eager to continue but fearful of what was to come. I highly recommend it.