Monster Story

By McCarty Griffin
$4.99 on Smashwords.com

Monster Story is a modern-day werewolf story. Please don’t stop reading now if you are not a horror, supernatural or science fiction fan. I’m not either, but author McCarty Griffin sent an email to our blog, www.greatbooksunder5.blogspot.com and asked if we would review Monster Story.

Out of courtesy only, I started reading the sample at www.smashwords.com, and before I realized what had happened, I was intrigued by the story and impressed with the author’s character development. In fact, I was a number of pages into the book before I realized that I was actually reading what the title says it is—a monster story.

Even when unspeakable murders start occurring in their midst, the main characters are believably normal. Their thought processes are credible as they arrive at the unbelievable conclusion that only a werewolf could be responsible for the gruesomeness of the deaths.

The story takes place in Appalachia, and Griffin does a good job of describing the area. She also has a touch that enables her to give the reader a sense of the hillbilly personalities of some of the auxiliary characters without being offensive.

Unlike many books of this genre, Griffin doesn’t rely on hysteria or a mob frenzy to make the story work; she relies instead on her storytelling ability.

Christy McCauley moved to South Carolina 10 years earlier to get away from West Virginia, where she grew up. At the beginning of the story, she gets a call from her father that her grandmother has died, she and heads back to Appalachia for the funeral. In her will, Christy’s grandmother leaves her granddaughter her cabin on 30 acres of woodlands, a tidy sum of cash and a $100,000 life insurance policy.

The cabin and the land in the woods are the last thing Christy thinks she wants, even though she loved staying there with her grandmother when she was growing up. But after her first night in the cabin, she realizes the draw it has for her.

Meanwhile, horrific murders are taking place around her.

In the end, a collaboration of Christy, her best guy friend from South Carolina who’s come to visit, her best friend Tess and Tess’s deputy sheriff-husband David, and Will Drummond with the Department of Natural Resources figure out who/what’s doing the killing and put an end to it.

But reading how they get to that point is the best part—whether you think you like monster stories or not.

Click here to link to Monster Story.

Davilynn Furlow