Books › Pretty Monsters
Pretty Monsters
stories
416 pages
A funny, surreal, and imaginative collection where the ordinary world hides bizarre, unsettling, and wondrous secrets.
What it feels like
Reading this collection feels like stepping through a funhouse mirror where the everyday world is suddenly tilted and strange. The pace is brisk, carrying readers through a surreal landscape of hidden villages, near-future alien arrivals, and eerie possibilities. The mood balances wondrous imagination with a subtle, unsettling edge of horror, creating an atmosphere that is both funny and deeply unpredictable. The prose is vivid and insightful, offering skewed perspectives that force you to look twice at the ordinary. It is an experience that moves from skepticism to awe, perfect for teen and adult readers who delight in genre-bending tales that blur the lines between science fiction, fantasy, and the delightfully weird.
- Mood
- surreal
- eerie
- wondrous
- unpredictable
- Tone
- funny
- skewed
- insightful
- imaginative
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- hidden worlds · skewed perspectives · the unknown · unexpected realities
- The writing
- Vivid and imaginative, blending humor with unexpected insights to twist the ordinary into the extraordinary.
- The arc
- Moves from everyday skepticism to a sense of wondrous, unsettling possibility.
- Who it's for
- Teens and adults who love surreal, genre-bending short stories that mix fantasy, sci-fi, and horror with a quirky sense of humor.
Content notes
- horror elements
- refugee experiences
- man-eating dogs
About the book
Kelly Link has lit up adult literary publishing—and Viking is honored to publish her first YA story collection. Through the lens of Link’s vivid imagination, nothing is what it seems, and everything deserves a second look. From the multiple award-winning “The Faery Handbag,” in which a teenager’s grandmother carries an entire village (or is it a man-eating dog?) in her handbag, to the near-future of “The Surfer,” whose narrator (a soccer-playing skeptic) waits with a planeload of refugees for the aliens to arrive, Link’s stories are funny and full of unexpected insights and skewed perspectives on the world. Her fans range from Michael Chabon to Peter Buck of R.E.M. to Holly Black of Spiderwick Chronicles fame. Now teens can have their world rocked, too!
Description from Open Library.
Books like Pretty Monsters
See why they match
Get in TroubleKelly LinkA darkly playful plunge into a world where suburban anxieties and teenage sleepovers collide with ghosts, superheroes, and the uncanny.
Magic for beginnersKelly LinkA surreal, pop-culture-infused fever dream where the mundane and the magical bleed seamlessly into one another.
Welcome to BordertownHolly Black and Ellen KushnerAn electric, bohemian anthology where gritty street life collides with wild elfin magic.
The WeirdAnn VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeerA massive, labyrinthine cabinet of curiosities that will permanently tilt your perception of reality.
Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, and Some Other Things . .McSweeney'sA delightfully weird and slightly subversive funhouse of stories that refuses to take itself or the adult world too seriously.
Slasher Girls & Monster BoysApril Genevieve TucholkeA cinematic, blood-spattered love letter to classic horror that delivers bite-sized, unpredictable nightmares.