Review

This is Book #3 of the Only a Monster series!

Book 1 – Only a Monster

Book 2 – Never a Hero

Warning! Series spoilers ahead! (But not spoilers for this particular book… I wouldn’t do that.)

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Joan, who’s half-monster & half-human, and her band of rebel friends, have ended up in the worst of all possible timelines. At the end of Book 2, Joan’s sister Eleanor gave Nick, once Joan’s true love, an ultimatum: either Joan dies or Eleanor creates a new timeline in which monsters rule. To Joan’s surprise, given his anger towards her, Nick chose her. Now they’re fugitives in monstrous London, where humans are slaves, poor and downtrodden, their lives freely available for monsters to exploit for time travelling tourism. And there’s very little time left for Joan and her friends to change it back.

This new world is different in surprising ways and the humans, Nick and Joan, are highly vulnerable. Can they defeat the all-powerful Eleanor? And can Joan reconcile her strong feelings for both Nick and Aaron?

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I enjoyed this final installment – the pacing was great and I was quite invested in the outcome. Lots of great romantasy action here, including much love triangle angst. It’s certainly one for patient & experienced fantasy readers (which presumably anyone who’s made it to #3 is), as there’s a lot of fantasy-style explanation and links back to the earlier books. At times, some plot points seemed a bit unlikely/contrived, but overall, I had a really good time with this one. Action, fantasy & romance… you can’t go wrong.

Book 1 and 3 are my favourites in this trilogy… #2 is a bit slow in the first half, but picks up in the second. The series as a whole is suitable for Year 7 & up, although #3 has some brief implied & very vaguely described sexy bits – no real detail. See content info. It’s told in third person from Joan’s point of view.

464 pp. – too long for casual teen readers, although that obviously won’t put off our keen fantasy fans who’ve read #s 1 & 2. I liked the audiobook.

> Click here for content info – spoilers, enter at own risk!

A few swear words here and there (s-, f-); fantasy violence and deaths; slavery and general oppression of humans by monsters; we know that two of the characters have sex and this is very, very briefly and extremely vaguely described – no detail, shouldn’t be a problem for most; love triangle becomes a polyamorous relationship, mlw and mlm; another minor relationship is mlm.

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Len, V. (2025). Once a villain (V. Chok, Narr.) [Audiobook]. Wavesound.

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