The Comfort Of Monsters is a debut novel that isn’t a fast, lighthearted read. It’s an intense story that is meant to make you think. Before I go on to give you my thoughts, check out the synopsis.
Set in Milwaukee during the “Dahmer summer” of 1991, A remarkable debut novel for fans of Mary Gaitskill and Gillian Flynn about two sisters—one who disappears, and one who is left to pick up the pieces in the aftermath.
In the summer of 1991, a teenage girl named Dee McBride vanished in the city of Milwaukee. Nearly thirty years later, her sister, Peg, is still haunted by her sister’s disappearance. Their mother, on her deathbed, is desperate to find out what happened to Dee so the family hires a psychic to help find Dee’s body and bring them some semblance of peace.
The appearance of the psychic plunges Peg back to the past, to those final carefree months when she last saw Dee—the summer the Journal Sentinel called “the deadliest . . . in the history of Milwaukee.” Serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer’s heinous crimes dominated the headlines and overwhelmed local law enforcement. The disappearance of one girl was easily overlooked.
Peg’s hazy recollections are far from easy for her to interpret, assess, or even keep clear in her mind. And now digging deep into her memory raises doubts and difficult—even terrifying—questions. Was there anything Peg could have done to prevent Dee’s disappearance? Who was really to blame for the family’s loss? How often are our memories altered by the very act of voicing them? And what does it mean to bear witness in a world where even our own stories are inherently suspect?
A heartbreaking page-turner, Willa C. Richards’ debut novel is the story of a broken family looking for answers in the face of the unknown, and asks us to reconsider the power and truth of memory.
Told over two timelines that are flipped between over the book. 1991 Dee McBride, a teenage girl, goes missing in the city of Milwaukee. Almost thirty years on, her sister Peg still struggles with her disappearance. Their mother is on her deathbed and is desperate to learn anything about what happened to Dee. They decide to hire a psychic to help to hopefully find her body and hopefully give them all some sort of peace.
This triggers Pegs memories from that time. A time when Jeffrey Dahmer was prolific and a solitary missing teenage girl didn’t count for much. Her recollections and memories are hazy at best, and she finds herself questioning everything from that time. Could she have changed Dee’s path, in anyway?
A deep and very intense read that explores the devastation of a family left behind when not enough is done. With Dee’s case, she got lost in the madness of a serial killer and wasn’t considered that she could have been a victim. It was like she dropped off the end of the earth. There is a legality that states no body, no crime. We see how it ripples down through the years.
A gut-wrenching, heartbreaking tale that successfully blends facts and fiction together. This gives us a story that reads like true crime. It’s not got a happy ending; it’s more realistic, so some may class it as a depressing book. I see it as a book that validates every single victim, the ones the police and other people blame for the tragedy. The families who are left behind.
This brought a victims family straight into my mind . The family of Keith Bennett, a boy murdered by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. These crimes were on my doorstep, and out of all their victims, they never disclosed where they buried that poor boy. His mother died in the recent past, not having a clue where her little boy was. The catastrophic effect on that family is something similar to what The Comfort Of Monsters conveys…and that is extremely valid.
It is a very compelling and emotional book. One, I am still thinking about weeks after I finished it. Superbly written by Willa.C Richards. A debut worth reading, as long as you don’t expect sunshine and rainbows.
Thank you to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours and Point Blank for my copy of this debut novel
About the author…
Willa C. Richards is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop where she was a Truman Capote Fellow.
Her work has appeared in The Paris Review and she is a recipient of a PEN/Robert J. Dau Prize for Emerging Writers. The Comfort Of Monsters is her first novel.
Links
sharonbeyondthebooks.uk 
Thanks for the blog tour support x
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Always welcome xx I loved it!
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