My Daylight Monsters

My Daylight Monsters by Sarah Dalton

Age: Young Adult
Category: Crime; fantasy
Rating: 4 stars

Helen Thinks: My Daylight Monsters by Sarah Dalton is a short novella that introduces the protagonist from Dalton's upcoming novel Mary Hades. The novella sees Mary's parents putting her into a psychiatric ward voluntarily for a week due to the 'visions' that she has been having lately. While in the psych ward, Mary makes friends with some of the other patients there and learns that they are betting on how many die across the corridor in the palliative care unit because recently it's been high. At first, Mary shrugs it off like the others because it's palliative care but then starts to realise that something else is going off over there. Something a lot more sinister...

The characters are believable, with great dimension and their own individual little quirks that allow them to stand out and Dalton has written their psychiatric illnesses flawlessly without any exaggeration. The dialogue was quick, witty and actually did sound like a bunch of teenagers sitting around a dining room table having banter.

My Daylight Monsters is a young adult novel that highlights the importance of friendship no matter where you find them, mental illnesses as well as corruption and abuse of power. It's a quick, fast paced novel that filled up a couple of free hours at work and I will most definitely be checking out the follow on novel.