Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Broken Monsters
    Unavailable
    Broken Monsters
    Unavailable
    Broken Monsters
    Audiobook13 hours

    Broken Monsters

    Written by Lauren Beukes

    Narrated by Robert Morgan Fisher, Sunil Mohatra, Jackson JD and

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    "Scary as hell and hypnotic. I couldn't put it down...I'd grab it if I were you." --Stephen King

     A criminal mastermind creates violent tableaus in abandoned Detroit warehouses in Lauren Beukes's new genre-bending novel of suspense.
    Detective Gabriella Versado has seen a lot of bodies. But this one is unique even by Detroit's standards: half boy, half deer, somehow fused together. As stranger and more disturbing bodies are discovered, how can the city hold on to a reality that is already tearing at its seams?
    If you're Detective Versado's geeky teenage daughter, Layla, you commence a dangerous flirtation with a potential predator online. If you're desperate freelance journalist Jonno, you do whatever it takes to get the exclusive on a horrific story. If you're Thomas Keen, known on the street as TK, you'll do what you can to keep your homeless family safe--and find the monster who is possessed by the dream of violently remaking the world.
    If Lauren Beukes's internationally bestselling The Shining Girls was a time-jumping thrill ride through the past, her Broken Monsters is a genre-redefining thriller about broken cities, broken dreams, and broken people trying to put themselves back together again.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHachette Audio
    Release dateSep 16, 2014
    ISBN9781611132670
    Unavailable
    Broken Monsters
    Author

    Lauren Beukes

    Lauren Beukes is a writer, TV scriptwriter and journalist. She has an MA in Creative Writing, but she got her real education in ten years of freelance journalism, learning really useful skills like how to pole-dance and make traditional sorghum beer. For the sake of a story, she's jumped out of planes and into shark-infested waters and got to hang out with teen vampires, township vigilantes, AIDS activists and homeless sex workers among other interesting folk.

    More audiobooks from Lauren Beukes

    Related to Broken Monsters

    Related audiobooks

    Mystery For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Go To Hell

      Sep 8, 2020

      Go To Hell
      8 min read

    • Article

      Go To Hell

      Aug 20, 2020

      Go To Hell
      8 min read

    • Article

      Gord

      May 20, 2021

      Gord
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Forest Cathedral

      Jun 18, 2020

      Developer Wakefield Interactive Publisher Whitethorn Digital Format PC, consoles TBA Origin US Release 2020 Something is wrong with the light. We notice it as we cross the butterfly-filled clearing outside our chalet – a sudden acceleration of the su

      3 min read

    • Article

      Get The Party Started III

      Mar 24, 2020

      Get The Party Started III
      8 min read

    • Article

      Inappropriate for Children?

      Oct 24, 2023

      Inappropriate for Children?
      3 min read

    • Article

      Get The Party Started

      Mar 5, 2020

      Get The Party Started
      7 min read

    • Article

      Black Tie – Worse Than The Black Death

      Dec 14, 2022

      It came as a shock recently to discover, in some long-abandoned cranny of this ravaged psyche, a residue of what felt like self-respect. Any epsilon male sunk deep into middle age, and deeper into irrelevance, has no business caring what others think

      3 min read

    • Article

      Get The Party Started

      May 11, 2020

      Get The Party Started
      7 min read

    • Article

      V’s A Crowd

      Jun 27, 2019

      V’s A Crowd
      7 min read

    Reviews for Broken Monsters

    3.5/5

    431 ratings77 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      I very much enjoyed this book. A mix of police procedural in a serial killer investigation; a killer who turns his victims into works of twisted art. Then there is another element, without spoiling it I will say it gets weird, even Lovecraftian, by the books climax. Ultimately a story about dilapidated old Chicago, and about the tragedies we can and can't walk away from. Highly recommended to weird fiction and horror readers, and even crime fiction readers who wouldn't be bothered by a supernatural twist.
    • 5/5
      Detroit Police Detective Gabriela Versado goes to the scene where a murdered boy has been found, and walks into the most nightmarish case of her career.

      It's the body of an eleven-year-old boy, or at least the top half is. The bottom half is the back half of a fawn. They're quite effectively joined together by a means which isn't at first obvious to the police or to the medical examiner. It's a potentially explosive case, and looks like it may be the start of a serial killer's spree, and they try very, very hard to keep the more outre aspects of it under wraps.

      Meanwhile, Gabi's daughter Layla and her friend Cas, each struggling with their own issues in a new school, use their smartphones to lure a pedophile with unclear ideas of trapping him. Jonno, a social media "citizen journalist," recently relocated from New York and attempting to rebuild his career, latches onto this case as some of the stranger details leak out. Thomas Keen, a.k.a. TK, a homeless man with serious computer skills, a good heart, a prison term in his past, but possibly the most grounded and together character in the book, tries to help a struggling, older artist who clearly has mental and emotional problems.

      Clayton Broome, the artist, is struggling to capture his visions in physical form, and sometimes that means clay. Sometimes it doesn't. Meanwhile, he's also struggling with something weird and awful living in his brain.

      All these individuals pursue their own threads, sometimes connecting, sometimes not, until new works of the Detroit Monster draw them together.

      I did not expect to like this book. There's an element of horror that, normally, I avoid. I was surprised, in the most wonderful way. This is a rich, compelling story with great characters. The mother/daughter relationship is stressed, loving, and strong when they need it to be. TK is interesting and compelling. Jonno and his new girlfriend Jen Q are pursuing a great story, and finding their footing as an effective team, even as they have no idea what the real effect of some of what they do is.

      This is a great mystery, a great thriller, and the element of horror enriches it rather than detracting from it.

      Recommended.

      I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.
    • 5/5
      This is my first Lauren Beukes, but consider me a fan. I saw another comment which called this a police procedural, and I do not know what book she read, but clearly not this one. Calling this a police procedural is like calling To Kill a Mockingbird a legal thriller. It is silly, and misses the entire point. This is a good old-fashioned horror novel, and a really great piece of social satire.I love that Beukes set this in my hometown. Detroit's little rise from the ashes is a great metaphor for this moment in human history, where people flock not to see beauty or industry, but to celebrate ruin porn, to revel in the almost total annihilation of this bit of civilization. We are all id, responding for the sake of responding, acting so we can feel, without worrying about if the feelings we are eliciting are good. Falling "in love" because someone is a warm body, and taking no time to determine if you share anything other then kingdom, phylum, genus and species. There is no interest in analysis or in finding good. The world is one long Reddit thread. This is horror for that world.Great horror is not primarily about blood and guts, its about being creeped out, and Beukes does a great job with that. Child killers, rapists, online pedophiles, conspiracy theorists, good men defined by mistakes made at 14, pseudo-centaurs, aging hipsters, and the death of empathy! Beaukes throws open the doors of the 21st century anxiety closet.This book is sad, and sweet, and funny, and terrifying, and really gorgeously researched and written. There were moments I felt like I was in a screenplay, where things were too well drawn and there was no room for me, the reader, to use my imagination. Other than that though, I just enjoyed the hell out of this a 4.5.
    • 3/5
      Seriously weird. Too many viewpoint characters for me. Interesting range of characters. Pacing seemed impeded, possibly because it was accomplished by viewpoint changes.
    • 4/5
      Horror, detective fiction, not something I normally gravitate to, but for some reason I really enjoyed this book! Sometimes the graphic imagery was a bit too much for me, but I tried to concentrate on the overall story and not dwell on it too much and that helped a bit.
      Great writing though, terrific story with strong characters. I will definitely be looking forward to reading something else by this author soon.
    • 3/5
      Entertaining potboiler. Reminiscent of Thomas Harris's Red Dragon, serial killer as deranged would-be artist. Not as substantial as RD. Even has a similar obnoxious journalist. Most compelling storyline is Layla. She's every mother's potential nightmare. Precocious, well-intentioned but with her not quite developed teenage brain capable of getting into a world of trouble if Mom just looks away for a second or two. (Single Mom guilt syndrome). One function of TK it seems to me is to be an alternative Layla story: justifiable but intemperate assault leading eventually to permanent homelessness. Unlike TK, Layla is middle class with an experienced, shrewd cop mom, so she is able to avoid going down that path. In addition to assault, she barely avoids being an accessory to murder by bringing the gun along to the meet with Cas, and her bad decisions distract her mom from following up on Sparkles' phone call that would have led to the killer.
    • 4/5
      In Detroit, a young boy is murdered and the top half of his body attached to the legs of a fawn, kicking off a hunt for a serial killer-avantgarde artist who is definitely operating outside of the mainstream.It took me a while to immerse myself in Broken Monsters. The story is told from several points of view, and Beukes takes her time introducing all the characters. Connections between them don't become clear until the end. This is not just a police procedural about an investigation into a string of bizarre murders; it's also an examination of urban decay and, I think, literal decay between the edges of our reality and other places. Appropriately set in the infamously apocalyptic city of Detroit, Broken Monsters is the written equivalent of all those haunting photographs of the abandoned city, which are mentioned frequently in the story.
    • 5/5
      A suspenseful crime thriller about a serial killer murdering people in a grotesque way. The book's story is like one you would see as a cop show's series finale. It is told from many different points of view that make the story fresh and equipped with many layers. It's not just a thriller as it covers other themes, like mental illness, sexual abuse, and journalism, and has a fantasy element loosely weaved around the contemporary setting. The audiobook has a different narrator for each POV, which makes the story and characters really come alive. I really enjoyed this book for the interesting characters in a well-written and modern story.
    • 3/5
      I am giving this book three stars, even though I didn't care for it. The writing is solid and it is fast-paced. Excellent beach reading if you are into horror stories. I am not. Apparently, Lauren Beukes is known for her science fiction writing, and for this reason, several reviewers described this book as a science fiction book. It makes me wonder if they read it. It is not science fiction, not even a little. The book starts off as a detective novel and midway through transitions into a gothic novel. Not sure if this was an experimental decision or the author could not decide which direction to go. The transition did not work for me, and I did not care for the gothic elements, but you will probably enjoy this book if you are a Stephen King / Dean Koontz fan.
    • 4/5
      Lauren Beukes has a very interesting style of story telling. This book is similar to (in style and story telling) as her other book, The Shining Girls. This book definitely grabbed my attention from the beginning. She has written the characters so well, that you feel like you know them. Very cool writing style in some chapters when texts are involved. All in all I would say this book is good, but definitely not my favorite and would not recommend to everyone. It gets to be a little too Sci-Fi; a little too Dean Koontz at the end. ****DESCRIPTION w/NO SPOILERS******Gabi is a police officer for the Detroit Police Department and finds herself in the middle of a grisly murder investigation; a boy whose upper half is sewn to the lower part of a deer. While they search for the killer, Jonno, a down and out journalist decides this is his way to making it big and starts a blog chronicling The Detroit Monster. While Gabi is consumed by this murder investigation her daughter, Layla, is busy being a teenager in the age of internet and social media. Hanging out with her best friend, Cas, and trolling the internet to pass her time. Layla soon finds herself involved in this bizarre murder spree.
    • 4/5
      What happens when urban fiction collides with suspense, collides with horror? That would be Lauren Beukes novel Broken Monsters. Filled with engaging characters and a surrealism that is unexpected, Broken Monsters searches for a serial killer who is creating horrifying public displays with his victims. Worth a read if you can stomach the descriptions.
    • 3/5
      While Broken Monsters was well-written and had some very creative and unusual elements within, my mind wasn't blown by this novel. It was included in lists for the scariest horror books and many reviews labelled it horrifying, terrifying, etc., but this wimpy reader was never frightened.
    • 3/5
      I am not sold on the thriller/horror stories with magical elements that Beukes has written, prefer the more punk-ish pieces of Moxyland & Zoo City. That said this was an enjoyable easy read and I enjoyed how she works the internet responses into the narrative.
    • 2/5
      An artist, whose mind has been taken over by "the dream", turns into a serial killer.
    • 4/5
      Detroit detective Gabi Versado may have just landed the case from hell. A young boy has been found murdered, well, half of him has anyway. The upper part has been affixed to the hind parts of a deer. What's happened to his other half? Not only do the mayor's office require a quick resolution but also want the full details of the grisly murder kept quiet to avoid spreading panic in the city. Not only does she have this to deal with but, like many cops before her, Gabi has a broken marriage that she's still coming to terms with and a teenage daughter, Layla, to take care of as well. Layla and her friend Cas are busy doing what teenagers do. Meanwhile, Jonno Haim is also trying to pick up the pieces of his broken life. Recently moved to Detroit after being rejected by the love of his life and trying to resurrect his journalist career after burning too many bridges in New York. His current girlfriend, Jen, suggests he start a video blog in order to get his name out there again so he starts looking into the arts scene around the city. We also spend time with TK, a homeless man who helps out at a local soup kitchen. So what will happen when these stories collide with the killer's?Set very much at the police procedural end of the crime genre it also includes more than just a touch of the supernatural along with it. Similar in tone to Beukes' previous novel, The Shining Girls, there's a real sense of dread contained in the story and while there's no mystery to who the killer is the tension is not lessened by the early reveal. The setting of Detroit is vividly brought to life, the characters are fully realised and consistent to who they are. There's a lot to juggle in this book but the author handles the day-to-day narrative of the many different lives with a deft touch as she does with the use of social media and how it has become such a huge part of all of our lives. I thought the transcript of a Reddit AMA in the epilogue was a particularly nice touch. This is another fine book from an author who has quickly become a favourite of mine.
    • 5/5
      I knew this book was a must read when Steven King called it scary. Absolutely riveting. The audiobook really drew me in, please read it now!!
    • 4/5
      Excellent story with just the right combination of police procedural and magic.
    • 3/5
      Really entertaining story until the end. Suddenly the writer turned genres from mystery to sci-fi word diarrhea. Strange.
    • 5/5
      This book is so gripping! I love the character build and how they come together.
    • 4/5
      Well, well, well, I really loved this book, I loved the characters, the storyline everything about this book. I listened to the audiobook version and the narrators were top notch! It came alive! Yes, yes, YES!

      BUT! Hello NO!

      WTF? I am still wondering why all the kids teeth fell out of his head when we arrive at Fleshers Warehouse/Plant? Converge may be a better word.... I am really tryin* to get a good grip on the ending. Did Lauren Beukes outsource the last 20% of the book to the trippin balls division. Good Lord you could have warned us!
    • 4/5
      Good read. A little far out, but keep me coming back!
    • 1/5
      This review contains spoilers.


      The antagonist (The Dream) was undefined and unremarkable, there were characters that honestly could have been completely chopped out and would not have changed the book much, and the ending was a let down.
      There was no explanation of The Dream’s origin, power set, weaknesses, or goals, and we even saw from its perspective. I ended the book saying “So what was The Dream’s point? What even WAS it?”
      The daughter’s story had almost nothing to do with the main plot. Neither did the homeless man’s. I don’t honestly know why he even ended up at the main confrontation at all, or why The Dream needed a follower. The daughter and her friend were written as if the author had never talked to a teenage girl in her life. When the journalist’s girlfriend died I felt nothing, because she was one dimensional and he was downright unlikable.
      The ending was honestly stupid. With a villain that had no discernible motivation or power set, a Deus Ex Machina truck, and an open ending that doesn’t really make any sense, I’m not going to be recommending this.
    • 5/5
      very entertaining. good plot, excellent character development. Got very mystical towards the end.
    • 5/5
      Great book, kept me on the edge of my seat throughout.
    • 4/5
      At first the book was hard to follow, but I ended up really enjoying it in the end. Very modern crime mystery!
    • 3/5
      I really enjoyed this book, it was very well written, and living in Michigan it was even more enjoyable because I knew all of the places mentioned in Detroit. Even though I like the story, I gave it three stars because the end got really strange and kinda sci-fi, which made it a terribly unbelievalbe story. I guess I didn't like the mixing of genres.
    • 4/5
      Creepy, disturbing, thriller. Great characters, story moves a good pace.
    • 4/5
      Oh my. Oh goodness. First, I'm terrified by this book. I'm terrified by the actual story and by the ideas left behind by the story. Also, my mind is just sort of blown by the bonkers ending. The whole book is bonkers really. Really amazing bonkers.
    • 4/5
      It was a bit scattered with many different characters all over the place. It all came together in the end. Quite odd with a bit of super-natural input and very modern with fairly current news references.

      Still, I read it in under 24 hours which means it was gripping. And I will still look out for her other two I've not yet read.
    • 2/5
      Too weird for me to continue, after getting maybe halfway through.