Review: Just Beyond: Monstrosity by R.L. Stine

Growing up I loved the Goosebumps books. My small town local library had quite a large collection of them and I must have read them all at least twice, some even more than that.

Some books terrified me, Night Of The Living Dummy, and some books I found absolutely bizarre, It Came From Beneath The Sink, but I enjoyed them all. I loved that the main characters were like me. Most were smart teenagers who were a little nerdy or sarcastic coming up against these weird and scary things and making the correct choices. They were great and I devoured them all.

When I saw Netgallery had a new RL Stine book up for review, despite it being a couple of decades since I last read one of his books I couldn't resist requesting it, so thank you Netgallery for sending me it and allowing me to review it.

Monstrosity is the latest book in RL Stine's graphic novel series Just Beyond. Each book tells a stand alone story. Monstrosity follows Ezra and Ruthie Dillon who's father and uncle have bought an old Horror Movie Studio and plan on making films using the old horror movie creatures. 

As this is an RL Stine story you can probably guess what happens next.

The good news is that all the classic ingredients of a RL Stine story are there, plucky teenagers, one of whom is obsessed with the old horror movies, a nice group of old school horror movies and some good action/horror sequences. I read this book in one sitting and did enjoy it. I found the majority of the characters to be good, making believable actions and I cared about what happened to the main two characters in particular. The monsters were variations on real life old school horror movie monsters so there was that nice nostalgia feeling when they popped up.

There were a few negatives though and I am not sure whether this is because if the format, the graphic novel format meant there was very little backstory, or because I am a *cough cough* thirty-something year old man reading a book aimed at early teens, but I felt the story wasn't very padded out and just jumped from one sequence to the next with no reason as to why or consequence from the earlier horror/action sequence. Also one of the adults who was making correct choices when "accidents" happened on set was painted as the bad guy for making those and that bothered me a little bit. 

All in all though this a very good graphic novel and if I had read it as 12/13 year old I would have loved it. If you are a teenager thinking of picking this up or thinking of buying it for a teenager I would definitely recommend it. It's a good action packed read which will keep you hooked. Also if you loved Goosebumps when you were younger and you are thinking about picking this up for nostalgia I don't think you will be disappointed.