Only a Monster

Only a Monster is a young adult fantasy novel by Vanessa Len, published in 2022 and the first in a series.

Joan is sixteen and looking forward to a summer in London with her late mother's eccentric family, where she has found a job she enjoys at the historic Holland House and a co-worker called Nick who has asked her on a date. The arrangement falls apart when she discovers what her relatives actually are: a family of monsters with abilities they keep hidden, and a history that other people hunt. Nick is not simply a boy she likes, but a monster slayer with a reputation and a determination to destroy her family. In order to survive, Joan is forced to work with Aaron Oliver, the heir of a rival monster family that despises her own, and she has to accept what she is in order to protect the people she loves.

Len writes a version of the urban fantasy story in which the heroine is not the slayer, and the novel's interest is in what a young woman does when her family turns out to be the monster in the story.