YA Horror: The Beautiful Monster Series

Beautiful Monster: The Exchange (Book 1)

His vampire brother turned Lev Baronovsky a hundred years ago. Since then, he’s waged an internal battle to retain his humanity by refusing to neither kill a human nor turn one into a creature of the night. It’s a tough battle, for his brother, Alexei is his polar opposite.

When Lev’s mortal girlfriend, Carly, dies from complications due to an automobile accident, the vampire is crestfallen. All he wants to do is die and join her on the other side. But how can a soulless son of Dracula be accepted into heaven?

Thus begins Jeanne Bannon’s YA novella, Beautiful Monster: The Exchange Book I. Bannon does an amazing job developing Lev’s and Alexei’s characters. When we are introduced to Boris, a monster that makes Alexei look like a cute Disney character, we are appalled by his ugliness and ferocity. Boris goes way back to the beginning of time. When Alexei met him, Boris was a power hungry older man back in the days of the Bolshevik uprising in the brothers’ native Russia. Boris is an immensely strong vampire who Bannon describes as a person with “a strange look in his eye, like a ravenous lion eyeing a lamb.”

Beautiful Monster: The Exchange will keep readers hooked from beginning to end in this 78-page vampire tale. It’s also is a love story that will grip your heart like a vise until its heart-stopping conclusion.

Beautiful Monster: The Hunt Book 2

In The Exchange we met Lev Baronovsky, his brother Alexei, girlfriend Carly, and the ferocious monster, Boris. Jeanne Bannon brings most of these characters back and more in book two of the Beautiful Monster series.

In The Hunt we meet Alina, a beautiful vampire assassin assigned to track down a killing machine terrorizing New York City. She soon discovers that the vampire she needs to terminate is her ex-lover Alexei, but her carefree fun-loving ex-boyfriend isn’t the same vamp.

To compound Alina’s problems, or perhaps elevate them, is ZoZo, a deformed orphan whom Alina cares for and who provides sustenance for the vampire caretaker.  Could heartless Alina actually love this wretched imp?

Bannon manages to sustain a fast-paced action packed thriller with battle scenes mixed in with the slower hunt scenes where character personalities are revealed. The author has a knack of creating believable characters readers can relate to and even empathize with, except the hated Boris.

Beautiful Monster—The Game (Book 3)

Alina is back in book three of the Beautiful Monster series. This time the gifted assassin for Those on High, a three member counsel ruling the undead, stands before her judges expecting death for a failed assassination attempt. Worse, yet, she lost her beloved imp, companion, and food source, ZoZo.

She also broke a few rules on the last mission. To kill Boris, a bloodthirsty monster, Alina brought Lev and Carly back from their heavenly resting place. Then, as soon as they took human form, Alina turned them into creatures of the night, just like her.

As punishment for her crimes, Alina’s three judges decide to enlist the assassin into a game of survival for their amusement. The idea is to see which of Alina’s emotions is the strongest—love, fear, or anger. Her task is to find ZoZo in three days. If successful, she can keep the imp and her life (maybe). Failure would be certain death.

Jeanne Bannon’s third installment of her Beautiful Monster series has a fast-paced plot, diabolical characters, and children held against their will as a food source for a New Breed of vampire. These NBs are not like traditional vamps because they have been genetically designed to be capable of shape shifting into any creature they desire.

The NBs are the creatures Alina needs to defeat to get her beloved ZoZo back, a feat the author makes near impossible to accomplish.

Beautiful Monster—The Game is a quick read and will keep fans at the edge of their seats until the final climax. Oh, and I have some inside information direct from the author; Jeanne Bannon is planning the fourth and final book to the series within the foreseeable future.(Read interview below.)

 

An Interview with Jeanne Bannon

Pop: What motivated you to start the Beautiful Monster series?

Bannon: I always wanted to write a series and loved Anne Rice’s Lestat series. In the beginning, I wanted to stay true to the genre and I’m not sure you noticed, but in the first book, The Exchange, I didn’t ever mention the word “vampire”. I created a world where readers would KNOW that the story was about vampires without actually telling them. However, as the series progressed, my imagination ran wild and I found myself in uncharted territory.

Pop: Where do you get your ideas? For example, the NB is unique in vampire lore. What gave you this unprecedented idea?

Bannon: Yes, the NBs, or New Breeds, a new kind of vampire, are definitely not part of traditional vampire lore. The NBs were genetically engineered so that they could shape shift, making them more than just a vampire.

I don’t know where the idea came from. It was one of those elusive things that writers sometimes experience – a gift from an unknown, unseen source. 

Pop: Are you planning another series? If so, what’s it about?

Bannon: I plan to write one more book to complete the Beautiful Monster series – at least that’s what I’m thinking right now. After that, I have two novels that need some attention. I’m sure that at some point, I will write another series and you can bet that it will be in the paranormal genre.

 

About the Author

Jeanne Bannon, a writer and freelance editor, has worked in the publishing industry for over 20 years. She started her career as a freelance journalist before nabbing a job as an in-house editor for LexisNexis Canada. Her debut novel, Invisible, is a superb paranormal YA novel about an unhappy teenage girl who wishes she could just disappear. And then one day she does.

When Bannon is not writing she enjoys spending quality time with her daughters and loving husband, David. She lives in Ontario, Canada.

 

Pop’s Rating: