I received a complimentary copy of Creatures by Crissy Van Meter from Algonquin Books through Netgalley. All opinions expressed in this review are completely my own. Creatures will be released on January 7th.
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Creatures follows the life of Evangeline, a woman who grew up on Winter Island just off the coast of Southern California. The island is a tourist destination, overflowing with partying mainlanders during the summertime and ravaged by weather during the off season. Creatures begins on the day of Evie's wedding when her often absent mother returns and Evie's fiancé is possibly lost at sea. From there the story flows from past to future to present and back again, revealing the difficulty of growing up on Winter Island with complicated and absent parents and the challenges of adulthood.
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I enjoyed Creatures overall. The writing is beautiful and Evie's story is compelling, but the format and the transitions between points in time made the story hard to follow. When I'd pick Creatures back up to keep reading, it would often take a while for me to grasp where I was in the story. This book is a solid piece of literary fiction with a touching and often relatable story to tell.

Despite the rage and grief in this book, I actually feel calmer as a person after reading CREATURES. Crissy Van Meter's writing style is utter perfection, effortless and lyrical and so, so evocative.

It isn't a plot-driven novel. We follow Evie's complicated relationship with her father, moving back and forth between her childhood and her present-day adulthood. Occasionally, this shifting made me lose my orientation, but CREATURES is the sort of book where a little disorientation doesn't hurt. It's all based around Winter Island, which is at once a gritty, isolated locale of debauched druglords and fish guts, and a beautiful hideaway for those with solitary hearts. There are storms, parties, wild children, wayward parents, sea lions, tourists, dead whales, empty lighthouses, and fascinating networks of relationships that captured me from the onset. Evie's voice is incredibly strong, and the sort of character I could've followed forever.

Overall, it's a high recommend from me. Definitely one to pick up if you're a fan of literary, poetic fiction, especially when it explores messy parent-child relationships, absence, nature, and what it means to grow up away from the world. 4/5.

I did not finish this book. It did not hold my interest. I couldn't get past 25% of the book in my Kindle app. I hope this book finds its way to those who will enjoy it.

I’m asking myself, what did I just read?? I enjoyed the author’s prose and kept reading until all a sudden I realized I was reading about one bender after another, literally a litany of excesses. This is Evie’s story. Her mother left when she was three and she was being raised by her alcoholic father who hustled to support them, so they never actually had a home, just places to stay. She gets drunk in celebration of her 16th birthday.

Winter Island is a fantasy located off the coast of Los Angeles, complete with a onetime oceanic research facility, a high school complete with a cross-country program and a small-time fishing industry. I felt like this could have been so much more, given the setting and instead I felt like, what’s the point? I wanted something to happen and I wanted to like it.

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Evie was raised on an remote island by her father, a loving rogue. Her life is made complicated by his lifestyle and the comings and goings of her emotionally and physically unavailable mother. Further complicating her adult life are a husband who is often gone and a child for whom she is a part-time parent.

I am torn about this one. The setting was lovely but the broken up parts not so much. Overall I would give it a 4. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher!!

I was really excited about this book but it just fell flat to me. I couldn’t connect with the characters and I felt like there was no plot.

Creatures is the story of Evangeline/Evie and the days leading up to her wedding. But the story covers so much more. We travel through her memories of childhood on Winter Island, her coming of age when she leaves for the Mainland, how she returns to winter Island for good, and her relationship with her husband after the wedding.

Creatures reads so lyrically that you feel in your bones there will be some magical realism. However, none comes. Every moment keeps you grounded in reality and struggling with love and loss in this story about the ways our families and friends can hurt us. At the same time, they can heal us so wholly that our lives are reinvented. The overall story is covered in a mist that feels gloomy. Within that gloom though, you are offered a ray of sunshine as secrets are revealed, stories are told, and forgiveness is found.

There are some beautiful passages in Creatures, but the way the book is written was more irritating than interesting. The author jumps around in time, in a kind of stream of consciousness jumble of memories and emotions. Not just chapter by chapter but constantly, every paragraph, throughout the whole book. There seemed to be a real time story at the beginning, Evangeline is trying to get ready for her wedding, annoyed by her mother showing up unannounced and distracted that her fiance is out at sea and a storm is coming. The planned beach wedding is also put in jeopardy by a dead and very smelly beached whale. The first "creature." Different. Intrigued, I plowed on through pages and pages of introspection and memories. It was confusing because although scenes from Evangeline's childhood, back to about age 3, are dropped into the book in no particular order, many of the "memories" are of a time many years after the wedding.
Evangeline is a researcher and there are brief notes about whales and other marine life interspersed throughout. I'm sure they are meant to be profound and literary, but I found them to be useless clutter that I learned to skip over. I seldom give a three star review. Usually, if I don't like a book, I just quit reading and don't review at all. But this one kept me hanging one, hoping for something I never found.

Van Meter’s debut is a mournful novel on Evie’s attempt to be self-truthful about her childhood through teen years into adulthood.

The format is both a strength and weakness of this story, The main sections of the book is names for the three days leading up to Evie’s wedding, if her fiancé returns from being at sea, and the subchapters for each of these days contain in a nonlinear manner events in Evie’s personal and working life. The strength is this format showcases the lyrical language and the interconnection of the unpredictability and love of Evie’s personal relationships and the natural environmental her home Winter Island – when it is good it is very good and when it is bad it is horrific. The weakness is because of the nonlinear narrative events caused a spoiler or two a little too early and enforced for me the lack of character growth.

This tale deconstructs how human tell stories and decided on which version of events are remembered. As the pull of tides on the island are an essential force I will remember this story for the pull of family bonds and of an island on a soul.

Interesting book. I had a hard time following the timeline and it felt like a bunch of loosely connected stories. Arranged differently, I may have really enjoyed it.

Ok, it’s taken me longer than I thought to write this review. Partly because I had to stop and start and re-read a good portion of it because, well because of life. And it is the type of novel I needed to read carefully because I REALLY LOVED it. There were so many layers in time, in style. I wish I had this novel in hard copy so it would have been easier for me to flip back and forth to reread parts, confirm interpretations, link events etc.. This novel, at times, reads like a fairy tale complete with villains and heroes and fantastical ocean creatures. In this instance, however, our protagonist, Evie, is in no need of a handsome prince be it her husband or her father, to save her. No, in fact, she can save herself, thank you very much, be it from a deadly storm coming in over the ocean and wreaking havoc on the island, or from a group of men who know she is carrying the best weed (Winter Wonderland) on the island, in her backpack as she makes her way home

I can’t wait to see what this book looks like when published. I am intrigued with the way it is organized. Parts read like poetry, parts read like a short answer exam, parts that read almost as a journal, and parts that are told from an adult Evie before and after her wedding day.I would like to see how the hard copy is formatted.

Our protagonist Evie, has pretty much got to raise herself. Not quite an orphan, because both her parents actually exist to varying degrees. Both parents are either literally absent or absent due to the ingestion of substances, controlled and otherwise. Honestly I was more worried about Evie’s broken friend Rook who seems to be on a road of self-destruction. I’d like to know more of her back story. What is she motivated to do what she does? Why does she seem to have a death wish of sorts? What is it about Evie that she is so attracted to? Is it Evie’s strength and good nature that seems to sustain itself no matter the circumstance?

The story is also about the failure of a father trying to convince his daughter/or himself that they are fortunate to live such an adventures (as being homeless and selling drugs for food) because facing reality would be devastating. Why is it always daughters who have to stay behind and keep their fractured fathers together long enough to see themselves into adulthood?

I would seriously consider using this novel in a high school English class. Not only is it a strong study in character and theme, it is also a great example of HOW a novel can be written. Often we encourage our students to read “mentor texts” so that they can see first hand how impactful creativity in storytelling can be.
There are so many beautiful phrases that can generate reflection in their profundity.

This is the exact kind of heart-wrenching coming-of-age story that I love. How does a person deal with the brokenness of family? With flawed and dysfunctional parents? With loss and grief and growing up way too soon?
How does a person forgive a lifetime of wrongs, and reconcile herself to continue to love? Within the pages of Creatures, all of these things happen with the help of gorgeous island imagery, and lessons learned from the depths of the ocean and all of her living things.
This book is lovely, and raw, and painful, and filled with the kind of joy and sadness that makes your eyes achingly well up. I will be recommending this to my customers and all my bookish friends!

Beautifully written story of the effects of dysfunctional parenting on a child. Could be used as a “Here’s why pot shouldn’t be legal” lesson. Takes a strong person to come out of that kind of sloppy, careless upbringing unscathed. To see it through the eyes of a child growing up is eye opening.

I really wanted to like this book especially after all the wonderful reviews. evidently I was reading a different book than the reviewers were, II didn't find one thing in the book to like, except for finishing it, and getting it off my list.

Creatures by Crissy Van Meter arrrives at a hopeful place after a complicated, emotionally wrenching journey. Each character is well drawn and flawed - some much more than others. Interactions cover several time periods and add layers of understanding right up to the end.

Thank you NetGalley for the free ARC. Beautifully written, stormy story about life with the ocean, good and bad. Evie grew up with a drunk, negligent father who loved the sea and a mother who wasn't there and hated the ocean. On the eve of her wedding, a whale is beached on the strand in front of Evie's house and her fiance is late coming in from fishing. Her mother shows up unannounced for the wedding - can things get much worse?

I found this book difficult to read because the narrator was essentially abandoned by both her parents. Her mother left physically while her ne’er do well father did it emotionally.

I objected to his portrayal as well meaning, I found him cruel, selfish and abusive. He is a totally Narcissistic, uncaring man. He must also be held responsible for destroying any relationship that Evie had with another female.

This novel takes place on an island 40 miles off the coast of LA and lurking during the narration is a beached whale, rotting on the beach as Evie waits for the return of her fiancée.

Yes, the writing is lovely but the life it depicts was painful for me to witness.