Loved the setting and I thought the story was interesting as well. But it also seemed to be lacking something. I loved the spooky elements!

I actually really liked this book, the action was great and the characters were well rounded. I like that there was an autistic main character. To be honest I don't remember a whole lot of this book, I read it several years ago when I first joined NetGalley and was looking for good children's horror. However as an American I'm not sure how much interest my library's patrons would show in this.

I did not finish this book as I was not the target audience, however, this is a book I would definitely recommend to my little brother and cousins.
I am a Yorkshire girl born and bred and hold Yorkshire very dear to my heart. To finally have the Yorkshire Moors be portrayed in a book filled me with joy, especially since most books portrayed in England are portrayed in the south or in London.
From what I did read (2/3 of the book) I enjoyed the characters and the quality of writing, I just felt I wasn't the right reviewer for this book- which I have altered my personal recommendations to ensure I don't review any further middle-grade books, which I used to enjoy.

Overall I would recommend this book for younger readers.

Thank you to Netgalley for this ARC.

The cover and description of this book grabbed my attention so I was looking forward to reading it. However, I was pretty disappointed in this one.
There's a lot of telling, not showing, and that makes it very difficult to get engrossed in this story. The characters are really flat and one dimensional, and their interactions and dialogue seem very forced. Stevie, in particular, was meant to be comedic relief but instead was cringy. All his one liners had the opposite effect on me than the author intended. I was also not a fan of some of the metaphors in this one. They didn’t make sense and left me confused. They pulled me out of the setting, which is the opposite of what a good metaphor should do.

I do have to say that a redeeming quality in this one was the way the author described the more horror based scenes. You could tell it had real potential in those scenes.

All in all, this one is a pass for me.

This was a really cute take on Sherlock Holmes for MG readers. I found the mystery/horror aspect of the book to truly be the best thing about it. It was certainly creepy enough that a younger me would have been thrilled and terrified all at once. Unfortunately, the characters were so bland and boring that it took away from the rest of the story. The conversations seemed stilted and unnatural and though I loved the author including Michael, who has Asperger's, and did a great job with him, he didn't utilize him or the rest of the cast enough. And because it focused so much on Bobby, who was perhaps the most boring, it really took away from what could have been a phenomenal MG read.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an eARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

A perfectly spooky October read.
I’ve been looking for a good horror werewolf book and this one hit the mark.
I devoured this book in one sitting!

When requesting this book I didn't realise that this was the second book in the series. In my panic I found that you can read this one without having read the first book so was happy to dive right into the mystery.
However I really struggled with this book. It felt incredibly slow to me and the dialogue just didn't seem to fit the image and description I held for these characters.

I might try reading this from the beginning later down the road but right now this book just wasn't for me.

While on vacation to the North York Moors, Bobby Holmes and his friends visiting from the United States find themselves amid another mystery. These characters have worked together before, solving a mystery the previous summer, but Monster on the Moors can easily be read without knowledge of the previous book. This time, they must figure out what creature is killing sheep and people on the moors.

I really enjoyed the setting of this book. I thought it was thoroughly described, and I especially loved the literary references included to Dracula and more indirectly to The Hound of the Baskervilles.

While I enjoyed the setting, I struggled with the dialogue and the timeline. My biggest issue with the dialogue is that it didn’t sound like children talking, and often the children and the adults talked almost exactly the same. Some of the dialogue also sounded more like narration but this wasn’t as frequent. In regards to the timeline, it jumped around a lot from all of the different characters and I think this led to some dropped details and could be confusing to some younger readers.

I think this could be a really fun series for students to read, especially if some of the dialogue is adjusted in future books so students can connect more with the characters.

Monster on the Moors was an entertaining and engaging read, even if I'm "too old" for the book. I loved the descriptions, the plot was interesting and the characters had depth to them, one of them even had Aspergers (yay for diversity). The only downside is that I felt the paranormal aspect was a bit brushed over and I would have loved to know more about that aspect.

It was an entertaining and engrossing read that kept me hooked till the end.
i think it's well written and I liked the character development.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

Thank you Netgalley and Publishers for granting me early access to "Monster on the Moors".

I'm currently in the middle of a major move, and will definitely come back at a later time and write out a full review and rating.

Thank you so much!

I really enjoyed this mystery book. It had me guessing at every turn! I liked the characters as well and found them enjoyable and likable

Written by J M Kelly, Monster on the Moors follows Bobby Holmes, a take on a young modern day Sherlock Holmes, and in this he is hunting a werewolf.

This is the second novel in this series, and I feel like it was trying to aim for middle grade and just, slightly missed the mark. The plot was interesting, and the descriptions fantastic, but the whole time I wanted them all to be adults going after the mystery.

If you enjoy novels with werewolves in it, give this a try, and if you want to read something with a Sherlock feel to it, this could be a good choice.

After having this copy sent to my tablet, I found out it was the sequel in a series, the first The Lost Treasure is set in America, and based around ghostly pirates. I decided to continue reading it. You could get away with reading just this one if you wanted to, as things in the previous book were recapped well enough. 

This is set in the very creepy village of Goathland in North Yorkshire where a young boy called Bobby Holmes is on holiday with his Scotland Yard Detective mother, to visit one of her old friends. Multiple people warn Bobby not to stay in the county and not to go out at night. When they arrive it seems that a young woman has gone missing...

Bobby seems to be quite mature for his age, probably as he is a homage to Sherlock himself, but it was really strange to see him converse with adults as if he was the elder and consoling one.  He and his friends were a cute little band of mystery solvers, with one being an obnoxious american called Stevie, an autistic young boy called Michael and the token clever girl of the group called Brenda. There were different POVs, from the children and the adults which was refreshing, as we could see what the adults were doing to solve the murders, and what the children were up to running around Whitby and the moors. 

The conversations between Melanie, Bobby's mum and himself were very strangely written - very stilted and formal. I also question whether a Scotland Yard Detective would carry a gun, which made me think that the author was American (on checking later I found this correct).

The writing was very good, beautiful in it's descriptions, but in making this a middle grade book, it feels like the author became a little stuck. The adult chapters were easier to read and follow than the children's. Whilst the plot was interesting and the writing for the most part were lovely, this felt a little off, and a little difficult to read in the sense that it didn't flow or make much sense in places. If this is edited and changed before it's release, then I would recommend this for older children and it could be a good introduction to horror books for young people. 

Trigger warnings for gore, blood, death of animals, detailed descriptions of injuries and supernatural bodily changes.

Thank you Netgalley and Publishers for the advanced copy.

Monsters on the Moor features Bobby Holmes, cousin Brenda Watson (hmm, sound familiar?) and friends, all of which get launched into a paranormal mystery.

This was a really neat spin off of your typical Holmes and Watson mystery, and I found myself enjoying it for the most part. It does start off a bit slow, but it picks up and stays there for the rest of the novel.

I have to say I’m big fan of the mythology / paranormal stuff. It’s commonly done that something ‘seems’ paranormal but has a logical explanation- so it was refreshing to have real creepies in this book.

I wouldn’t purchase this novel right away for my library, mostly because we do not own the first one. However, now that I have read Monsters on the Moor I would highly consider looking into acquiring “The Lost Treasure” also by J.M Kelly. The younger grades would definitely enjoy it.

A fun little mystery (love me some monsters on the moors) for young readers, though I didn't feel that the writing lived up to the atmospheric cover. Even for a middle-grade book, the prose was very "And then this happened. And then this happened. And then this happened." with very little character development or even a sense of the characters as individuals at all. However, bonus points for a genre-savvy supernatural tale for kids featuring a werewolf, which is always a refreshing change of pace.

An interesting read that I believe is a retelling of Holmes?
The story while enjoyable meandered for a bit before picking up speed. That and the constant shift of perspectives somewhat soured my expectations of this. Apparently this is also a part of a series so even though there was backstory I felt more than a little lost along the way honestly.
This is however a great book for those who are favs of middle grade fiction and an opening to horror and mysteries for young minds.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for my ARC. All opinions are my own.

Bobby Holmes, his cousin Brenda Watson and friends are embroiled in a deadly mystery in the North York Moors of England. An old beggar warns Bobby to stay away, and another stranger appears to be at the center of it all. Bobby and his mates travel to the seaside town of Whitby, where a puzzling tattoo on the stranger is revealed to mean Wolf Slayer.

Their goal, to track him down, leads them to baffling clues: the appearance of a group of gypsies and a librarian attached to Her Majesty’s Government, who is researching a group of super wolves. His research dates as far back as King Edward and his ally, Peter Corbet, who is charged with ridding the country of these beasts. Searching for his mates, friend Michael gets attacked and captured by the monster, then taken to the witches who control the creature.


Seeking their friend, Bobby and the others locate the gypsies, discover their leader is the beggar who initially warned Bobby, and receives aid and information. They learn that the mysterious stranger they’ve hunted is a descendant of Corbet, named Alex. Their new friend takes them to the Red Lion Inn for help in finding the cottage of the Witches of Westerdale.


They find it, burn the cottage along with the witches, rescue Michael, and return to the Inn. Here they find the beast, waiting. It is killed by Alex, who then leaves to help another in New Zealand.- Goodreads


As a disclaimer, this is a book two. I did not read the first book but in all honesty I didn't feel as if I needed to. The author provides enough backstory from the first book that it isn't necessary for the reader (well at least me) to read it. But getting to this read, I enjoyed it.


I really don't read Sherlock Holmes retellings but I picked this up because it has a paranormal aspect of it (shocking). Although this read is for, what I would assume, middle school readers, it was pretty heavy in the graphic section; so if you are an adult looking to give this to your child, you might want to take a look into it first. 


This was a slow read as most mystery novels are; however, this was oddly slow. Not a whole lot happens and even when Bobby and his crew try to find information it is a lot of Bobby running off without telling anyone and them chasing after him. Bobby does that a lot and was extremely hypocritical about it because he would say in one sentence "we need to be a team. All for one and one for all." and then he would run on a wimp AND leave out information that affects everyone. 


Speaking of everyone, his friends weren't really that helpful. If anything they made situations worst. This could be completely because they were created to solely keep the story along and the reader needed to see how amazing Bobby was OR they weren't developed enough. Either way they weren't exactly the biggest of help and Bobby could have done this whole thing on his own. 


The paranormal aspect of the novel was good but it was brushed over. There was a lot more the author(s) could have done with the history and the culture of the environment. The setting, which was written very well, screamed for a deep dive and that is really what the book was missing. 


As previously mentioned, the pace was slow, Bobby was a hypocrite but the one thing I didn't fully mention was the writing. Overall, it wasn't the strongest I have read. It is as if the author(s) were more concerned with how to add more chapters than actual development. The plots twists weren't actually twists and the one that was a "big" twist within my eyes was weak. 


Despite this, it wasn't a bad read. For me, it was a nice introduction into Bobby Holmes and I am interested in another book.


Overall, 


2 Pickles

The young adult genre keeps pumping out mysteries and thrillers here lately and I am absolutely living for it! This was an all-consuming read and will be perfect for a reading binge, as you won't want to stop once you've started!

While I don’t believe I’m the target audience for this book it was pretty enjoyable.

“Monster on the Moors” follows Bobby Holmes who is on a holiday where he is anxious to meet up with his friends who are coming over from America but soon an ominous warning keeps him from enjoying his time away and it isn’t long before the group finds themselves lost in the night with nothing but the howling of the creature to keep them company.

I didn’t know this was a series when I requested it but thankfully there was a bit of a recap from the groups earlier adventures so you can get caught up fairly quickly.

This reads a bit like a Scooby Doo meets Sherlock Holmes only the supernatural elements are real which was an interesting touch. Here we have the classic monster on the moors or the werewolf mythology thrown in and it was interesting to see how the kids worked to solve the mystery at hand at the risk of being lost to it all.

I did think however that Bobby’s abilities would have been at the forefront of the plot itself but it’s more like the catalyst to each new story which was fine but I was hoping to see more especially when introduced to a character who seemed to have similar abilities.

This book isn’t bad but again I think it’s meant for a younger audience and I can think of quite a few people I’m going to recommend it to!

**special thanks to the publishers and netgalley for providing an arc in exchange for a fair and honest review!**