A little warning, Chapter One opens with homophobia and Chapter Two was the most torturous animal death I think I've ever had to read.
I usually have quite a strong resolve but the sudden and intensely descriptive demise of a pet like that was truly stomach curdling- I admit to scanning it as quickly as possible and giving myself a moment to recover!
Clearly this was going to be a VERY dark read.

I really enjoyed the varying perceptions of insanity held by both the doctors and some of the patients. 'Who determines who's sick and who's well?'
We Are Monsters is thought provoking in its approach to extreme mental illness, the frequent forays into psychology were extremely interesting and kept the balance of power and intelligence shifting between characters. Of course the horrors of enormous needles, electroshock therapy and submersion tanks are still at hand to ratchet up the pulse.

We Are Monsters is divided into segments, and Part Three is where the heat gets high. A sudden departure from reality told in four different POVs gives insight into each characters psyche through dark and disturbing hallucinations.
Their fear is palpable and claustrophobic, much as a nightmare that's impossible to wake up from.
I can't tell you that this sudden swerve made any sense, or even that it flowed nicely, but I will say it was fun.

I would've liked a little more description of characters and surroundings, there were moments I struggled to imagine. We Are Monsters can get heavy on the dialogue/ monologue; not necessarily a negative but personally I prefer an equal ratio of speech, action and description.

I was also disappointed to find the horror trope I spoke about last year.
Giant dick.
It's 2020. I'm more than tired of male authors using genitalia to incite fear or horror. Fear of rape is relevant of course, but always with the detailed descriptions of cock?
But let's not get side tracked, I've discussed this already in *POST*

Dr Alex Drexler was a tricky main character. 90% of the time I hated him, but now and then the smallest redeeming quality or moment of tenderness slipped in. I sympathised with Eli but simultaneously shouted at him to grow a backbone! As for Angela, ooh what a mess.
Crosby was a great antagonist, a psychopathic killer with a stereotypical history. His unwavering conviction in his delusion and the inability to reason with him made him a formidable threat. Unfortunately he just seems to drop out of the book!

The final quarter of We Are Monsters is bizarre, it seems to completely unravel. I finished the book wondering what the hell had happened. There were questions unanswered, storylines unfinished, it was just a sudden whirlwind of crazy that felt like two concepts smashed together.

Ultimately the atmosphere was good, the fear and revulsion was near constant but as a novel it needs fine tuning.

We Are Monsters is Brian Kirk’s debut novel and what a debut it is. The walk of sanity is a knife-edge. One slip and you can tumble to your death via a savage tumbling that cracks you open. Coping mechanisms may not be healthy and realities shift. One day you are a fully functioning individual, the next you are embarking on a divine mission to rid the world of demonic evil. Is sanity truly sane? Why were people committed to insane asylums for teenage pregnancy, infidelity and mild depression…are the realms of diagnosing insanity moral/accurate? When the real apocalypse arrives and if it’s anything close to this, dig a hole and throw yourself in because that is your only chance at survival.

Brian Kirk tackles some real hard-hitting themes – mental health, radical research which has immoral connotations and psychiatric treatments. The book is primarily told in the perspectives of Alex (Psychiatrist), Eli (Chief Medical Director) and Alison (Social Worker). Dr Eli Alpert has built his stellar reputation at Sugar Hill Hospital for his humanistic approach to mental health treatment. He believes that compassion and drug free methods has a higher success and relapse rate rather than purely medicinal treatments. He has a dark and troubling past which comes back to haunt him.

Dr Alex Drexler has constantly pissing against the wind. You really got to feel for the guy. He is at the top of his game, waiting in the wings for Eli to retire and capture the end goal of Chief Medical Director Position. Both Alex and Eli have different ethos. Alex having formulated a medicine that could potentially cure Schizophrenia. If only it wasn’t for that pesky issue of testing on humans without backing. His marriage, his career and his financial stability is riding upon this being regulated. The scenes with Dr Drexler testing his medicine gave me major anxiety. My eyes watered, my heart wanted to escape, and my stomach felt like it was on the super spin cycle.

Sugar Hill is seriously creepy. Chills down your spine, skulking along the corridors awaiting an axe murderer to end you. It restricts your breathing, engages your fight or flight response. Fear is an icy sweat. Fear is imagination losing all semblance of sanity. Fear is a broken psyche. This book gave me serious Gothika and Shutter Island feels. Brian Kirk is nerve-splittingly brilliant at examining the human condition. He has pulled back the layers of life to highlight how mental health is shoestring – pull too hard and it’ll break.

The second half of the book really goes into top gear. It’s on steroids. Just when you think that you know the remits of sanity, you are smacked across the face with a 2×4. It’s not the monsters that we should be fearful of…It’s insanity. It’s raw and excruciating, but at the end of it all it is indescribably human. It gains traction, it’s unique and terrifying.

Brian Kirk has created a true skin crawler. We Are Monsters has disguised itself as the most unapologetic trojan horse. If you enjoy deep, psyche breaking horror, this should hit the spot.

Set in Sugar Hill hospital, a facility for the treatment of various mental illnesses,

Dr Alex Drexler is working on a cure for schizophrenia, by injecting a drug into the pineal gland, it seems to be working and just needs refining…..but funding is a problem.

So, when his boss Eli is deemed responsible for an employee murdering Alex’s brother and his treatment of patients is questioned and certainly questionable, immersion tanks for one.. The powers that be give Alex the job and they want him to use his ‘cure’ on patients, against all protocols…..he agrees!

Now, one of the patients is Crosby Nelson, known as the Apocalypse Killer who sees demons and so Alex decides to test his drug on him….all seems to go well and Crosby reacts well. But then all hell breaks out.

“Not all the voices we hear are imaginary”

Crosby’s inner demons have been released and they have brought darkness with them. Just what is real? And who are the ream monsters?

The back stories for each of the characters really helps build the picture, each of them have their own problems and a darkness in their lives…..a fine line of being a carer or a patient themselves….

A creepy supernatural horror with some truly menacing moments…..full of menace and crackles with atmospheric tension.

Thank you to The publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this for free. This is my honest, unbiased review.

“It’s official. The Apocalypse has come to Sugar Hill.”

Alex, Eli and Angela work together in the forensics ward of Sugar Hill, which houses and treats the criminally insane. Angela is a social worker who is described by a friend as “Dr. Do Good by day and Little Miss Devil by night”. Alex Drexler is a psychiatrist whose views on treatment are diametrically opposed to those of his boss and mentor, Dr Eli Alpert, Sugar Hill’s Chief Medical Director. Eli’s approach is humanistic, with a focus on treating patients with dignity and respect. Meanwhile, Alex is in the process of trialling an experimental drug to cure schizophrenia.

“Why did the mind have the capacity to create delusions? To hallucinate? To perceive the unreal? And why, so often, did such altered states appear to the perceiver as the actual reality? A world more real than this one.”

When the funding for his trials is withdrawn, Alex winds up continuing his experiment. His latest subject is Sugar Hill’s newest patient, Crosby Nelson, the Apocalypse Killer. Because what could possibly go wrong when you use a mentally ill, traumatised serial killer as your guinea pig?!

More background information is provided about characters than I’m used to seeing in horror books. This took me out of the story initially although I could understand the relevance of this information later on. It’s not only the patients whose pasts haunt them and it’s not always obvious who should be a patient, especially when the workers’ own demons are revealed.

“Either she is insane, or I am. Or nobody is. Or we all are. Either way, who am I to say?”

The only character I really liked was Eli. I think I would have liked Crosby as well but I didn’t get much of a sense of who he was outside of his mental health and trauma histories. Fortunately it’s not necessary to love horror book characters. I enjoyed hoping Alex would get a taste of his own medicine and I couldn’t wait for a couple of other nasties to get their comeuppance.

At times it felt like a hallucinogen was wafting off the pages. I wasn’t always especially clear about what was really going on during the more trippy parts.

“He was now unsure which reality had been a dream and which one was real.”

If I’d encountered this sense of unease, not being able to easily discern reality, in another book I’d probably tell you it was a reason I didn’t like it. This book, though? It was like I was being given a glimpse into what life must be like all the time for some of the residents of Sugar Hill and it was scary to even contemplate living in their worlds.

While I’ve known a lot of people with various mental illnesses, my knowledge of schizophrenia and psychosis are limited to the DSM-5 and random articles and books I’ve read. Because of this I cannot comment on the accuracy of their depictions in this book but I didn’t come across anything that stood out to me as ‘there’s something wrong with this picture’ symptom wise.

Between the graphic violence (I almost DNF’ed this book when the dog died) and derogatory terms used for pretty much anyone you can think of, sometimes challenged but oftentimes not, this book isn’t going to be for everyone. If having anything uncomfortably close to your eyes makes you squeamish you may have trouble with some scenes.

Content warnings include addiction, alcoholism, child abuse, domestic violence, graphic death of a dog, homophobia, incest, mental health, mention of death by suicide, racism and sexual assault.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Flame Tree Press for the opportunity to read this book.

Rating: 8.5/10

We Are Monsters takes place at Sugar Hill mental asylum, where the clinically are housed and treated. The story is focused mostly around Dr. Alex Drexler, an up-and-coming psychiatrist who is working on a cure for schizophrenia. He is hoping to sell his new medication to a drug company and get rich. But when he gets stalled on the project his funding is pulled, and he continues to experiment with asylum patients off the books. Then Dr. Drexler goes too far and unlocks the demonic side of Sugar Hill. Now he and other members of the staff need to figure out what is going on and how to stop it if they are going to survive.

“The medicine makes you blind. Why don’t you cut out our eyes? Take them with you. Look through them and you’ll see what I see.”

It had been a little while since my last horror read, and I am glad I picked We Are Monsters to get my fix. This book did the trick. It has everything one could want in a horror story: ambitious doctors, a dark setting, blood and gore, and a whole lot of creepiness. I very much enjoyed reading it.

While the story on the surface is interesting, one of the best parts of the book is the way Brian Kirk weaves in and out of the past and the present. I am always a sucker for flashbacks, but for a book like We Are Monsters, in particular, this method writing is even more effective because of the way it sets the tone. As a reader, knowing the background of the characters and seeing where each one’s motive for their actions come from is really important because the most of the story take place in a psychiatric setting. Showing the flashbacks and history of the characters mimics the main plot as the doctors and nurses use the patients’ history when treating the patients at Sugar Hill; thus, flashing back to the previous actions and experiences of the staff is almost treating them as the patients to the reader. We experience the staff almost from the same eyes they are seeing their patients.

The story start a little slow, at first, but the author drops in enough interesting nuggets to keep the reader intrigued. Once the meat of the story picks up in the second half of the book it evolves into one that is too hard to put down. The narrative becomes so creepy and trippy such that as a reader I did not know what was real and what not. It kept me guessing at every turn, and because of that I did not want to stop reading. That is a true litmus test from me, and We Are Monsters passed with flying colors.

“They were sexless now. Their genitalia had been devoured by something other than a snake.”

I did think the dialogue was a little cheesy, at times, but for a book like this that is the hardest part to write and, honestly, the least important. I was also slightly surprised at the ending. It fell a little flat for me compared to the previous 150 pages, which is actually a compliment to the rest of the story. It took me on such a ride that I craved some kind of big bang at the end. I did not get my wish, but I am still happy with the book overall.

“We’re all dead here. We’re caught in the in-between.”

We Are Monsters is a really good read if you are looking for a horror fix. Think Stranger Things set in a mental asylum. I recommend it for fans of the genre, and anyone looking for a book to take them on a psychiatric roller coaster ride.

One hell of a story where the Apocalypse Killer comes to an asylum and will disturb the fine line between reality and madness. This book takes place at a mental institution with two doctors who have very different approaches on how to help their patients.

One of them believes in being kind and trying to help the patients by being more of a friend. The other wants to be famous and rich by developing a cure to schizophrenia. After his testing is no longer funded, Dr. Alex Drexler is desperate and starts to try this new drug on patients from the asylum.

A great exploration of different characters and madness. Who can determine who is mentally sick? Aren't we all a bit crazy? How delicate is the line between sanity and madness?

This book will take you to explore people's worst nightmares and bring back their worst memories.

Dr. Alex Drexler is working on a miracle treatment. The psychiatrist believes that with enough time and resources, he can cure acute mental illness with the new drug he's developing, using a simple injection into the pineal gland. Very lobotomy-like. *shudders* Unfortunately, his latest test subject isn't showing the results he was looking for and his contact at the pharmaceutical company is pulling his funding. Fortunately, as a doctor at a mental health facility, he knows where he can find other guinea pigs for his experiments. However when he ups that dosage and uses it on a patient very close to him, the results are...odd.

The title is quite accurate - the characters ARE all monsters and thanks to the good doctor, they might be able to lay to rest their own demons.

I have an affinity of mental health hospitals, so this appealed to me. I feel like the story started off slowly, by ones the shit hit the fan, I ran through the rest of the book. This is the second book I've read by the author, and this one was much better.

Whew its a while since i read a book that engrossed me so much my coffee went cold { i am a coffee fiend of epic proportions}. This is a brilliant debut novel which I didn’t realise till after i read it because it felt so polished and well written i thought it had to be one of a few by the author. In trying to help his patient and fill his bank account the doctor Alex Drexlar does unauthorised trials on his patients. Unfortunately for not only him but his patients the cure is not all it seems and things start to go gruesomely wrong. His mentor Dr Eli Alpert treats the patients in his care with compassion and care at odds with Alex and his ways. As the story unfolds we learn more of both men’s backstory and the reasons they do what they do with their patients.The horror that starts to unravel within the walls of Sugar Hill Asylum pushes both men to the very edge of their humanity. We may all harbour demons of one kind or another within us but when they break free as they do in the book its fatal.Flame Tree Press are fast becoming a go to publishing house for those wanting a great horror story and this one just adds yet another great book to their bookshelf. Well written, the right amount of horror and gore mixed with the psychological it delivers as a great read.

3.5 stars rounded up to 4

Dr. Eli Alpert works with the criminally insane patients at Sugar Hill Psychiatric Hospital. His protege, Dr. Alex Drexler thinks medication is the way forward in the treatment of the patients. He's been trialing a medication of his own creation. But the trials aren't going well. He gets a new group of patients to conduct his tests on. This time he alters the medication and as a result, he's opened up the patients minds more than he intened5to. He released new horrors in the hospital.

I found this to be a thought provoking read. There are some great characters (not that I'd like to meet any of them). Thenauthor has researched the history on how mental health has been treated over the years. I also liked his style in writing this book. 5he book starts off slowly but I'm glad I stuck with it. This is a dark read filled with tension and emotion. I quite enjoyed this book which is different to the type of book I normally read.

I would like to thank NetGalley, Flame Tree Press and the author Brian Kirk for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

A big thank you to Flame Tree Press, Brian Kirk, and the Night Worms folks for providing me with a copy of this book to review! I absolutely love the Night Worms Book Parties we do, and love so much of what Flame Tree is putting out these days.

The premise of this one pulled me in immediately, and I was really looking forward to reading it. I love spooky stories set in mental asylums, and the combination of one of my favorite horror tropes along with serial killers and what sounded like a scare-filled plot was right up my alley.

Unfortunately, I didn't get the payoff that I was hoping for. This is the second book by Kirk that I've read where I don't relate to or like any of the characters throughout - in fact, I actually tend to really DISLIKE the characters in his books I'm noticing, which for me, makes it a bit difficult to remain invested. I have no issues at all with Kirk's writing chops, but the characters themselves just don't really do much for me. When reading about characters I don't like, I expect something bad to happen - something that makes me hating them fun, if that makes sense? I didn't really get that here.

The book started off okay, but even before hitting 10 pages, I started questioning the necessity of some of the things happening in the plot. You can call me a baby or whatever, but I have 3 little dogs, and there are just some things I don't enjoy reading. /shrug

I enjoyed the central theme - that we're all monsters to varying degrees, that we all have the potential to hurt and damage the same way we've been hurt and damaged, and that we can choose instead to be kind, and to show forgiveness and love. The road to the message though, for me at least, felt a little jumbled and a bit too chaotic. There were elements to the story - bits of character history, for example - that were mentioned once and then never again. A lot of the middle of the book lost me, and I kept finding myself skimming through bits that didn't seem relevant to the story (and that ended up not being touched upon later).

I will say this sort of jumbled, fever dream-like quality to the story was also present in his other book that I've read, WILL HAUNT YOU. If the pacing and story in that one were things you were really into, this one should also be on your TBR for sure!

I think if this had been trimmed down a bit, I would have enjoyed it more. Brian Kirk is an excellent writer - his descriptions are vivid, the dialogue feels natural, the characters are well-developed and fleshed out. I'm going to look into some of his short fiction, as I'd love to see what he's able to do with a more limited word count.

The creep factor is high with this book. Don't read this at night time unless you have every light on in your house and don't plan on sleeping any time soon. Really, don't read this book if you're alone in the house unless you want to jump at every creak and noise you hear. You've been warned. If you like goosebumps and being scared out of your skin pick up this amazingly creepy story. Happy reading!

Two doctors butting heads at a mental institution.

Dr Eli prefers a drug-free approach. Dr. Alex prefers more....unconventional methods.

When the newest arrival, The Apocalypse Killer arrives to the institute, he is the perfect candidate to Dr Alex's testing. Or...will the cure open other part, more dangerous parts, of his brain.

This book is.....a lot. Mental health, as a whole, is severely misunderstood. While I like the general idea of this book, the human experimentation part bothered me. There is an incredible amount of detail, adding to the story and 'real' nature of this book. Still, it wasn't the worst book I've ever read.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Big thanks to Flametree Press for not only letting me check this one out through Netgalley, but also rereleasing this book.
‘We Are Monsters’ is my second book from Kirk I’ve read after ‘Will Haunt You.’ ‘Will Haunt You’ was one of my favourite reads of 2019 and so I went in with high expectations for this one – especially as it had been previously named a Bram Stoker Nominee for Best First Novel.
I have to say, overall this was an ok read, but a lot of it just didn’t click or flow.
We are introduced to Sugar Hill Asylum, under the direction of Eli. His vice-director Alex Drexler is hot on his heels to succeed him. We also are introduced to Angela, one of the psychologists working at the facility.
The main narrative of this story is that Alex has developed a compound that will help patients with schizophrenia and other mental disorders return to normal. Something he then attempts to use on his brother Jerry.
We also get introduced to Crosby, a violent offender who has been transferred to Sugar Hill for evaluation and treatment.
Crosby plays a big role in the unravelling of the story, but for the most part is a very minor character, one who completely disappears around the 75% mark.
I really wanted to love this one, but a few things kept glaring out at me.
In the beginning, Alex speeds home, only to strike and kill the family dog. His wife is upset, but we don’t hear too much about it as she’s pushed aside quickly.
Then after something horrific happens to Jerry’s character, witnessed by Alex’s wife, we don’t hear about her again. She’s essentially written out, only to be alluded to in passing during an episode Alex has near the end.
I also didn’t enjoy the character of Angela. At first I believed she was going to be portrayed as a strong presence, but then within a few chapters was turned into an unhinged lady who likes to drink and have one night stands. The first time we read about this, it appears as though she’s drugged and then as they begin to have sex, she fades out of consciousness, only to wake up sprawled out and abandoned in the alley by the bar. I just didn’t find much of a reason for this to even happen, even after we find out her back story later on.
The ending, while in the context of the book works, really didn’t hammer anything home for me. I’m not sure if this was going to be part of a bigger world or a series of books, but the ending just happens and felt a bit flat.
Kirk can write, there’s no denying that, but as for the story within this one, it just felt more like pieces cobbled together to make a full length read.
Overall, I wanted to love this book so badly, especially with how fantastic ‘Will Haunt You’ was, but for me this just missed the mark. I can see why so many folk enjoy it, but as for this reader, it was decent.
This review will feature on Kendall Reviews.

We are Monsters, by Brian Kirk is the latest flametree release. This one a reprint of Debut previously published through the now defunct Samhain. If you haven’t read it, it’s time to fix that.

The Apocalypse Killer, recently deemed unfit to stand trial by way of insanity has been sent to Sugar Hill Psychiatric hospital for treatment. Dr. Alan Drexler is developing a cutting edge drug that help cure schizophrenia. Things look to be going Drexler’s way, but there are unforeseen side effects.

I was blown away by how much I enjoyed We are Monsters. I mentioned this to people while I was reading it, and I’ll say it here in this review. This book doesn’t read like an authors debut. It’s well thought out. Kirk spends a good portion of the book building his characters and the world they live in. This causes to make the first half read a bit slow, but I’m ok with that. You can’t complain about books with under-developed characters but complain when an author takes the time to actually develop his book.

As I said before, the characters are well done. As for the rest of the book? Once the ball gets rolling it really picks up steam. It would have been very easy for this book to go off the rails, and it does but just enough to make it a good kind of crazy. Kirk never loses control of his story, he gives it room to go nuts without ruining what he built in the first half.

I’m being a bit vague here, and that’s by design. I want to stay as spoiler free as possible. Fans of psychological horror MUST read this book.

The whole time I was reading this I would think to myself, this is what a horror movie written by Christopher Nolan would be like. I mean that in the best way possible. BUY THIS BOOK.

4.5 stars

First off, thank you to Netgalley, Flame Tree Press and the author, Brian Kirk, for the advanced copy of We Are Monsters.

This was my first introduction to Brian Kirk and I can safely say I will be reading more of his work. Right from the start I enjoyed the writers style, I thought it flowed really well and I found myself invested and immersed within the story.

I loved the setting of this novel. The story took place mostly within Sugar Hill Mental Asylum. Alex, a physician there, is testing out an experimental drug but despite his efforts, loses funding for it. When he starts using that drug on one of the most dangerous patients in the facility, a series of side effects are triggered and it opens the patient’s mind, setting his inner demons free.

What I found was done really well was the character development. I felt connected with them; their thoughts, their fears and I felt like I had a sense of who they really were. Their backstories felt like a sneak peak through the keyhole into their minds.

I thoroughly enjoyed the first half of this book but then, I admit, it lost me a bit. I became somewhat confused with all the back and forth between the characters experiences and It felt a bit drawn out. The ending I thought was OK. Although I didn’t love this book, I still feel like the author has more to show us and I will be keeping an eye out for more of his work in the future.

Err. Eli Alpert and Dr. Alex Drexler work in Sugar Hill mental asylum. They are psychiatrists. That have different philosophies of treatment. Dr. Alpert has a humanist approach that is highly successful with his patients. The board of the asylum are not happy with Dr. Alpert. Why? Dr. Drexler is working on a prescription to cure schizophrenia. He tries it on a patient and it works but not for more than a few minutes. He continues to work on the medicine. Dr. Drexler has an older brother who he dearly lives but is a patient at Sugar Hill. He has had schizophrenia and Dr. Drexler wants to cure him. Will he be able to?

This novel is intense. I felt as if I were present watching the humane and inhuman treatment at the asylum. It made me think what was the best way to treat the mentally ill. It’s an excellent novel that will leaving you thinking about that novel.

A doctor motivated by greed and unchecked ambition believes he has created a cure for schizophrenia. But the only way to prove the drug's capabilities is through testing....so he decides to test it on mental patients. While that is horrific enough as it is....it gets worse. When he gives the drug to a famous serial killer, there is an unforeseen side effect. This wonder drug sets the mentally ill free from their demons...by releasing that darkness into the world. The dark halls of the Sugar Hill Asylum now hold the inner demons of The Apocalypse Killer.

This is a horror story with an underlying point about how society views and treats those with mental illness. This story means a bit more to me because my family is currently experiencing the deterioration of an elderly parent with bipolar and the beginning stages of dementia. As I finished reading this book, she was involuntarily hospitalized for the second time in six weeks, so I had a bit of a different reaction to this book than some readers might. Society has a mindset about those with mental illness, often viewing them as bothersome annoyances rather than people with a medical issue. And medical treatment, at times, seems to just be experimenting with mixes of medication to keep them controllable and quiet, rather than an attempt to return them to a condition where they can function/survive within the world. It's a world filled with medications, doctors appointments, fear of hospitalization, and fears/experiences that other people don't understand. The horror of dementia is that there is no going back....there's no way to return a wonderful woman to who she was for almost 80 years. That person is gone....locked inside a short circuiting brain. What people see now is just an out of control, elderly woman with a foul mouth and nasty disposition. They don't realize that up until a year ago I never heard a cross word come out of her mouth, let alone strings of curse words and horrible, hurtful insults. It is soul-crushingly sad to see someone deteriorate slowly and permanently. And it's hard to maintain patience and kindness when she is angry/abusive/out of control. So, this story about a doctor seeking fame and fortune at the expense of the mentally ill really hit home with me. What if medical staff, or the public at large, could see and experience the horrible things that the mentally ill deal with that come from their own minds? What if those who look at a medical career as a way to become rich rather than a chance to do good and heal people were confronted with the downside of their actions?

Very scary story....with a bittersweet edge to it for me.

This is the first book by Brian Kirk that I have read. I will definitely be looking for more by this author. Enjoyable story....with a hard truth beneath the horror.

**I voluntarily read a review copy of this book from Flame Tree Press. All opinions expressed are entirely my own**

This book was a weird one for me. I liked the beginning, the premise was really cool and i liked the doctor with a god complex kind of trope. But halfway through the book the story morphed and it wasn't for me. The message in this book was a bit too much and i would have like the story to be a bit more coherent. I think this book can be enjoyed by many, it just wasn't for me.

Okay so this took me a bit to get into, and the pace would speed up and slow down throughout. But I'm giving it four stars because it made me have trouble falling asleep at night. Messed up, scary, and disturbing.

Under Dr. Eli Alpert’s tutelage, Sugar Hill became one of the most esteemed asylums. As technology advanced, his protege Dr. Alex Drexler had the vision to take the hospital into new height by using a groundbreaking drug to cure schizophrenia. But Alex’s ambition could unravel the very thread that held everything together.

I love books that feature mental illness, and I went into this one with certain expectations regarding the story direction. The first half was how I imagined it would be, but it took me for a wild ride in the second half of the book like crazy on crack.

There were a lot of characters in this book and each of them had their own interesting background. However, there was a certain character that played a pivotal role, yet there wasn’t enough info on how the character descended into the situation.

What I loved the most about this book is how the characters were forced to see things from a different perspective. I enjoyed seeing their struggles and their rise/fall in coping.

We Are Monsters is a story of facing inner demons. It would appeal to fans of gory psychological horror.