This is just a very messy book. 19 year old Colton meets the older Donna who is in an abusive marriage. Instead of trying to help her, he decides to lust after her (because she gives him attention) and become friends with her husband in order to get closer to her. So many red flags here already but it doesn't stop there.

Absolutely everyone in this book is toxic. We have an abusive cheater, a somewhat unhinged and demanding femme-fatale-esque FMC, and the obsessive little puppy that follows them both around. It is so painfully obvious where this is heading from the first interaction which is okay if the build up is well executed, but this didn't really offer anything exciting or new. Some parts of this book felt like they were in there for shock value which isn't a thing I like at all. I wasn't emotionally invested in any of these characters so sadly the crux of the story just didn't work for me.

I think I could've enjoyed the concept of this if it was written differently or offered a fresh perspective on a story that's been told a thousand times before.

Rock and roll. Noise. Drugs. Music. Etc etc. This story was fine but had moments where it lacked something else in the greater scheme of things.

Every Giant Becomes a Monster is a very dark and gritty story. It delves deep into the world of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. It was a very straightforward story and very quick to get through. If dark and gritty is your thing definitely give this a try.

Sadly this book wasn't for me.
I didn't like how the characters behaved or how the story was build up.
Not every book is for every reader, sadly this one wasn't for me.
I hope the next one will be more to my reading tastes.

I made a concerted effort to give this story a chance, but in the end it was not for me. I decided to put it down without continuing after about 85 pages. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to preview this book.

A great book. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Would recommend

No rating given as I did not finish the book and feel it unfair to rate. I also deleted off my Goodreads account as my review would have been too negative for my comfort.

A few notes on why I stopped reading:

The transitions felt odd.
Character motivation did not feel authentic.
I did not warm to the hero at all.
The scene with the shoes at the beginning did not seem completely plausible.

As a result of the above and a few other things the story did not engage me. I'm very sorry and obviously this is just my opinion, I'm sure others may feel differently.

Thank you for the opportunity of reading.

Every Giant Becomes a Monster is a story of sex, drugs, and music. Not sex, drugs, and rock and roll, alas, but noise music. Our hero (anti) Colson loves music and gives us evocative descriptions that convince me the music would give me an instant headache. Colson is just nineteen, a young man with limited prospects and appeal. He’s very tall and gaunt, with horribly misaligned snuggle teeth. Like many young men his age, is is obsessive, at first with his music (noise) and then with Donna, a bartender who was kind to him.

His obsession with Donna is only enhanced by her marriage to Travis, a drug-dealing, brawling, loud man of whose reckless abuse and feckless infidelity Donna is sick to death–his death, if you please. If Colson can only save her, he can win her and who, at that age, can resist being a savior.

Colson seems a nice enough kid, though he is very skilled at grifting and stealing, and even better at rationalizing it. This gift for rationalization is what probably gets him in the very deep trouble he finds himself.

These are not the most likable people on the block. Nearly everyone is a 40 watt bulb in a 60 watt world. This made it less interesting. I will confess to some sympathy for Colson whose naivety made him easy to lead around. I suppose I should feel some post-mortem sympathy for Travis, PTSD Iraqi marine that he is, but I don’t. He is a violent, abusive cheater who demands fidelity. I think we are supposed to be horrified and shocked by Donna’s fetish for violent sex, the drunken shooting and hell-raising and even the things that happen in prison, but you know what, that is life.

I didn’t feel shocked or offended. I felt sad. I am sad for Colson who let obsession override his humanity. I am sad about what happened to his life. Sadly, I didn’t really care enough for anyone to feel invested. If people could only have risen out of their roles, just a bit, to be a little more interesting, then maybe I would have cared.

Every Giant Becomes a Monster will be released April 1st. I was provided a egalley by the publisher through NetGalley
★★

No review/rating. Could not finish, see above notes. Thanks.

Thank you again NetGalley, Collins Kelly and Rosethorn for my eARC of this book!

Please note that my rating is within the genre - this is a dark novel, borderline thriller. Some surface themes are sex, drugs, music and violence, but on a deeper level, we see themes emerge of displacement and the struggles of survival among Americans living in more rural, isolated areas.

Being a musician myself, I found it interesting to see the protagonist, Colson, chase his musical dreams only to get distracted and head down a path of self-destruction, harming others on his way. Collins Kelly assaults the reader with an onslaught of raw, vibrant, graphic imagery leaving you overstimulated - in the best of ways. This is similar to Colson's preferred method of performance - creating "noise" soundscapes to make the audience's skin crawl. I LOVE Collins Kelly's writing style. It is unique and rich and alive.

MILD SPOILERS BELOW:
The plot is a classic story-line - no real surprises here. But I love that this was chosen specifically along with familiar character archetypes to better illustrate the struggles of lower middle-income families, veterans, foster kids over 18 - many displaced "everymen" here, that may often get looked over in contemporary literature. The sense of tragedy is quite great. Colson's wasted artistic talent is a huge blow, especially as he is described as a bit of a musical genius. He is a self-taught musician who can play Ligeti from memory at the age of 19. My heart ached for him throughout. Read this if you're craving something dark and raw. This feels a bit like a great new HBO show.

A story about how far people will sink to become a monster. There are different types of monster in this book. A pretty girl drives men to do some horrendous things. The crime itself was a bit predictable but it is still a very good book. The style of the writing added to the story. This book is worth reading.

Colson is a nineteen year old drifter who shows up in a small town. He does some kind of sound music ( I have no clue what that is still-but I'm sure it would get on my nerves).
He meets the wonderful, hot Donna. Donna is married to ex-military but now loser Travis. Colson is hot for Donna so he buddies up with Travis hoping to get closer to her.

Donna likes the attention and has a bit of a fetish on getting the guys in her life to physically hurt her in order for her jollys to happen.
Travis has been known to smack her around and cheats on her constantly. So when Colson shows up at the right time in her life she starts bossing him around.
Donna gets pretty demanding and Colson follows like a puppy dog.
The book pretty much goes the way that you expect it to with no surprises popping up to keep you interested. I was not a fan. Give me my week of slogging through this mess back please.
I can watch Charlie Brown to see that dark haired wench yank someone around by the balls and be much more entertained.

I did not care at all about this book, about what happened, what was happening or what will happen to the characters. Carson, for some reason he certainly didn't know, decided to just roam the country. He decided to stop for a while in Flaggtrap because he met a woman he was attracted to. In his obsession with Donna, a I-like-it-rough-and-I-play-the-viction-when-I-could-be-divorcing-my-alcoholic-husband bartender, he is what some would describe a loser. A liar and good-for-nothing, with an affinity for and skills in music, he seems to have a high opinion of himself, trying to act like a I-got-this-thing-called-life wanna-be man. He's 19; he knows nothing. Not even the wit the book description mention didn't endear him to me, the reader.

The characters are weak, both in their actions in the novel and in the way they were created. Not even one character seemed worthy of interest from my part, not even the main character who was the most irksome of all.

Probably the only redeeming thing for this novel as far as I was able to read it are the references to music. No matter how unusual, crazy, dark and slightly creepy the genre the characters prefer, this is the only thing that makes them human.

This book is pretty good, it is my first noir romance fiction. The character is convincingly real, and the story is at a slower pace that I would have liked. It is also slightly messy on the presentation, could have used a little better (cruel) editing to make it look neater. Plus, it would be great if the author can invoke more sense of urgency and suspense to aid the book's pull to readers.

I did not post my review for this book was not a good fit more me.

I really enjoyed this book. At first I was a bit leery, when the young man was attracted to the female bartender and ends up friends with her husband!!!! Some parts made me laugh, (when he got up to play and got kicked out of the establishment), some made me a tad bit upset. Why? Because I grew to like Colson. Take a ride with Colson and be pleasantly surprised at the things he encounters. This was my first time reading Collins Kelly but I will most definitely look for more from this author. Thanks to NetGalley, the publisher and the author for the advanced reading copy in return for my honest review.

I'd rate this 2.5 stars.

Colson is a 19-year-old noise musician who leaves his troubled past behind him and rides the rails, searching for a new beginning. He thinks he may have found this in a small Arizona desert town called Flaggtrapp, especially when Donna, a sexy bartender, pays him some kindness. For a young man who has always been self-conscious of his excessively crooked teeth and his skinny body, attention from a woman like Donna goes right to his head.

The thing is, Donna is married to Travis, a former Marine who has never quite been the same since his time in Iraq. He used to be a well-known musician in the punk scene, but since he returned home, he'd much rather get wasted, cheat on his wife, and get into fights. But when he meets Colson, he feels kinship with a fellow musician, whose presence encourages his creativity and revitalizes his desire to perform—when he's reasonably sober.

Donna lets Colson know that her marriage no longer makes her happy, and she'd be receptive to starting something with Colson once Travis moves out. But despite getting some mixed messages from Donna, and discovering some troubling things about her past, he's willing to do whatever she wants—even help precipitate Travis' exiting her life. Colson is torn about betraying Travis, but the possibility of finally finding someone to be with is more powerful than anything else.

As Travis becomes increasingly more unhinged, and Donna becomes more demanding, Colson isn't sure where to turn or what to do, but his singular focus could have disastrous consequences for all.

In the words of Mrs. Potts, this is a tale as old as time—man wants woman, woman is married, woman convinces man to help her get unmarried, disaster ensues. I had hoped that Every Giant Becomes a Monster would provide a fresh twist on this story, but for the most part this book unfolded much as I expected it to. I was disappointed by that, honestly, because I thought Colson's character was very interesting and I saw a lot of potential there, but I guess like most troubled 19-year-old men, he was focused on one thing only.

As the story unfolded, the book became more and more of a downer. And at the very end, some information about Colson comes to light that really would have been more interesting to know earlier on, and perhaps Collins Kelly could have done something with it. I found that frustrating, although I guess it was conveying the message that we can't always blame our circumstances for the trouble we find ourselves in.

I think Kelly is a writer with some promise, and his take on the underground music scene was really interesting, but ultimately, this book didn't really work for me.

NetGalley and Rosethorn provided me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making this available!

Thank you to NetGalley for my copy of this novel.

This book does deal with some heavy themes like sex, drugs, and violence. I found myself sympathizing with the main character, although I definitely didn't agree with many of his decisions! He's a kid, well, a young adult, dealt with a bad hand & doing what he can with the hand he's been dealt. He has an instant attraction to a bartender & ends up befriending her husband. Can we say awkward? It was an interesting story & well-written.

This is an author that I have not read before, but I will keep an eye out now! This book was crazy--in a good, "I am actually not living this drama" way...There were surprise twists which desimated my every prediction. Everytime I thought I knew the direction the book was traveling, it seemed as if I had been derailed by the train running through Flaggtrap. Believable characters, very real adrenaline pumping action--WOW, Enjoying this book has been a guilty pleasure.