The book does not romanticize mental illness, nor does it spin it into a hopeless black hole. Rather, Casas aims to acknowledge how each monster affects his day-to-day routines. I love seeing the monsters interact with each other, and seeing them as separate entities helps me cope with my own brain fog as well. I love the designs and metaphors used in the art, and I love the creative choices used to depict and make relatable many of the invisible monsters we struggle with.

This is a really informative book I'd say. People don't usually recognise mental health as health. And hence those diseases don't get counted as diseases. But this book very nicely and comically showed the whole aura around a normal person. I did find it a bit difficult in the beginning to make sense of the book but in the end it did connect very nicely. Glad I stuck through. If any school curriculum ever require a book to help people understand mental health, this would be a perfect book as it also has discussion points and projects for people to do together.

It was just perfect. 🥺

A beautiful metaphor that almost all of us can understand and identify with.
It's all about the monsters in our heads such as anxiety, imposter syndrome, sadness, fear, doubts etc. and how to live with them.
I really love the way shadow work was visualized in this graphic novel! 💕
And the art is simple but illustrative.

I received this ARC from NetGalley for an honest review.

This graphic novel gave told the story of the author/artist's negative feelings that impact his mental health, but represented them as monsters that follow you around all day.

I fell in love with the author's representations, I think they were perfect. I particularly loved the doubts, toxic thoughts, and anxiety for the future. At the time I was reading this I was trying to explain to my mom about some anxiety and what it felt like, and to show her I just pulled up the comic and said "Imagine this just clinging to you." I've always described my own anxiety as a yeti screaming behind me while giving a back massage.

I've immediately shared a couple of panels with friends, and a few of them I'm planning to buy the graphic novel as gifts for in the future. During the lockdown I think a lot of us became more acquainted with our personal monsters than we wanted, but I think it helps when people share their own burdens. It makes everything feel less lonely.

One page "You built that statue for years, a version of yourself you so idolized that was--obviously-- unattainable... and in the gap between you and that image of you, a shadow was cast....which is where all monsters come from" hit me so hard I had to pause for a moment and just breathe.

I would recommend this not just to people struggling with their mental health, but to people who want to understand more of what might be going on in someone's brain.

I really liked the original concept of this book and the different form each monster took. The tone was a bit too dark for me though. I was expecting a bit more humor.

First of all this book is genuinely beautiful. The art style is wonderful and engaging and I found my self pausing at several points just to take in all the details in the background.

This book takes us through the process of one man introducing his "monsters" (his anxieties, traumas, and doubts) and then learning how to best live with them. As both a creative person who has experienced anxiety and depression and a mental health professional I really enjoyed this perspective on mental health. While my monsters look and behave differently at times there was still a great universality of this experience.

I think that this is a wonderful comic and in addition to recommending it to those who care about mental health and want new and engaging ways to talk and think about it, I also want to get a getting a physical copy to have available to my patients as this way of externalization is very related to narrative therapy which I practice.

Thank you to NetGalley, Diamond Book Distributers, and Ablaze for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Monstermind by Alfonso Casas is a comic where all of Alfonso’s fears and anxieties all turning into physical creatures that terrorize him in his small apartment during the pandemic.

It’s not about banishing the monsters and curing them, but more like learning to manage them. Which is much more realistic than how things usually go when this sort of story is written.

The art style was different from what I usually see. I like the shading. I also think that the story had a very good message behind it.

This was a really great and important book. I wish I had something like this when I was in high school and college dealing with anxiety.

Thank you to Netgalley for this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

A unique look at what it is like to live with the constant presence of unwelcome anxiety and depression. In some ways this reminded me of David B.’s opus, Epileptic. It has a style of illustration that is frequently virtuosic, and features characters who are monstrous embodiments of internal sensations and emotions: loneliness, fears, nagging worries, feelings of inadequacy and self doubt. It strikes the perfect balance between humor and sadness without being overly self-pitying.

In practical terms, the book presents several vignettes from the life of the author, and his ongoing struggle with his “monster roommates” (the last few pages actually has a police lineup and some charming bios for each). Their conversations are often hilarious but their tragedy will also ring true for anyone who’s had gazed jealously at the success of a rival’s career on social media, and meanwhile seems only to find themselves growing increasingly older.

Thanks to NetGalley for the review copy.

This was a really fun read! I think that books like these are great ways to simplify and explain mental health issues to younger audiences. I could also easily relate to many of the struggles that were brought up in it.

An intensely relatable collection of comics, to be sure. Like Casas points out at the end of the book, who among us hasn't dealt with doubts and insecurities and anxieties at some point? In that respect, I really enjoyed this read. It's nice to feel seen sometimes, you know?

The thing that made me knock a star off was just that it felt a little too... wrapped up in a nice, neat little bow in the end, I guess. Almost a little preachy in the whole "just learn to live with it!" aspect. It isn't that easy for some people, so it felt a little idealistic. But not so much so that it bothered me all that much.

The art was thoroughly enjoyable as well. I really enjoyed all the different monsters drawn to represent all the various forms of trauma that a person has to deal with. They were both adorable and oddly menacing feeling, which seems to be what the author was going for. All in all, a fun, quick read.

I loved this! A visual memoir of the authors raw, and honest experience. The monsters represent different kinds of struggles that exist and personify them in a way that would bring more attention if they were seen. So why don’t we still have this validation?

I thought this book was completely relatable and really interesting.
The illustrations in this book were amazing. They depicted the struggle with anxiety so well.
The end of the book is something I especially enjoyed. The message that you need to learn to live with your anxieties and not let them rule you was really important and cleverly put across
I really, really enjoyed this and found it so helpful to realise some things about my own mental health

I’m thankful to Diamond for this free NetGalley ARC in exchange for an honest review ✨ (My review will be posted to Instagram by April 1, 2022.)

MonsterMind is a graphic novel in translation, written by Spanish cartoonist Alfonso Casas and translated by Andrea Rosenberg. A memoir of the author’s process of coping with his mental health, the personification of emotions was familiar (ringing true to both some of my own tendencies but largely, I think, it made me think of the movie Inside Out) and the illustration style was whimsical. While I do appreciate the importance of the subject, I for some reason couldn’t get into this. I DNFed about 3/4 of the way through.

This isn’t to say this is a bad book! I found it whimsical and occasionally poignant. I enjoyed the intimacy of sharing an internal landscape and personifications of mental health challenges. I would recommend this book to teens or folks new to mental health diagnoses still trying to get a handle on things. If you’ve had your diagnoses for a long time, this book might yield some low level friction/anxiety (as it did for me, though I can’t totally nail down why) or it might be too at odds with your lived experience to enjoy (though isn’t this always the case, to some extent, with books?). No matter where you are or are not in this journey, it might be a lil irritating to see mental health habits labeled as monsters, or, it may give you a cathartic giggle. Overall, this book was clearly done in gentleness and jest, with fun art, and is important in how it continues to destigmatize conversations around mental health. The casual roommate relationship between the author and his cast of characters is a relatable portrayal of an over thinker with a clamorous inner dialogue just trying to get through a day.

This book is available now through Diamond book distributors. My highest recommendation is to order your copy through your FLCS- friendly local comic shop !

This is a great graphic memoir about mental health and dealing with difficult thoughts and feelings. The art style is really enjoyable.

This was a pretty accurate and scary visual representation of what anxiety and depression can feel like. I personally found it a bit too triggering. There's not much humor in this book. I wasn't sure it would ever get around to any sort of uplifting message, but it eventually did. I do think some people will relate to the book and therefore find some comfort in it, but I feel extra anxious and sad after reading this. It's interesting that there's a discussion guide at the end of the book. Perhaps its target audience is more young adult.

A man illustrates and brings to life his mental illness as monsters. Monsters that I share. Monsters that many of us share. And anyone with mental illness will relate to this graphic novel.

I planned to read a few pages before bed then proceeded to read the whole graphic novel then drop my iPad on my face when I fell asleep reading the discussion questions at the end. I felt seen and fully related to the text and illustrations on the page. I didn’t have any expectations going into this, but I was blown away. I wouldn’t change anything about it.

While it’s fairly short and to the point, it speaks volumes.

This graphic novel chronicles the anxieties, sadness, traumas, and other mental health issues of a man, but these issues are personified in monster form.
This was pretty well done and incredibly relatable as someone who also has many a mental health struggle (as so many of us do).

About half of the book is made up of shorter stories, a page or three long, that zone in on different portrayals of the day to day mental health struggles. Some of my favorites of these were the ones titled: Bogged, When in Doubt(this one has brilliant visuals), My Two Perpetual Moods, and Toxic. There is also a longer "chapter" and then the conclusion, which was where the millennials would likely insert the phrase "I'm not crying, you're crying." And truly, I was tearing up.

There are many a quote you could take from this (the entire dialog from Sadness, especially), as well as a lot of memorable images. To be completely fair, I'll state my only negative which honestly is more of a neutral, is that this concept of mental illness being monster-ified has been done before. That said, it's done quiet well!

This book was relatable, and also validating.

Definitely check it out!

Such a well-done graphic novel. I definitely related to the feeling of talking to my anxiety like a separate entity.

Thanks to Netgalley for the copy of this graphic novel.
This was a brilliant visual of the monsters or demons that we fight with inside ourselves every day.
The illustrations were great, and the message was communicated and addressed well.