An amazing new vampire story- fresh, creative, and heartfelt. I can't wait to share this story with others!

Cute middle grade book about vampires. The family is a very well blended group of distinct characters that work well together. Can totally see this being a beloved book by many.

This book just didn't really make an impact. It's a quick read but it's so over-the-top in the way characters speak and act. I'd just read several other, smarter, children's horror novels before this one and so it disappointed me in comparison.

I get what the author was going for though and can understand how other's would like and enjoy the story, and I always enjoy when a story-teller tries to do something different with a traditional myth. Just not my cup of tea.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me free access to the advanced digital copy of this book.

So mad that I forgot to give this feedback before it was published! "Don't Want to Be Your Monster" is not only a book that I'm glad exists, but I'm proud to display in my library's children's section. Though there are narrative moments that were difficult for me to follow, this is a book that does an excellent job at interrogating what it feels like to find dissonance between yourself and the world around you, including your own family, and the joys of finding community that both understands the fundamentals of your being, be that through "windowed" or "mirrored" experience. Very cool and good.

I really wanted to get to this one, as it seemed interesting. This was requested when I first found out about NetGalley and I had requested so many ARCs that I could not get to all of them before they were archived. If I can find this somewhere for a reasonable price, I will try to get it!

Adam and Victor are brothers who are also vampires. They live quiet lives with their moms and older siblings, hidden away from everyone else. When a serial killer starts murdering people in their town, they both start to venture away from their home. Ten-year-old Adam wants to help solve the murders, so he befriends two mortals who don’t know he’s a vampire. Fourteen-year-old Victor wants to find his purpose as a vampire but he ends up encountering a vampire hunter instead. When the serial killer begins to target vampires, the brothers must work together to save their family.

This was a fun middle grade vampire story. I really liked the characters. Adam and Victor were trying to learn how to be vampires, while their moms wanted them to stay children. The characters were all diverse, from different cultures, religions, and sexualities. There were twists at the end that kept me guessing what would happen next.

Don’t Want to Be Your Monster is a great middle grade vampire story!

Thank you Tundra Books for providing a digital copy of this book.

Don't Want To Be Your Monster is told from the perspectives of two very different vampire brothers, Adam and Victor, who are struggling with their own identities as well as their relationship with one another. This is an evergreen theme in middle grade which Moulton handles skillfully and with such insight. The main storyline follows the brothers as they investigate and become ensnared in a murder mystery.

From the very beginning, I was hooked because Adam and Victor are such well-developed characters that you can't help but care about. Their personalities are near opposites but Moulton makes sure that the reader gets a good sense of not only who they are but why they are the way they are. In essence, they show us their hearts and that's not easy to do right off the bat with vampires who do actually need to drink human blood to survive. In fact, one of the best things about this book was all of the grey areas within the story and its characters. Everyone and everything had nuance and depth and it was these things that pulled me deep into the story and kept me invested until the end.

I'm still stunned by Deke Moulton's Don't Want To Be Your Monster. I finished this book in a single day--something I rarely do and haven't done in years. But this story was so well-paced and engrossing that I didn't even realize I was burning through it until I was near the end! I'll be recommending this book to every reader I know!

ampires have a history as unquestionably one of the most recognized creatures in all horror. With roots extending back into folklore, Jewish writer Deke Moulton is fully aware of a truth too few know or want to recognize. The antisemitic roots of many portrayals of vampires. Blood-sucking fiends whose crimes are so deeply ingrained in old blood libel myths that most don’t even know they’re there. In Don't Want to Be Your Monster, Moulton revamps the myth as a tale of family and reclamation.

Adam and Victor are a pair of brothers who happen to be vampires. Adam, as the younger, wants to find more to life than just drinking blood, while Victor wants to accept vampirism for all it is. But along the town, bodies begin to pile up. A murderer is afoot, and the brothers must set aside their differences to solve it.

The foremost goal of this book is deconstructing antisemitism in the vampire mythos by presenting the “classic” tropes of vampire myth and explaining them, while creating new purposes for vampires not often found in literature. Through the perspectives of the brothers, Moulton writes with care and empathy for two boys forced into roles by the world around them.

At the core of the story is the Jewish drive of tikkun olam – to heal and repair the world. Moulton writes this as the true heart of vampirism, making them an unfairly vilified people. But what ultimately drives our heroes is that desire to make things better. When neighborhood kids are in danger, they are driven to do something about it.

The characters are written with spectacular heart, and Moulton pushes to flesh them all out. Each have their conflicts and goals, with the author making sure to delve into the discord between them all the way through. But Moulton writes with absolute purpose: about heroism, about analyzing who we are taught to hate and why.

And ultimately about what makes a monster and who rejects that label.

I want to take this moment to sincerely apologize to the publisher for not meeting the ARC Review deadline for this title.

Please accept my heartfelt apologies.

This was so much fun and I absolutely flew through this. The book follows two brothers named Victor and Adam as they struggle with listening and tuning into one another's feelings - while also being vampires. I found Moulton to have done a really excellent job at highlighting both Victor and Adam's problems within the novel and how important their relationship as siblings is. Both children struggle with this idea that they are a "monster" and are ostracized from society due to this and the book really demonstrates how difficult it is for children to grapple with this concept while trying to make a place for themselves in the world. Moulton does a really interesting job at tying this concept and using it to deconstruct the antisemitism in vampiric lore. It was nice to see how Moulton changed the vampire myth that we know and, without going into spoilers, I found it to work really well with the themes they were trying to convey. (The author's note was an added addition to the novel that touches upon this and I found it to be equally interesting). Overall, I found this to be a really cute, quick-paced and fun book that I would highly recommend especially to younger readers.

This wasn’t quite what I was expecting it to be, but I still enjoyed it and I think the message is important.

I love the found family trope and vampires frequently offer such good opportunity for it to be used. Adam and Victor’s observations of their family and how they cycle through so many other immortals coming and going was something I hadn’t considered before.

And I loved that the inherent queerness and Jewishness of this book. When Shoshanah said the blessing for seeing an unusual create it made me laugh, of course we would have a blessing for something like that! Maybe not originally meant for seeing vampires, but still!

The only thing that really bothered me was that I was on edge the whole time waiting for Adam or Victor to be caught and revealed as vampires.

Thank you to NetGalley for making this available in exchange for an honest review!

Adam and Victor are brothers. They also happen to be vampires. Everything is fine in life until kids start getting murdered and a vampire hunter is suspected.

I liked a lot of the lore in this one, especially with the healing magic. I do think pace wise, a lot of the book felt slow to me personally. The last 20% of the book really ramped up, but before that parts dragged a bit. I think especially Victor’s chapters were tough because he is an angsty teen who thinks he knows everything. I think it could’ve played up Victor and Adam’s relationship more in the end - there wasn’t a lot of growth throughout, more just realization right at the end.

I received my copy from Netgalley in exchange for a honest review.

Best vampires ever!

Almost my first thought on beginning to read Don't Want to Be Your Monster was, “Is that an allusion to the Blood Libel, or am I imagining it?” I flipped to the back to check if there was an Author’s Note.

There was, and no, I was not imagining the reference to Blood Libel. Deke Moulton read Dracula and was annoyed at some of the downright silly rules that Stoker made up for vampires: they need to be invited to enter a home, they cannot withstand a crucifix, … Yeah, it’s all pretty weird and arbitrary — it annoyed me, too, when I read Dracula. But Moulton noticed other things I had not, which led them to believe that the vampire myth had its origins in the Blood Libel. From there they were led to reimagine vampires from the ground up. Moulton’s vampires are not Count Dracula, or even Spike and Angel from Buffy — they are much better thought out, and make more sense. They are people you can like and sympathize with.

By the way, I encourage anyone who’s interested to begin by reading the Author’s Note — it doesn’t spoil the story, and it will help you understand where Moulton’s ideas came from.

In fact, this is the story of a small family of vampires living in rural Virginia. The point of view pair is two brothers, Adam and Victor, who have questions about what they are and what’s the right way to live. On learning that a murderer is killing neighborhood kids, they feel morally obliged to do something about it. It’s a good exciting story.

If I have a complaint, it is that Moulton does tend to sermonize. I agree entirely with the point of the sermon and I think the story backs it up well. I just don’t like being preached at — I think most people don’t — and these heavy-handed “This is the point of the story” harangues weaken the lesson instead of making it stronger.

Thanks to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for an advance reader copy of Don't Want to Be Your Monster. This review expresses my honest opinion.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the eARC of this novel. 4/5 stars.

I really enjoyed this middle grade novel about vampires and vampire hunters and just the overall somewhat absurdity of the whole thing. Victor and Adam are child vampires (Adam is about 12, Victor is a few years older) who were turned when they were young by their moms (s/o to the LGBTQ rep) and have continued to grow. Both were turned to save them from dying. One of the moms works at a hospital, so she asks permission from patients (typically dying ones) to collect their blood to bring home. Adam and Victor are close as brothers, but they begin growing apart when Victor wants to embrace more vampire elements...oh, and there are murders happening in the town!! Surprise!!

Adam stumbles upon other children trying to summon a ghost in the graveyard to ask about the murders...and then somehow finds himself making friends and trying to solve the murders with them while also hiding the fact that he's a vampire.

Overall, I liked how this addressed the tropes of vampires along with a sense of found family. I also appreciate the inclusion of Jewish aspects -- especially the author note about how Dracula is based on antisemitism rhetoric.

This was a fun read with a unique and effective take on vampire lore. Expertly turns some of the anti-Semitic themes of Stoker’s original on their head. Highly recommend.

Thank you to NetGalley for giving me a copy of this ebook. I thought this book was so good! I would give it 3.5 stars and would be asking my library to get a copy of it.

CONTENT WARNING: blood, mention of murder, brief reference to gore, mention of an antisemitic attack, mention of leukemia, mention of parental abandonment, mention of past trauma

I originally connected with the author over Twitter, and when she was talking about writing a Jewish-oriented vampire book, I was immediately intrigued. You may not know this, but vampires have historically been written as Jewish-coded villains, beginning with Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and continuing from there. So a book that subverts the antisemitism that’s basically baked into the vampire story was one that I couldn’t pass up. I did a happy dance when I got approved, and couldn’t wait to start this book. It doesn’t hurt that it start with a killer (no pun intended) first line:

“I know my brother is evil, but that has nothing to do with him being a vampire.”

The story is told from the perspectives of both Adam and Victor, who belong to a strange and unusual found family … of vampires. They have two moms, one from Italy and one from Sudan, an older sibling Sung from Korea who is studying hard for online college, and then there’s Adam and Victor. We learn pretty quickly that Adam is ethnically Jewish, but wasn’t raised with any knowledge of his religion. The two younger members of the family want to learn the cool vampire stuff that they’ll be able to do at some point, but their moms are focusing on stuff that they consider boring.

We get to see the whole vampire myth being rebuilt from the ground up. Instead of biting humans and draining their blood just to kill them, they are able to use their powers to heal instead, making them able to develop symbiotic relationships with humans, rather than parasitic relationships. It was cool to see the whole dynamic changed, and done so beautifully. The reason for the shift in dynamics between vampires and humans is also explained.

I loved the two different main characters, and getting into their heads. Do they make stupid mistakes? Of course, but what 10- or 14-year-old doesn’t? It felt more realistic than anything, and while yes, they’re both vampires, it was easy to get into their mindset and empathize with their struggles. The side characters were also written so well. They have full personalities complete with realistic quirks, and I loved getting to know all of them.

Everything flowed so smoothly, and I almost felt as if I was in the Pacific Northwest while reading. It was a nice change from the smoke blowing down from Canada. This story was a fun, fast-paced, adorable, and a little spooky read that I loved so much. There’s so much diversity in the story, with a cast of characters from various countries and backgrounds, and we get to learn a bit about each throughout the story without it feeling like a lesson at any time. Moulton is a gifted writer, and I’ll be looking forward to any other books that they put out. In their author’s note, this really stood out to me:

“Hate doesn’t die in silence—it thrives. The only way to stop it from growing is to call it out when you see it, in whatever form it takes.”

I spent a lot of time debating with my Jewish friends whether or not a vampire could keep kosher. So when I saw there was a book about Jewish vampires coming out, my expectations were immediately high. I'm pleased to say I Don't Want To Be Your Monster is everything I could have hoped for and more. They even discuss the kosher vampire problem! Even better, the story interrogates the underlying biases and prejudices that created vampire myths--especially antisemitism. What results is a story that is fascinatingly nuanced and interesting while also being an incredibly satisfying and enjoyable read.

A truly fantastic debut and such an important entry into the vampire canon. I know kids are going to go absolutely bonkers for this book. Especially loved the PNW setting!