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Lily's Monster
Consumed with guilt following her elder brother’s fatal accident, Holly escapes to the isolated seaside home of Gant House with her family.
But the house has a menacing history, and the restless spirit inside has been waiting a long time for a family as perfect as Holly’s to turn up. Who is the child, Lily? And what is the terrifying dark power swirling at the heart of the house, whose touch means death?
Can Holly uncover in time the truth behind the monster in Lily’s past? Or will she and her family simply become Gant House’s next sacrificial victims?
But the house has a menacing history, and the restless spirit inside has been waiting a long time for a family as perfect as Holly’s to turn up. Who is the child, Lily? And what is the terrifying dark power swirling at the heart of the house, whose touch means death?
Can Holly uncover in time the truth behind the monster in Lily’s past? Or will she and her family simply become Gant House’s next sacrificial victims?
269 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 6, 2025
2 people are currently reading
4 people want to read
About the author
Cliff McNish
42 books253 followersI was born in Sunderland, a city in the north-east of England.
I don’t recall too much about my first 8 years of life other than I loved being outdoors especially in the woods near our house. I came home every night covered in scratches.
My first real book memory is being given C.S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew by my English teacher, Mrs Baldwin. I loved that, and all the other Narnia books.
So how did I become an author?
As a parent I was used to making up short and funny stories for my daughter, Rachel. When she was about ten, however, she wanted a story about a really, really nasty witch. This time I put pen to paper and what started off as a tiny scrap of an idea got bigger and bigger and BIGGER. It became The Doomspell.
After I finished it, I continued my love affair with fantasy by creating The Silver Sequence which I still think is probably my best and definitely my most original work. Following that, I tried to scare everyone half to death with a couple of ghost novels – Breathe and The Hunting Ground.
I could tell you more about myself, but the truth is that perhaps the biggest gift we can give anyone is our imagination and everything important I have to offer you about that is in the novels.
I don’t recall too much about my first 8 years of life other than I loved being outdoors especially in the woods near our house. I came home every night covered in scratches.
My first real book memory is being given C.S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew by my English teacher, Mrs Baldwin. I loved that, and all the other Narnia books.
So how did I become an author?
As a parent I was used to making up short and funny stories for my daughter, Rachel. When she was about ten, however, she wanted a story about a really, really nasty witch. This time I put pen to paper and what started off as a tiny scrap of an idea got bigger and bigger and BIGGER. It became The Doomspell.
After I finished it, I continued my love affair with fantasy by creating The Silver Sequence which I still think is probably my best and definitely my most original work. Following that, I tried to scare everyone half to death with a couple of ghost novels – Breathe and The Hunting Ground.
I could tell you more about myself, but the truth is that perhaps the biggest gift we can give anyone is our imagination and everything important I have to offer you about that is in the novels.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 1, 2025
I received a review copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. It has not affected my opinions.
LILY’S MONSTER is a powerful horror novel about how hard it can be to break out of the fear created by an abusive home.
This is a mash up of a controlling monster and a psychological horror. There’s Lily, controlling the family but acting out her own life and all the fear in it, but there’s also the dread and fear that comes from an abusive home. Her control starts subtle, with just one member and creates this deeply uncertain “what is going on?” sense that makes you wonder why the dad is acting as he is. Is this really him? Something that’s been unlocked by grief?
The book explores how trapped an abusive home makes people feel. Lily has all the power and yet her fear means she feels like she doesn’t. She’s making Holly’s family act out the dynamic she grew up with, so trapped within this narrative of abuse that she feels she can’t break out of it or change it, causing people to enact it again and again.
It’s quite a short book but packs a real punch. It’s deeply unsettling, deeply sad, and full of powerful family dynamics. It does this with pretty sparse language, making then all count (necessary when there’s less than 300 pages in the entire book!) It’s certainly one to read with the lights on.
LILY’S MONSTER is a powerful horror novel about how hard it can be to break out of the fear created by an abusive home.
This is a mash up of a controlling monster and a psychological horror. There’s Lily, controlling the family but acting out her own life and all the fear in it, but there’s also the dread and fear that comes from an abusive home. Her control starts subtle, with just one member and creates this deeply uncertain “what is going on?” sense that makes you wonder why the dad is acting as he is. Is this really him? Something that’s been unlocked by grief?
The book explores how trapped an abusive home makes people feel. Lily has all the power and yet her fear means she feels like she doesn’t. She’s making Holly’s family act out the dynamic she grew up with, so trapped within this narrative of abuse that she feels she can’t break out of it or change it, causing people to enact it again and again.
It’s quite a short book but packs a real punch. It’s deeply unsettling, deeply sad, and full of powerful family dynamics. It does this with pretty sparse language, making then all count (necessary when there’s less than 300 pages in the entire book!) It’s certainly one to read with the lights on.
Displaying 1 of 1 review