The Comfort of Monsters by Willa C. Richards




A missing sister. A sexually deviant boyfriend. A flaky brother. And a man that is all wrong for her sister. Peg was surrounded by questionable men. And since the disappearance of her sister, Dee, Peg has been struggling with the following questions: Why did she let Leif slap her around like that? Were she and Dee doomed from the start to seek the ‘comfort of monsters’? Was her sister a victim of the Milwaukee Monster or something more sinister? Dee was always receiving attention from boys. Someone used to write love notes in the front yard to her as children. Where was Frank and was he responsible for his sister’s disappearance? And why aren’t the police doing anything about these disappearances?

Thirty years have passed since Jeffrey Dahmer had been arrested and the town was tired of being a tourist depot for those who are obsessed with the man who had terrorized the streets of Milwaukee. Many of the cannibal’s victims were still being drugs through the media while their families are still healing, and a visit from a renowned psychic, Thomas Alexander is not helping the matter.
In failing health, Peg’s mother begs her children to seek the help of Thomas Alexander to bring closure to Candace McBride’s disappearance. Maybe this will bring some closure to Peg who has tortured herself with blame since the day Dee ran out of the apartment on the fourth of July.

Overall, I enjoyed the style and flow of the writing. There were some really well-written lines and I can see why this title has won the awards that it has. Willa C. Richards is a talented writer. But as far as the story plot, I felt that more could have been done with Frank. I felt that the storyline asked the wrong questions and was slightly disappointed with the answers to the questions that I had while reading this.



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