Review: Monster in My Closet by R.L. Naquin

Monster in My Closet

(Monster Haven, #1)
By: R.L. Naquin
Publisher: Carina Press
Published: July 30, 2012
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Rating:

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I stopped believing in monsters long ago. But I knew I wasn’t imagining things when I found one in my kitchen baking muffins. I’d seen him before: lurking in my closet, scaring the crap out of my five-year-old self. Turns out that was a misunderstanding, and now Maurice needs a place to stay. How could I say no?

After all, I’ve always been a magnet for the emotionally needy, and not just in my work as a wedding planner. Being able to sense the feelings of others can be a major pain. Don’t get me wrong, I like helping people—and non-people. But this ability has turned me into a gourmet feast for an incubus, a demon that feeds off emotional energy. Now, brides are dropping dead all over town, and my home has become a safe house for the supernatural. I must learn to focus my powers and defeat the demon before he snacks on another innocent woman and comes looking for the main course.

We’ve all been afraid of monsters in our closet or under our beds when we were kids. But when Zoey was 5 years old, she really did have a monster in her closet. So imagine her surprise when she wakes up one morning and finds the closet monster from her childhood is not only sitting at her kitchen table, drinking coffee and reading her newspaper… but making muffins as well! Not only are the monsters in our closets real but so are incubi, pixies and brownies as well. Apparently Zoey is a “helper”. It’s in her nature to help others and the “hidden” are starting to flock to Zoey for help, which is where she meets all these new and different creatures. Not only are these creatures of folklore real but apparently she has gained the unwanted attention of an incubus.

Let me start out by quoting the first paragraph of the book, just so you get a snippet of how awesome this book is.

“Of all the possible weapons I might have grabbed, I chose a toilet brush. The men’s boxers and oversized Hello Kitty t-shirt I wore reinforced my feeling of absolute stupidity. I made a mental note to buy myself a baseball bat, should I live through the next few minutes. And maybe some grownup pajamas.”

I really liked this story. I liked all the creatures that Naquin brought to the table. I must admit that I had no idea what a brownie was at the time of reading this but when Zoey starts cleaning off barbie furniture for them to use when they show up to her house for help, you get a sense of their size and between that and her description of them, I could easily picture them in my mind. Not only were the creatures unique in the story but the humans that are involved are different as well. Zoey meets a guy at the beginning of the book named Andrew who can see auras, has an herb shop and can whip up a tea that can cure just about anything. Oh yeah… and he has a Fennec Fox as a pet! You see what I mean? Naquin not only wrote a fabulous story but she thought outside the box throughout the entire thing.

If you are looking for a fun new urban fantasy that is not your typical vampire, shape shifter, angel, ghost… whatever… this is the book. You won’t find ANY of the typical creatures that are in the mainstream books in Monster in My Closet.

“Nice one, Zoey. You did everything short of farting in there. Maybe if you see him again, you can tell him you have a yeast infection.”