Scan barcode
A review by howlinglibraries
Chasing American Monsters: Over 250 Creatures, Cryptids & Hairy Beasts by Jason Offutt
2.0
I'm so disappointed in this book, and I'm not even sure if it's fair for me to be this disappointed, but here we are. I love cryptid stories and literally spent countless late nights as a kid/teen (okay, who am I kidding, I'm 26 and it still happens frequently) digging through cryptid forums and sites and blog posts, devouring any stories I could find. Even if the stories took place thousands of miles away from me, it didn't stop me from loving them (though my favorites, of course, are the ones that took place in my home state of Georgia or surrounding states).
All of that said, as you can imagine, I was super excited to read this, but it wasn't what I expected at all. It's broken up by states, which was a cool formatting, but each state only has an illustration of one of its cryptids, and... honestly, I'm not convinced some of those illustrations weren't traced over old Neopets designs. Sorry.
Artwork aside, instead of giving history on established cryptids that a lot of people actually believe in, most of these were nonsense (one of the Georgia cryptids' sections claims that it's a widely held belief in this particular area, and having lived very near that region as a kid and knowing a ton of people from the town? No, it's not). Half of the stories given were basically just like, "This ONE PERSON in *insert year* claimed they saw this and now everyone believes it!" and, frankly, that's not how cryptid stories work from my experience. Maybe Offutt's circles run a little differently, but ask anyone in mine, and we'll all agree that a cryptid story isn't fun until there are enough corroborating stories to make it plausible.
Sigh. I didn't mean for this review to become a rant. I'm sure the author is a great person who thought they'd write something really fun and kooky, but the delivery wasn't there for me at all.
Thank you so much to the publisher for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!
All of that said, as you can imagine, I was super excited to read this, but it wasn't what I expected at all. It's broken up by states, which was a cool formatting, but each state only has an illustration of one of its cryptids, and... honestly, I'm not convinced some of those illustrations weren't traced over old Neopets designs. Sorry.
Artwork aside, instead of giving history on established cryptids that a lot of people actually believe in, most of these were nonsense (one of the Georgia cryptids' sections claims that it's a widely held belief in this particular area, and having lived very near that region as a kid and knowing a ton of people from the town? No, it's not). Half of the stories given were basically just like, "This ONE PERSON in *insert year* claimed they saw this and now everyone believes it!" and, frankly, that's not how cryptid stories work from my experience. Maybe Offutt's circles run a little differently, but ask anyone in mine, and we'll all agree that a cryptid story isn't fun until there are enough corroborating stories to make it plausible.
Sigh. I didn't mean for this review to become a rant. I'm sure the author is a great person who thought they'd write something really fun and kooky, but the delivery wasn't there for me at all.
Thank you so much to the publisher for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review!