A review by vikingwolf
Matt Archer: Monster Summer by Kendra C. Highley

4.0

*I received a free copy of this book from the author via Smashwords in exchange for an honest review*

Matt is finally coming to terms with his role as a monster killer and has best friend Will working with them. For the summer, they are part of a military operation in the Australian Outback to kill mutant dingoes. But these creatures are smarter, speak Australian English and work as a team, leading to one of the squads being kidnapped.

"It was just an attempted strangling...nothing serious."

Matt and Will are happy to be working together and visiting Australia though that changes when they are attacked by trash talking Aussie mutants. Matt is already struggling with his jealousy over having to share his precious time with Mike with Mike's new fiancee' Julie, who is part of the team for this mission. When Julie's team are kidnapped, Mike has to risk Matt and his team to rescue her. Could the Archer family have a more complicated time right now? In later books, I will assume yes!

I wasn't sure if I would take to Julie but she is a good character and Mike does deserve a bit of happiness when he is not monster hunting. You do feel sympathy for Matt though. Mike is his father figure and sharing him with a stranger is difficult, especially when Mike and Julie will be moving to DC. In this book I really enjoyed the dingoes new intelligence and the fact that it was a different monster from those in book one. It keeps things interesting when there are different monsters and locations.

My only complaint is that the book was just too short! I'd have liked to have seen more in the search for Julie to give it more time for the tension to build up, maybe a more fleshed out big fight at the end. But that is just a bit of nitpicking on my part! I did enjoy this book even though it was short and I'm moving straight on to book 2.