Only a Monster (monsters, #1)

Only a Monster is set in a version of London where hidden among ordinary humans live "monsters," beings who appear human but can travel through time by stealing life from people through touch on the back of the neck. Each monster family also has a unique hereditary power. The monster world is governed by a mysterious King who rules through the Monster Court, the ruling authority of all monsters.

When Joan Chang-Hunt is six, her grandmother Dorothy Hunt, known as Gran, reveals that Joan is a monster. Gran demonstrates the Hunt family power, the ability to hide and retrieve objects by placing them into moments in time, and teaches Joan the central rule: Monsters hide in plain sight, and Joan must never reveal what she is.

Ten years later, 16-year-old Joan spends the summer at Gran's London house. Joan's father, Pei-Wen Chang, is a human immigrant from Malaysia, and her mother was a Hunt. Joan volunteers at Holland House, a museum restored to its Georgian heyday, where she has a crush on fellow volunteer Nick. On the morning of their first date, Joan encounters Gran's elderly neighbor Mr. Solt, who has dementia, and accidentally brushes the back of his neck during a scuffle. Day instantly becomes night. Gran explains the truth: Joan stole time from Mr. Solt, shortening his remaining life, and used that stolen time to travel forward. All monsters travel this way. Horrified, Joan confronts her cousin Ruth, who confirms everything. Joan flees.

Joan finds Nick at Holland House. They spend the evening in the library, sharing a first kiss. The Oliver family, a monster family the Hunts despise, then arrives and seizes them. Joan and Nick are dragged before Edmund Oliver, the family's patriarch. Edmund identifies Joan as half-human and half-monster and orders Nick killed for witnessing monsters. Joan steals a knife and resists. Aaron Oliver, Edmund's teenage son, objects but is dismissed.

Edmund orders his man Lucien to duel Joan with a sword. Lucien wounds her side. Just as the blade races toward her, Nick intervenes, killing both Lucien and Edmund in seconds. Nick reveals he was trained from childhood to kill monsters and has signaled his people, who are hunting every monster in London. He offers Joan safe passage if she stays, but warns that if she ever steals time again, he will kill her. Joan runs to warn her family.

She finds Ruth pressing a blanket against Gran's wound. Uncle Gus, Aunt Ada, and Joan's cousin Bertie are dead, killed by Nick's people. Gran, dying, tells Joan that only she can stop the hero, that a new power will emerge in Joan, and makes Joan promise to tell no one. Gran places a gold necklace with an unfamiliar pendant over Joan's wrist and dies. Joan escapes through a window, but Nick's people break in and stab Ruth before Joan can pull her through. Ruth vanishes, having apparently traveled away. In the hedge maze, Joan rescues Aaron from one of Nick's men, and Aaron guides her out.

Aaron explains they must travel back to before Joan was born, since a person cannot exist in the same time twice, requiring them to steal approximately 20 years of human life from many people. At Buckingham Palace, Aaron teaches Joan to take small amounts of time from the crowd. When Nick's operatives appear, Joan feels a deep yearning and the world shifts. They land in 1993.

Joan tries desperately to warn people about the coming massacre, but every attempt fails. Aaron explains that the timeline corrects itself, smoothing over changes to important events. Ruth, who survived her stabbing and escaped to the 1980s, finds Joan after two years of searching. She reveals that other massacre survivors have been hunted and silenced by Court Guards, the Monster Court's enforcers. The massacre has been erased from every family's records, suggesting a coordinated cover-up.

Joan and Aaron visit Ying Liu, whose family possesses the power of perfect memory. Ying confirms that some Lius remember fragments of a "true timeline," the zhēnshí de lìshǐ, which was erased and replaced using a device kept at the Monster Court. He identifies Gran's pendant as a key to the Court. Nick then appears in the 1990s and takes the necklace from Joan, revealing his volunteer work was a cover for locating it. Joan realizes Nick intends to use the necklace to reach the Court and the device. She tracks down a younger version of Gran for information but discovers this harder version cannot be trusted.

Joan recruits Tom Hathaway, a former Court Guard, to guide the group into the Monster Court during a gala that opens the Court's gates once per century. The Court exists outside normal time, in a frozen moment of the long-destroyed Whitehall Palace. Inside, Aaron endures a humiliating encounter with his still-living father Edmund to divert attention from Joan. Tom leads them to the Royal Archive, guarded by a barrier containing a slice of the Paleolithic era. Ruth uses the Hunt power to bridge the barrier, nearly exhausting herself. Joan discovers a new power within her, turning the sealed lock to brittle ore.

Inside, they find not a treasury but a recently vacated prison cell. Joan retrieves a hidden message. After escaping the Court, Tom reveals the prisoner was Jamie Liu, Ying's son and Tom's partner, who was forced to serve as the living archive. Jamie's recorded message shows Nick as a teenager, subjected to over 1,900 iterations of trauma by a mysterious blonde woman who systematically manufactured him into a monster-killing hero. Nick was not born to this destiny; he was broken into it.

The group visits the younger Jamie, who explains that in the true timeline, the hero was an ordinary boy in love with a monster girl. The current timeline still yearns to return to its true shape, drawing together people who once belonged together. Joan recognizes the pattern in her connection to Nick and understands what she must do.

Aaron gives Joan a travel token containing 50 years of stored time and warns her that if she changes the timeline, he will not remember their bond. Joan travels to a future Holland House that Nick has converted into a trap for monsters. Imprisoned and interrogated under truth serum, Joan tells Nick everything about how he was manufactured. She escapes by exploiting her dual nature, taking time from her own neck in agonizing pain.

Nick eventually finds Joan in the ruined library where they first met. He confesses that the timeline feels wrong and that he loves her. Joan kisses him, sensing the timeline respond. Then she unleashes her true power: the ability to unmake things, to return them to their original state. She unmakes Nick, undoing everything done to him and everything he did, bringing her family back to life and erasing the massacres. Her power burns out entirely. The Nick she loved ceases to exist.

Joan recovers at Gran's house, surrounded by her living family, none of whom remember the other timeline. Holland House, altered by Joan's power, now lies in ruins. Jamie Liu, who retains fragments of memory thanks to his family's power, finds Joan among the ruins and confirms that the woman who created the hero remains at large. Joan promises they will be ready.