Constant Reader (YA) July 2026 When We Were Monsters

 

I'm not the kind of person who thinks in terms of perfect introductory sentences for novels. But Jennifer Niven came up with a hell of a one for When We Were Monster:

The day before we kill Meredith Graffam is calm and blue. Like Massachusetts in summer after the rain. The scent of earth and flower and fresh clean air. Just a perfect sunlit day.

None of us will walk into the forest that night planning to commit murder.

Niven tells in the acknowledgement section that among the authors she grew up loving was Shirley Jackson and its impossible not to read the introduction and not be reminded of Jackson's perfect dialogue that introduced The Haunting of Hill House. "Whatever walked in Hill House, walked alone."

I was familiar with Niven's work long before I read this novel: I was a huge admirer of Holding Up The Universe and All The Bright Places. To say neither of these works, which while dark are far more optimistic, could have prepared me for Monsters is an understatement. Niven herself admits that she grew up loving Gothic novels and couldn't understand how she had never written the kind of book she grew up loving reading.

All of Us Monsters very much takes place in the increasingly growing world of dark academic thrillers. This is a genre that both writers for adults and young adults have been trafficking in for decades. I remember devouring Donna Tartt's debut The Secret History and Joelle Wellington's recent Their Vicious Games with extreme delight and there have been countless books in between. But All of Us Monsters is the first to lean in hard to the idea of true Gothic. It takes place at a prep school called Brighton & Hove that is mostly made up of the very rich and highly accomplished, save for the present company who are all scholarship students. There's no secret society but there's such a thing as Jan Term 'its own elite, slightly nerdier organization of students, past and present. The building where all the action takes place is Moss House, named for the founder and it is surrounded by ten thousand acres of forest that even though its official name is Murton Wood, everyone calls it Murder Wood. And in 1995 a student wandered off the path and died there.

The novel introduces the four people who will kill Graffam and they also fit certain notches:

Effy, the orphan, who doesn't believe in ghosts but is haunted by them.

Isaac, the legacy, who carries the world on his shoulders.

Vanessa, the wallflower, who never thought she belonged.

And Arlo, the prodigal son, who returned to the school he walked away from two years earlier.

So Monsters is not a whodunit, even though it will never tells us which one of these students does kill Meredith Graffam. Therefore you go in knowing what will happen. What it's about is why they kill Meredith Graffam. And honestly by the time the novel is two-thirds over, you've rarely wanted someone to die more.

The story is told from the perspective of two of these four 'killers': Effy and Arlo. They, along with four other students, have been selected for the Visiting Artist series in January. The artist is a best-selling author, Oscar winning actor, director and screenwriter and Tony winner Meredith Graffam. They will be there for three weeks and on completion of the class one of them will be awarded a $15,000 scholarship and a chance to have their work published.

The novel is punctuated by three weeks, each beginning with a pamphlet presumably written by Graffam, telling the students who attend what each is going involve. Needless to say, very little writing is involved even before the decision is made to kill Meredith Greffam.

The only other people besides the students as Moss House are Drea Garcia, Meredith's assistant and the groundskeeper. And I think the best way to describe the action in the novel is through something that occurred to me only after I finished, a subtext I don't know if Niven intended but actually makes the story more fascinating if it's true.

Meredith Graffam's first book was The Hunt. It involves the murder of her best friend Lara  – who was the student who died in the forest in 1995 – and her personal crusade to put the killer behind bars. However six years after the novel was published, new evidence exonerated the man Graffam had for killing Lara Leonard who'd serve eight years for a crime he didn't commit. The public went after her with torches as if she'd personally betrayed them.

Ten years later she emerged with another memoir: The Lie, in which she came clean about her past, documenting every lie she told and the shame of putting an innocent man in prison. That was turned into an off-Broadway show, which became a film, which led to other films and other books and now at 45 she's bigger than ever.

At the start of the book Effy has immense sympathy for Graffam and throughout the novel, even as it becomes incredibly clear that Graffam had no intention of bringing them her for a writing workshop, she keeps trying to excuse what is becoming increasing degrees of dangerous behavior to her students and increasingly exploiting and gaslighting them. For the record all of the students who are still there by the final week are still trying to make excuses for her until its well past too late.

Now I'll ask the question: is society willing to forgive Meredith Graffam for his obvious transgressions because she's a woman? It's certainly clear that none of the students have even considered doubting anything that happened to her all the way through. But would society be as forgiving if Graffam had been a man?

To be clear if Meredith Graffam had been a man (Meredith is actually used as a male name so let's stick with it) I don't think that America would have been willing to keep welcoming him back with open arms and certainly not an elite prep school who doesn't want to have scandal associated with it. I can't imagine a dean of students being willing to allow this happen in an era that involves both MeToo and cancel culture and I can't imagine any female students idolizing 'Meredith' if he had been a man. And the fact that every student is required to sign a NDA – which in the world of corporations is considered a red flag for bad behavior -  would argue that none of them might feel at risk with a female author that they would with a man.  They'd definitely be debating the patriarchy rather than attend voluntarily.

Now consider what Meredith does in their introduction. The eight students assemble by the cliff and Meredith gives the kind of pretentious speech that I've heard given by so many directors and writers that speaks of privilege and pretention. Then she demands they jump off a cliff at the count of three and if they don't she will automatically send them home. I can't imagine this scenario playing out if Jonathan Franzen were to do the same thing.  But all of them do so. One of them, I should mention, nearly drowns. Graffam immediately apologizes and everyone says okay.

After this its clear there's no wi-fi which again I can't imagine any teenage girl would allow to happen if they were around a male writer who had this history. The following day one of the students is gone. "Graffam kicked her ass out." When her assistant says it was more civil than that the student points out she was crying when it happened. Would this be tolerated if a man did this to a teenage girl?

By that point one of the students asks the obvious question:

"Did she deserve a second chance after getting that guy locked up and blaming it on the school?"

This is the explanation a female student gives: "In a world where people are canceled and then never heard from again, she managed to remake herself."

At that point the same student points out that her husband accused her of stealing his original idea and Effy says that he cheated on her as if that's a defense. Then she says that she didn't lie. She believed he was guilty.

I honestly can't see a world where two female students who defend a male writer if they did the exact same thing. Combined with the fact a male student is doing the accusation makes it clear that they've lined up on gender lines.

At this point the electricity starts going out and the heat can be worse. Then that night the power starts back on and every student is awakened by loud music on the second night. At the source of the music they find a handwritten note by Graffam telling them:

Now that I have your attention. In order to improve the creative dynamic of the group, someone else must go. You decide who it should be. After voting, return to your rooms and pack your bags. Set them outside your door. One of you will be gone by morning."

Everyone does it without a second thought. The next day another student is gone. Then Meredith stands on the roof of the building, on a windy cold January day and orders them to express their deepest fear. She says if they don't do it, she will jump – and she does into a snowbank.

After that Effy goes to another room and Meredith finds her:

The magnetic pull of Meredith Graffam is dizzying. She is one of those people who comes with her own thermosphere, as if she could channel the sun itself. She's been through hell. She has battle scars. She's powerful and fierce and intensely human. She does her part to shatter the glass ceiling for women and she's not above giving young writers a chance. In many ways she's who I want to be.

It's that underlined segment that makes it clear why Effy is so willing to forgive every single thing Graffam does. She confides in her about Lara and why they were friends and then talks to her. When asked what to say about her past Graffam openly says:

You can embellish. Lie. Whatever you want to call it. Take the truth and twist it. Improve it. Give it a better ending. Everything that's ever happened to me is material for my work.

She then makes it clear she doesn't want kids and gives a story about being villainized because she's a woman. Then she openly tells Effy how she drugged a producer with Visine that ended up with a producer ending up in the hospital.

"It sounds bad but it's not like anyone died and trust me he deserved it."

Meredith Graffam is confessing to poisoning another human being, which is a crime. Effy just accepts it as what a woman has to do in a male world. I can't imagine any reversal of the genders that any teenager would just blindly accept this.

As the novel continues Meredith Graffam increases the level of danger of the exercise. The second part begins with her demanding all the students stand in the open road while traffic is driving by. By this point one of the five students really does think she's crossed a line and refuses too. He calls all of them reckless and walks toward the fan. Meredith orders her assistant to shut the door and tells him to walk back, even though its January and freezing.

The student never makes it back to the Moss. Graffam then tells him the student is fine and back at home. Immediately after that the landline – there only connection to the outside world  - stops working. At that point Effy realizes just how cut off they are. Not long after they start feeling sick as if they have the flu. And at one point Arlo goes into the study and looks at the Scrabble Board which says RUN NOW.

And at this point I think I've told you all you need to know, save this. Unlike the works of Jackson and so much Gothic the monster is technically human. But by the time the third part is under way it's clear that Meredith Graffam is missing parts of her: compassion, empathy, a conscience, any ability to see the world through any lens but her own. Meredith Graffam truly believes she is the only person in the universe and everyone else is an NPC that she can discard or exploit as she sees fits.

By the time the novel's over you really wonder if Graffam ever had any stories to tell or if all she's been doing is stealing the lives of other people – in many cases, literally – for her own financial and personal gain. To call her insane seems inaccurate; narcissistic is by far the better term. Even in the final pages when she is confronted with all the horrible things she's done, she honestly seems too think that it is the students who have betrayed her.

Perhaps the greatest irony of what happens is that the legend of Meredith Graffam remains unchanged even in death. The novel's epilogue involves all the students returning to Brighton and Hove in the same exact positions that Meredith invited them five years earlier because of a book and a film based on their experiences of that workshop. Its clear by a discussion with a security guard that the legend has remained intact all this time and in a way they have carried on her legacy. One of the last things the book tells us is a letter that Effy has written to Meredith about everything that happened since then. Her words are not much different then much of what Meredith told her. And the final line makes one wonder an uncomfortable possibility.

We all know Meredith Graffam died in the opening pages of When We Were Monsters But how much of her spirit is in those who came back? There was only one monster that night. How many more of them came back?