A fabulously powerful story about a child cruelty and murder case, and the people – largely flawed, but all interesting – that surround and are affected by it.

I would recommend Monster Love to anyone for the writing in an instant, and yet the subject is one that makes me hesitate to recommend it at all – a paradoxical feeling that sums up the ambivalence of having discovered a book that tells a horrific story with absolute humanity and insight.

Sherilyn and Brendan seem like the perfect couple – a bit detached from everyone else, a bit distant, but obviously in love and at home with each other. Nothing comes between them. Not even their daughter. Topolski ruthlessly undoes the romantic notion of the ‘soulmate’, taking it to its tragic extremes… the origins that might create such a dependency, and the results of two people being the all-consuming obsession of one another.

Topolski’s voice changes with each of her narrators, adopting the concern, the disgust, the passion, the almost trivialised neglect, the foulness that creeps into the soul, unchecked and undetected; her ability to conjure something like this from all angles is masterful, as is her ability to summon empathy from an unwilling reader.

I think what I found most astonishing in Monster Love is that the shocking central event is entirely underplayed – reactions are not, but at no point does Topolski give into the need to embellish or dwell upon the child’s misery… in the stream of characters who step up to tell their story, never do we hear from Samantha – an exquisite highlighting of the parent’s achieved goal; to send their daughter back to the oblivion from which she was sent to ‘part’ them.

This book will unsettle and upset you, but not gratuitously. It will make you think about humanity and all the ways in which it can go wrong. And when you close it, you will be left undecided about whether you have read something horrible, or something wonderful. ( )

Monster Love wasn't a book I would normally have picked off the shelf but it came highly recommended by a friend whose reading judgement I trust so I was willing to give it a try. It was the slightly fuzzy photo of the angelic-looking child on the cover that put me off initially as it looked suspiciously like another example of misery-lit. In the end, I was so glad it had been recommended to me. This is a well-crafted novel about the aftermath of a child cruelty case. It soon becomes clear that the protagonists have appeared in court on cruelty charges involving their baby daughter. The story is told from the point of view of neighbours, social workers, police etc - all the people who have, in one way or another, been involved in the case. It isn't, however, one of those books that fights to get a tear of sympathy or a shriek of horror from the reader. It is subtle and understated and left me reeling. In many ways it reminded me of my favourite ever 'nasty little book', The Collector by John Fowles. It's several weeks now since I read Monster Love and it still haunts me. ( )

Absolutely harrowing but addictively gripping is the best way I can describe this book. Like other reviewers, there were times when I wondered if I'd be able to finish the book, but I could not resist returning to it again and again. The terrible story of a child's murder is told from the viewpoint of multiple persons - neighbours, family & colleagues of the murderous parents,as well as the parents themselves, and each voice is so convincing. The author has an astonishing ability to be able to write from the viewpoint of any character and convince us utterly that they are male or female, prison officer or abused wife.

I was not at all surprised to read that the author has a background in psychoanalysis. This book is absolutely saturated in Freudian theory. Unresolved parental conflicts, Oedipal abuse, classic defence mechanisms such as denial and regression (the protagonists sledging down the stairs on duvets, and Brendan's repeated enuresis during stressful times). Bowlby's ideas about maternal deprivation are realised as both Brendan and Sherilyn are presented as cold affectionless psychopaths. In fact the only people they ever get close to are each other, so close in fact that by the end of the book they no longer need each other's corporeal presence - instead they have all but merged into one person despite being separated in space.

The monster love of the title could refer to almost any character - most obviously Brendan and Sherilyn, but also the obsessively doting love of Sherilyn's mother for her sister, the monster that is Brendan's father: even the minor players such as James the paedophile seem to have encountered such monsterous love during their formative years that they are damaged forever. The whole messy family business brings to mind Larkin's 'This Be The Verse'. Horrific, unsettling and utterly compelling. As difficult as the subject matter is, I'd definitely look for more work by this author. ( )

This book has me almost speechless with shock but was so gripping that I read it in one sitting. Just when you think it cannot possibly get any more shocking or distressing it somehow does.

Brendan and Sherilyn have everything but all they want is each other. By the time they meet at work they have already abandoned their unsatisfactory families and carved out high-flying careers but their meeting starts an obsessive love. All they want and need is each other, to the point that when they have their daughter Samantha they resent her intrusion into their lives and a spiral of abuse and neglect ends in the telling of this shocking, distressing story by those who played their part in it. From a concerned neighbour to a harrassed social worker, a police officer driven to breaking point and the disbelieving families of Sherilyn and Brendon we get every point of view, including theirs.

Everyone but Samantha has a say in this story, perhaps because she had no voice herself throughout her life.

It's rare to find this sort of abominable coldness in a character and yet here it is in two. With no perception of what they have done, no acceptance that they have abused and killed their own child and at one point this terrible proud happiness when the policeman's discovery of her body is described in court (their reaction is noted with shock by the court usher) they truly are two of the most cold, unfeeling and quietly psychopathic people ever to appear in a book I have read. They are frightening, and yet at the end of the book Brendan has this one moment of humanity that makes you wonder why he can empathise with a strangers child but not his own.

This book is not for the faint-hearted and it is not just the death of Samantha that some readers might find distressing. Sherilyn's mother is mentally fragile following the loss of four other children and those losses and her feelings about them are described.

I don't think anyone can read this book and not end it feeling shaken and upset but I would still recommend it as being the first book by an author with amazing insight and talent. It's well written and well thought out, designed to make everyone think that this could happen behind the closed doors in their street and makes the reader wonder how much responsibility they might bear if it did. This book took hold of me from the minute I started it and did not let me go even after I finished it. It's going to be on my mind for a long time and although I can't say I 'enjoyed' it with it being such a terrible subject, enjoyment isn't the only criteria for great book and that's what this was. A great book that shook me out of my comfortable reading habits and kept me gripped right until the end. ( )

The storyline revolves around neighbours thoughts and feelings on an appalling murder committed by Sheralyn and Brendan Gutteridge. This monsterous couple lock their four-year-old daughter Samantha in a cage and leave her to die without them feeling a shadow of remorse. When I read the harrowing passage about this little girl’s death I thought I wouldn’t be able to carry on but Topolski writes very fluidly and pulls you into the bewilderment that the community feel. The book fed on my own paranoia of how well do we ever know other people. It is a very disturbing tale that is now haunting me and I can’t get the tragic images out of my mind. I did get a reprieve from the horrors it contains because the telepathic communion between the couple seemed seemed a little far fetched . Thanks to that it took the edge off of the shocking storyline for me. I will look out for more by the author but hopefully she’ll choose a less sensitve subject next time. ( )