Tabby Swain: A Monster-Boy Bromance

I was drawn into the cover art on this one and generally enjoy YA Coming-of-Art, Romance, and light fantasy. Unfortunately, Tabby Swain one didn't come together for me.

The main issue for me was that there was so much extraneous content. I don't mind long books, but this one had so much that simply wasn't necessary to the story that it became laborious to read (skimming was the only way I could get through it). The idea of the main story could be good, but it hard to focus on that and think about it with all the extra stuff. I think this book could have used a good editor to cut the book to 250-300 pages which would have given the main story a better space to develop and shine.

It is possible though that I just didn't get it. I found show more the mature content warning at the start of the book really odd especially because I thought this was a YA book. Understandably then, I was confused from an early point about who this book was really for and that could have shaded my entire reading. show less

**Trigger Warnings for: Depression, Eating disorders, Domestic Violence, off-page SA, Mental Illness, and Alcoholism.**
‘Tabby Swain’ features a large cast of unique and wholesome characters. A coming-of-age novel about a group of friends with one thing in common: they’re shape-shifting monsters. If that wasn’t bad enough, they must also navigate the angst of high school, first love, and heartbreak. There's our main protagonist, Matthew; cat boy, his best friend Mark: a dragon boy, and their new friends John the bunny boy, and Teddy the bear boy. This story shows strong themes of interpersonal relations, the true bonds of friendship, accepting yourself, and learning to love others as they are, and overcoming racism.
While I show more definitely feel this was overwritten, it was still a wonderful book to read. By ‘overwritten’ I mean that there are extremely long winded, overly detailed physical descriptions, and drawn out scenes that I feel were not needed for the story's progression. I also wasn’t sure exactly what age group this was written for, as there are plenty of scenes that talk about hard topics like grief, eating disorders, past child abuse and neglect, as well as some very sexually suggestive dialog.
I enjoyed the strong bonds between Mark and Matt, and their utter comfort at being platonically intimate with one another, while still both being comfortable in their own sexuality. From sleeping in the same bed for comfort when one or both were hurting or crying, and the fact that the two boys openly cry with each other, and hold each other when needed. Their lighthearted banter was very entertaining as well, especially Mark, he was very unique!
While I did enjoy the many POV’s throughout the book, it did get confusing occasionally trying to figure out who was who. I also think that the timeline should be more clearly defined, as the book spans the time from when Mark and Matthew are Sophomores in highschool, and ends with their high school graduation and moving into their apartment at college.
This book truly does a remarkably good job in showing the day to day struggles of an animal person trying to make it in a society where they are anomalies. I really hope there is going to be another book, as I would like to learn more about where they come from, and the science of it from Dr. Rausch, the Octopus man/ geneticist. Overall, this High School Bro-mance was highly entertaining.

Thank you to the Librarything Early Reviewers Club, and the publishers, Bladenboro Beast Books, and the Author, Sithia Queen, for providing me with a free Autographed copy in exchange for an honest review. show less

A High School Bro-mancery

Tabby Swain lives up to its claim at a teen bro-mance. It centers around a group of high school friends who are part human, part animal, and they work to navigate the hard world of dealing with their afflictions while managing their everyday lives. There are some adults who have the same affliction as well, others who are aware it's a thing, and others who have no idea.
Some parts made me feel like I was reliving teenage life again, in high school where I sometimes have nightmares I'm still there and can't escape—to remember what it was like to still figure things out, to experience young love, to piss off parents. That being said, even with the monster afflictions these characters had, this story was not very show more interesting as a whole. It is an excessively long read. There was so much over-description—to a granular detail. You could hack off about half of the content and it wouldn't have changed much.

The characters were very believable, but this was written with too many POVs, (about 6 I think I lost count truthfully) and the writing style was not unique enough in tone to distinguish one from another. IMO, this would have been better if written in the 3rd person. I'm not sure why SQ decided to take the hard road on this one.

The concept was good, and the threads of friendship woven between the characters were nicely done. At the end though, I'm left with many unanswered questions and wanting to have experienced more supernatural conflict above the mundanity of everyday high school life. show less

I was immediately drawn to the cover of this book. Love the artwork!! I also love the concept of them navigating through life in highschool as part human part animal, I love that... Amazing. However I felt like the book was too long for no reason... Some good editing could chop it down some. I did enjoy the peak of the book. Overall the book was alright!!

I wanted to give this a try to go outside my usual reading comforts, but this just wasn't for me.
This novel is full of descriptions, which will help submerge you into the world and about high school life with the added twist of being a shape-shifting monster! It was fun to read.

This was extremely, extremely long. The cover art admittedly drew me in! I wanted to love the characters but I just couldn't! I didn't care for the mundane, endless descriptions of high school life. I liked the multiple POVS, but disliked how many people kept being introduced.
Overall, not my favorite and definitely could've been shorter. I did enjoy a peek into the highschool life! But the ending left too many unanswered questions.