Review: How To Make Friends and Monsters by Ron Bates

How To Make Friends and Monsters by Ron Bates
Publisher: Zonderkidz
Release Date: July 22, 2013
Book Format: ARC 
Number of Pages: 347
Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars 
Synopsis: Howard Boward, a 13-year-old boy-genius with a chip on his shoulder is too smart for his own good. He has troubles making friends---possibly because he complains so much. Until one day a science experiment goes haywire, and Howard creates a best friend for himself---Franklin---who also happens to be a monster. Creating Franklin was an accident, not like Howard was playing God or anything---or so Howard tells himself. Franklin and Howard are having so much fun, Howard decides to create more 'friends, ' using DNA from kids at school. Only, these friends aren't quite as friendly. Soon there's a major mess and Howard has to sort it all out before the monsters destroy their human counterparts. But terminating the monsters proves harder than he imagined. They didn't choose to be monsters; they can't go against their innate nature. Howard finds himself facing consequences for playing God. Getting rid of the monsters means learning to tame his own inner beast, and Howard begins to understand the meaning of free will and true friendship


My Review: 
I received How To Make Friends and Monsters by Ron Bates from the publisher, and this is my honest review.

How To Make Friends and Monsters was a breath of fresh air compared to the YA and Adult i’ve been reading. In this story we meet Howard who doesn’t really have many friends. So throughout the book we follow him on his journey to somehow making friends, and let me tell you it wasn’t not easy. Howard is a 7th grader and he is what most people would call a nerd I guess and he doesn’t have many friends. His solution to this problem is to use what he knows best (science) and make himself a “friend” many things went wrong but many things went right as well.

I don’t normally read Middle Grade books but lately i’ve been giving them a try lately and so far I’ve been liking what I’m reading. This book was so breezy and fun. I loved it because it brought me back to the days when I was in Middle School which are times I miss dearly so I’m glad the book could take me back like that.

Howard was such a cute and sweet character. I loved how nerdy he was because I’m a nerd myself so I liked reading him try to make his way through middle school being himself. I also loved the way the author made the book fantasy but very believable I’m always impressed when books are believable.

Can we just talk about how much I loved Franklins character! He was supposed to be big and scary looking but he was such a sweetheart even when Howard was being rude he was so innocent. I hated the part in the book where they fought I felt so bad for Franklin, but I’m glad everything worked out.

I also enjoyed Howard’s character because he was a very creative young boy. I mean he had to have had an amazing imagination to create all those monsters!! In the end Howard did the right thing and I just enjoyed how well the book played out with the monsters and everything, this gets a solid 5 out of 5 stars.

I hope you all enjoyed this review! Let me know what you think in the comments :)