Let The Monster Out, succeeds were it not for those muddling meddling kids

Allegory, teen-angst, outsiders, corporate shenanigans, and overcoming your fears meet in mglit, what’ll ya have? If you’ve ever been to The Varsity in Atlanta, which is a fabulous place to grab a hot dog, they’ll greet you that way. Let The Monster Out is mglit that wants to be in the Stranger Things, but with-more-heart club, and almost gets there. It has high aspirations and does offer plenty of thrills along the way, but left us feeling empty as though the book was playing favorites, let us explain.

Let The Monster Out is a title that can apply to the book’s subplot, but is also a metaphor for the actions that the book’s protagonists need to do in order to overcome things. Bones Malone is the new kid in a small town. He’s an active kid with lots of friends, but things lately aren’t as normal as they used to be. However, as one of the few black kids in the area, he’s always felt like an outsider to some extent, and the new aloofness that many adults are displaying is not helping him.

Bones meets a new friend named Kyle. They have lots in common, get along well enough and it’s great for Kyle to get past his safe circle of family and friends. He’s on the spectrum and while he hasn’t officially been tested, they all suspect it due to the way that he processes certain things. Kyle is also very much into lists, keeping things on them, and maintaining order.

Fluxcor is the big corporation in town that’s giving away high-speed routers to the entire town. The two kids are playing down by the river one day when they see someone drifting dangerously down the river. Bones jumps into the water to rescue the man who is a mental shambles of a person when he emerges from the water. He covertly gives the two a notebook and begs them not to tell anybody that it was on his person when he let the river.

The notebook has lots of notes that have as many questions as they do answers. It mentions tests by Fluxcor, forbidden tests, secret rooms, hiding locations, and more. At about this same time Bones’ mom starts acting very distant and uncommunicative. He mentions it to his friend and it looks like many of the adults in town are being spacy, distant, and forgetting things also. Could all of this have something to do with the advanced routers that the company is putting into place? And if that’s the case, what’s the intended outcome that whoever is doing this is trying to accomplish?

The plot to Let The Monster Out, looking back at it in hindsight, feels like something that is more at home in an extended Scooby Doo episode. There are elements in the book that middle school readers will really enjoy, but there are a couple of character traits that might rub other readers the wrong way. Bones can be a little standoffish at times, by his own admission. He also has a chip on his shoulder and thinks some racist things.

“The Evil Rich White Guy Club” is how Bones refers to the organization that might be causing all of this harm. It’s a flippant statement that his friends quickly condemn him for, but it’s out there. I could see middle school students realistically using that description for laughs, but it’s still racist. Such attitudes and personalities need to exist in books because they teach lessons about the actions and consequences of Neanderthals who think like that.

However, it’s that it felt entirely out of place in Let The Monster Out. We were having a good-old zombie, wasted parents with an evil corporation tale, and then this. Unfortunately, shortly after that instance, the climax doesn’t meet the evil that readers will want it to as it feels rushed and the AI surrounding makes it seem not to matter. What happens in AI stays in AI, unless you really believe it then we’ll all get together and have a laugh once the kids defeat the villain, if only it weren’t for those meddling kids.