What do readers think of Creatures by Crissy Van Meter? Write your own review.

"Creatures" by Crissy Van Meter is a beautiful story of a woman who must overcome her unconventional upbringing to find happiness. Evie is raised by an addictive but loving father. Her mother occasionally visits but never for long. When Evie marries Liam, a fisherman who is gone for long periods of time can she learn to love and forgive? I enjoyed this book though it was at times somewhat depressing. It is not a romance novel although it is about love and relationships. The story jumps forward and backward in time which I found to enhance the development of the characters although this may be a distraction for some. I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading!

The deeper I got into the book, the more I liked "Creatures" and it's deeply flawed characters. It's a powerful story about love. Not the romantic kind, not the kind with a fairy tale ending but the messy kind. Loving someone despite their flaws, their inability to parent and inability to communicate. Loving when it's hard. I really enjoyed this book and the author's style of slowly revealing Evie's story, her love for the creatures in the sea and her love for her island home. I loved the inhabitants of Winter Island.

On Winter Island, off the coast of southern California, Evie carries on a love-hate relationship with her hard-drinking but caring father. "Raised like a boy,...with mostly no mother", Evie helps sell Winter Wonderland, the potent pot raised on the island by her father, to the tourists who come from the mainland to enjoy the island atmosphere. This enterprise seems to be their main source of income. Island life is richly portrayed through the lives of the 'creatures'...those who live on the island, those who visit the island, and the beings that live around them in the ocean. There are beautiful descriptions of ocean and island life, but there is also loneliness and sadness in Evie's lack of any true family experience.

I am sorry to say that I enjoyed the information about the Whales more than the story. Evie's story of a unsettled life with disappearing and reappearing mother, a father drug dealer & addict made me wonder how she became a caring adult. It did make sense that she married Liam whose job on a ship took him away for months at a time. The limited population on the island was very well portrayed. I saw Evie surrounded by risk takers yet wanting to be the one in control, her role as a child.
As usual the hopping back and forth from adult to child, within the same page, was annoying yet made me pay attention. Possibly that is why the ending was a surprise. Duh I should have seen that all along.

As others have stated, from the brief description of the book, I did think it would be somewhat more humorous under the surface. The characters are certainly unique, flawed, yet human---and pertinent to the overall development and temperament of Evie. I did find the book hard to put down...once I got through the first two chapters. Overall, well-written---but I did find it a bit confusing and disjointed in places and had to go back and reread portions to follow the flow of the story. But, I'm glad I read it through to the end!

Van Meter's debut is a mournful novel on Evie's attempt to be self-truthful about her childhood through teen years into adulthood.

The format is both a strength and weakness of this story, The main sections of the book is names for the three days leading up to Evie's wedding, if her fiancé returns from being at sea, and the subchapters for each of these days contain in a nonlinear manner events in Evie's personal and working life. The strength is this format showcases the lyrical language and the interconnection of the unpredictability and love of Evie's personal relationships and the natural environmental her home Winter Island – when it is good it is very good and when it is bad it is horrific. The weakness is because of the nonlinear narrative events caused a spoiler or two a little too early and enforced for me the lack of character growth.

This tale deconstructs how human tell stories and decided on which version of events are remembered. As the pull of tides on the island are an essential force I will remember this story for the pull of family bonds and of an island on a soul.

While the analogies between whales and humans are interesting, Van Meter fails to fully connect the dots, for me. I struggled through this story as it seems disjointed while also being depressing. The "heroine" seems conflicted long after she actually finds answers, as though she needs an excuse to keep telling us about her drinking, smoking J and having irresponsible sex. It appears she resolves her mother and father issues well before she marries Liam, yet her marriage is a mess for many years. Confusing and mostly sad story of what it's like to be born into a family of addicts. Recovery is heartbreaking and endless.

The book begins with a dead, decaying, odiferous whale and a fiancé potentially lost at sea and segues into Evie's relationships with her alcoholic drug dealing father and mother that deserted her. Perhaps because I've previously lived with alcoholics and know the associated dysfunction firsthand, I found this story disheartening. I struggled to finish it. I liked Ms. Van Meyer's writing style, but this felt to me like an Al Anon meeting with Evie telling 'her story'. I read to escape real life.