Little Monsters by Máire Roche

Honestly, stick any Little Women retelling in front of me and I’m gonna read it. Ofc, it helps that this one has a super interesting modern twist too. Some of the changes from the original had me wondering whether this really needed to be tacked onto the LW framework but overall this was a compelling story about sisterhood, emotional health and the burden of responsibility, with cryptids thrown in for good measure!

The four original March sisters are still here but in this story they’re foster children being looked after by the sensible but two-job-juggling foster mom they call Marmee. Meg is fourteen and terrified of being split up from her sisters, who need her not only because they’re young girls in an often uncaring foster system but because they all have weird, monstrous traits that could get them all shunned or worse. Meg herself has claws and teeth that pop out at the most inopportune moments, usually in times of stress or heightened emotion. Which, given that she’s a teenager who’s taken on the burden of looking after three younger kids and who up till now has been doing whatever she can to please a rotating case of foster parents, is unfortunately often.

When Meg starts waking up covered in dirt with her claws and teeth out, whether in bed or in the forest outside of her Salem, Massachusetts home, she begins to worry. She’s always known she’s a sleepwalker, but could she now be doing much worse without being aware of it? Her anxieties worsen when she hears about the rumors of nearby attacks on livestock and property damage by some weird, strange beast that the townsfolk are becoming more and more determined to capture.

Adding to her stress is the impending Halloween holiday: her sisters want new costumes and she doesn’t want Marmee to think that they’re being a burden by asking. So she’s doing her best to come up with the money herself by taking on odd jobs, including for Mr Laurence, their kindly next door neighbor. The arrival of Mr Laurence’s young ward Brooks, however, throws a wrench into Meg’s plans to focus on taking care of her sisters. Not only is Brooks handsome and sweet, he also sees her in a way that no one else really has before. But Meg’s number one priority has to be taking care of her sisters… doesn’t it?

As an eldest daughter myself, I felt for poor Meg so hard. My own situation was never as bad, but I totally understood how difficult it was for her to start believing in other people outside of her sisters, to let go of her hypervigilance and to actually allow herself to want something that was just for herself for a change. And honestly, having Meg be the focus in this retelling is a genuine breath of fresh air. As a character/archetype, she’s usually discounted for wanting conventional happiness. Why should that make her somehow less interesting or less deserving of both attention and happiness? Why is it not a triumph that she gets the guy she loves, and the pretty dresses that she wants to wear? She’s still smart and compassionate and brave and responsible. It’s okay that she doesn’t have bigger ambitions than building a happy family, especially after all she goes through even to have that (and honestly, it’s tiresome when people think that good parenting is somehow “easy.” It is objectively not!)

I also loved the mystery in this book, and how it was sleuthed through and resolved. Some of the stuff was a little abrupt — like, I still want to know more about Brooks’ mom, among other things — but overall it was a very satisfying Middle Grade read that touched on a lot of the horrors of adolescence, with a deliciously spine-tingling urban fantasy twist. Also and importantly to me, Beth does not die.

Little Monsters by Máire Roche will be published tomorrow August 18 2026 by Aladdin and is available from all good booksellers, including