As pop­u­lar as the vam­pire nov­el has become for young read­ers, Don’t Want to Be Your Mon­ster proves that there are still dimen­sions of this genre to be explored.

Deke Moul­ton points out in their insight­ful author’s note that alleged Jew­ish traits have always hov­ered over vam­pire sto­ries, from folk­lore to Bram Stoker’s Drac­u­la. This can be traced back to the infa­mous blood libel, a con­spir­a­cy that held that Jews con­sumed Chris­t­ian blood and that result­ed in vio­lence against them. More broad­ly, the lie that Jews con­trolled the world finan­cial­ly and manip­u­lat­ed non-Jews made it easy to asso­ciate Jews with treach­er­ous monsters.

When Adam and Vic­tor, two fos­ter broth­ers, are con­front­ed with a series of crimes, they must bal­ance han­dling the nor­mal stress­es of their fam­i­ly life with find­ing the killer. The boys’ moth­ers are both lov­ing and sup­port­ive, and they share the anx­i­eties of all par­ents who are try­ing to pre­pare their chil­dren to sur­vive and thrive. Mom and Mama have shel­tered a series of kids, but Adam has a par­tic­u­lar­ly unique ori­gin sto­ry. Dur­ing an anti­se­mit­ic inci­dent at a syn­a­gogue, Mom saved him through a bite that trans­formed him from an ordi­nary mor­tal to a vam­pire. Adam admires Vic­tor, his old­er broth­er, but Vic­tor seems increas­ing­ly dis­tant; he feels con­strict­ed by their sta­ble home. It becomes clear that drink­ing blood does not spare any­one from the pains of grow­ing up.

The novel’s vam­pire lore is not gim­micky, although it is intrigu­ing to hear a moth­er warn her son not to get caught in the sun­light, or to learn that, giv­en their ​“hema­vore” diet, vam­pires don’t need dish­es. The coex­is­tence of famil­iar and unfa­mil­iar aspects of the char­ac­ters’ lives rein­forces the idea that peo­ple share com­mon expe­ri­ences but also have dis­tinc­tive traits. Groups with dif­fer­ent qual­i­ties should not be alien­at­ed from others.

When Adam meets Shoshana and Luis, two humans equal­ly obsessed with solv­ing crime, he enters into a dia­logue with them about how some dif­fer­ences can be obsta­cles to mutu­al accep­tance. Shoshana is knowl­edge­able about both Jews and vam­pires, and she knows that igno­rance can lead to hatred.

By the novel’s con­clu­sion, not every rela­tion­ship has been healed, but there are con­di­tions in place for heal­ing to hap­pen. No one, Moul­ton assures us, has to live as some­one else’s mon­ster. Read­ers will also learn the prop­er bracha to recite upon see­ing a vampire.