Invisible Monsters

I thought this was an outstanding novel by Palahniuk. I thought the pacing of the story was well and especially liked how a lot of the surprise in the novel came from character's true identities. But not just in the normal sense of a character's motive being different than expected, but due to the fact that many of the characters are addressed by different names throughout the novel, there are moments where we find out that two characters who we think are different are actually the same person. And this keeps the reader on edge and does not allow them to take names for granted throughout the story.

I also thought this was one of the better openings of the Palahniuk novels. It really started with a bang, and even though we traveled back in time to grasp exactly what was going on, it did a really fantastic job of giving you a good “juicy” scene to get you interested in the novel from page one. The ending sections of the novel are everything that Palahniuk fans are to expect from him. The events really start to ramp up and surprises and shocking events are around every corner. In this novel in particular we get to see a scene in the first few pages of the novel, then at the end, armed with more information on the situation, view the event very differently, and this is very effective and interesting.

At it's core this book feels like a story of many people searching for their identity and place in the world, which is something that at one level or not very relatable. The twists and turns throughout the novel mixed with a quirky narrative and some interesting characters make this a very enjoyable read.