A Monster Calls
#284.34 in the official ranking · full ranking
Books 1 book Status Complete 2011 Reading commitment Low Patrick Ness Last reviewed 2026-10-13
Overview
A Monster Calls is a standalone YA novel in which a thirteen-year-old boy, Conor, is visited nightly at 12:07 by a monster in the shape of an ancient yew tree while his mother undergoes cancer treatment. Patrick Ness completed the novel from a premise left by Siobhan Dowd, who died of cancer before she could write it herself. Published in 2011, the novel uses the monster's visits, and the three unsettling stories it tells Conor before demanding a fourth story in return, as a structure for confronting grief, denial, and guilt rather than conventional horror. It won both the Carnegie Medal and the Kate Greenaway Medal in 2012, the first book to win both British awards for the same title, and was adapted into a feature film in 2016 starring Felicity Jones and Liam Neeson, extending the story's reach well beyond its original YA readership.
Mythic fantasy · For YA
Core Canon: Reading Order (1 work) counts toward ranking
A Monster Calls (2011) core · 4.34 (296,610 ratings)
Quick answers
- How many books are in A Monster Calls? A Monster Calls's Core Canon is 1 book.
- Is A Monster Calls finished? Complete (2011).
- How much reading does A Monster Calls take? Low reading commitment (estimated from 1 Core Canon book).
- How is A Monster Calls ranked? #28 in this site's official ranking, based on 296,610 reader ratings across 1 Core Canon book. See the full ranking for how this is calculated.
Why is it ranked #28?
Ranked #28 in the official ranking.
- Average reader rating of 4.34 across 1 core book.
- Backed by 297k reader ratings.
- Less than 0.01 behind #27, The Riordanverse (a finer tie-break level decides the order).
- Below the top-10 average of 4.45.
- A single standalone novel: ranked on that one book alone.
Why explore this universe?
Top-tier rated · 1 book · Complete · 297k ratings · Ranks #28 overall
Good choice if you want a quick, low-commitment mythic fantasy universe that's already finished, so there's no wait for the next book.
Reading order
A single Core Canon work: no sequencing question to resolve.
Awards (verified)
- No awards found for this universe.
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Official resources
Research details
Ranking metrics: weighted average 4.34 across 296,610 ratings on 1 Core Canon book. See Why is it ranked here? above for the full breakdown, or the full ranking.
How do we know this?
Admission: Admit A Monster Calls (Patrick Ness) accepted 2026-09-04
Sources: (see source tier definitions)
- Wikipedia: A Monster Calls Tier 3
Last reviewed: 2026-09-04
Rule: Core Canon = the single novel A Monster Calls (2011); no series or Expanded material exists.