Imagine a modern spin on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein where a young couple’s undying love and the grief of a father pushed beyond sanity could spell the destruction of them all.
A string of suspicious deaths near a small Michigan town ends with a fall that claims the life of Emma Gentry’s boyfriend, Daniel. Emma is broken, a hollow shell mechanically moving through her days. She and Daniel had been made for each other, complete only when they were together. Now she restlessly wanders the town in the late Fall gloom, haunting the cemetary and its white-marbled tombs, feeling Daniel everywhere, his spectre in the moonlight and the fog.
When she encounters newcomer Alex Franks, only son of a renowned widowed surgeon, she’s intrigued despite herself. He’s an enigma, melting into shadows, preferring to keep to himself. But he is as drawn to her as she is to him. He is strangely…familiar. From the way he knows how to open her locker when it sticks, to the nickname she shared only with Daniel, even his hazel eyes with brown flecks are just like Daniel’s. The closer they become, though, the more something inside her screams there’s something very wrong with Alex Franks.
And when Emma stumbles across a grotesque and terrifying menagerie of mangled but living animals within the walls of the Franks’ estate, creatures she surely knows must have died from their injuries, she knows.
First, the blurb here is full of spoilers, but as it's my practice to use the provided blurb....
Second, it took quite a while to figure out the Frankenstein reference from the blurb. And honestly, reading the story, it didn't click...it was re-reading the blurb AFTER finishing the book that I suddenly got it. And I'm a professional reader......
All that being said, it's a good paranormal/gothic YA read. It's really well-written and spooky. You like the characters you should like, you don't like the ones you shouldn't. You kinda wonder about the ones you should kinda wonder about.
I just, I don't know. It didn't stick with me. And maybe it wasn't intended to, but I like to think that YA authors in particular want you to be clamoring for more when you finish their stories. I'm not. It's, ok, but not fabulous. It's a weekend read, but not necessarily one I'd hand off to a friend as soon as I'm done.
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this ebook galley from Angry Robot's Strange Chemistry imprint. through the netGalley publisher/reader connection program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
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