Genre-ally Speaking: The Madman’s Daughter

Title: The Madman’s Daughter
Author: Megan Shepherd
Publisher: Balzer + Bray
Publication Date: January 29th, 2013
Read: October 2013
Where It Came From: Library
Genre: YA-horror-science-fiction-historical
Rating: 4 H.G. Wellses

The Quick and Dirty:

Juliet Moreau has been living on her own in Victorian London, trying to scrape together a living in the shadow of her father’s disgrace. Once a prominent surgeon, Henri Moreau’s mysterious experiments led to scandal for his family, exile for him, and poverty and hardship for his daughter. As Juliet struggles on her own, she is left wondering whether her father is the warm man she remembers, or the monster that everyone says he is. So when she comes across Montgomery, her father’s old assistant, and discovers that he is still working for her father on an island in the Pacific, she convinces him to take her along on the ship back in order to finally get some answers. On the way they pick up a mysterious shipwreck survivor named Edward, who has no choice but to travel to the remote island with them. Things escalate after their arrival and less-than-welcome from her father when Juliet discovers that he has been experimenting on animals to make them more human-like, and that a killer is on the loose. Juliet knows she needs to escape the island, but doesn’t know if she will be able to escape the madness of her father’s blood in her veins. This novel, inspired by H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau, while probably not for the squeamish, is an absorbing gothic thriller that I quite enjoyed.

The Wordy Version:

When this book started off with a vivisection and a wrist-tendon-cutting in the first 50 or so pages, I wasn’t sure it was the book for me. Vivisection reminds me of a traumatic experience with a Mark Twain short story, and y’know, I just like animals too much to not get upset when I read about them being tortured. (You might judge me for finding that more upsetting than someone getting the tendons in their wrist severed, but that tendon-cuttee totally deserved it, so there.) I was feeling a little nauseous, but decided to stick with the book a bit longer because despite the grossness, there was something undeniably enticing about the writing. And I’m glad I did. When I tear through a 400+ page book in less than 36 hours, that says something! (Mostly that I should probably put more of a premium on sleep and social interaction, but hey, it happens.)

The amount of horror was just right for me, since I don’t like hardcore horror very much. If you’ve inhabited society and pop culture in the past century, you probably know what The Island of Dr. Moreau is about and thus have some idea of what Juliet’s dad is up to, but there is an air of mystery and suspense in Juliet getting around to discovering the extent of her father’s nuttiness and finding out how the other characters are involved that pulls you through the story. And then of course there’s the question of how she’s going to extricate herself from this remote island incubator of crazy, AND THEN how she might manage to reintegrate into society after experiencing all of that (although that second question might be best left for the next book). Juliet herself is very concerned with the possibility of having inherited a little bit of her father’s crazy, which adds an interesting psychological slant to the story, although from the reader’s perspective it’s pretty clear that Juliet isn’t as much like her father as she fears.

And yes, this book does have THE DREADED LOVE TRIANGLE. I’m not one of those knee-jerk reaction love-triangle-haters—it can be done well, and I try to give each a fair chance before passing judgment. The Montgomery-Juliet-Edward love triangle falls firmly in the middle of the spectrum. It’s definitely not an equilateral—maybe more of an isosceles? By which I mean that 2 sides of the triangle are well-developed, but one leg is less developed and left sort of flapping in the wind (although if any triangle had a leg flapping in the wind, I guess it wouldn’t really be a triangle, so there goes my metaphor). The attraction and romance between Juliet and Montgomery was convincing and made sense—they had a history, there was chemistry, and there was appropriate conflict. How would you feel if this nice-seeming guy suddenly reveals that he’s been complicit, if not an active participant, in horrifying medical experimentation with your nutso father? There was good internal conflict for both Montgomery and Juliet, and it built into realistic obstacles to their relationship. Now, castaway Edward on the other hand… I mostly just felt he was useless. Not really offensively so. I just…didn’t know what he was doing there. Juliet kept talking about being so drawn to him, and I just didn’t feel it. It didn’t feel real. There wasn’t much chemistry, neither the readers nor she knew much about him, and perhaps most importantly, he didn’t really have much personality. We are told that he is clever and educated, but it is never really shown to us in what he says or does. It wasn’t rage-inducing; I was more like Why are you here? Why aren’t you interesting? And why do you keep distracting Juliet from Montgomery? And yes, yes, Edward has a somewhat important part to play at the end of the story, but even that development failed to impress me with regards to his character. So, Montgomery and Juliet—fun to read about. Edward and Juliet? Less so.

Aside from my confusion about why Edward needed to be in the story, the only other thing that I had qualms about was the amount of time characters spent running around the jungle. And like with Edward, it was less, “This is stupid, I am angry at this writing!” and more, “Why are we doing this…? Oh, okay…” It may have bewildered me for a moment, but it didn’t disrupt my reading of the story and it was easy to forget about it and keep turning pages.

And that ending!! Oh man. Action right up until the last page, and then that cliffhanger. It was pretty awesome, and set up some promising conflict for the next book in the trilogy. (Yes, another YA trilogy. I thought with being inspired by The Island of Dr. Moreau it would be a standalone, but it looks like the next entry will take inspiration from Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.) Overall, I enjoyed this one a lot. More upfront, moderate horror than truly frightening, creep-down-into-your-bones, insidiously chilling horror, it drew me in and kept me reading, even with my worries about squeamishness and a limp-legged love triangle. I plan to read the sequel come January 2014, and would think about purchasing a copy of this for my shelf.

It turned out this was a good unplanned Halloween read! Have you read anything spooky this October? What’s next on your TBR?

Book Review: Poor Little Dead Girls, by Lizzie Friend

Title: Poor Little Dead Girls
Author: Lizzie Friend
Publisher: Merit Press
Publication Date: December 18th, 2013
Read: Sept - Oct 2013
Where It Came From: eARC from publisher via NetGalley*
Genre: YA-contemporary-thriller
Rating: 2.5 Secret Society Scandals

The Quick and Dirty:

Lacrosse star Sadie Marlowe transfers from her life in Portland to the prestigious Keating Hall in Virginia on an athletic scholarship. Boarding school life with the 1% is a bit of a culture shock for her, and she gets yet another shock when she is kidnapped one night to be inducted into a secret society. The posh parties, high fashion, and other privileges for members are enough to keep her from thinking too hard about the unexplained bruises on her body, other members with sociopathic tendencies, and the mysterious deaths of some former inductees—until things get really out of hand. But will Sadie be able to extricate herself and her friends from the toxic world of Keating and the Order of the Optimates before it’s too late? There’s potential here, but clunky dialogue, blah characters, and other aspects of the story/writing need polishing.

The Wordy Version:

This book…gah. I just. I don’t know how to feel about it. It’s not horrible by any means, but there’s so much that could be better about it. It was really hit and miss for me—some parts were pretty good, but other times it just fell flat.

I was drawn to this book because it sounded vaguely like the Pretty Little Liars series, which I unironically and unabashedly enjoy (the books, not the TV show. The show is dumb). Wealthy teenagers with private school shenanigans—scandal! Murder! Mayhem! The books are very different, but try as I might, I find it very hard not to compare the two. Still, for you, dear readers, I will try to keep them in separate corners of my head.

For the most part, the writing in Poor Little Dead Girls is good in that the words are put together in sentences that make sense and flow well. However, I do have issues with the dialogue—it often sounds like it’s trying too hard to sound teenager-y, dropping all kinds of lingo and slang that comes off a bit like an adult trying to approximate how they imagine high schoolers might speak. Even for the adult characters the dialogue simply doesn’t feel realistic. There were also many times when the word choice or phrasing of a sentence was just off—I understood what the author was going for, but it was just a bit wonky and could have been said better or more clearly. Keeping in mind that I read an advanced reader’s copy that may differ from the final published version of the book, here’s an example of some word choice/ambiguity that made me lol: “Brett shook her head, so small it was almost imperceptible” (270). I would argue that “slightly” would be a more appropriate word than “small” in this instance, unless of course Brett’s head really had been shrunk down to microscopic proportions. I can forgive that sort of word-wonk if it happens once or twice in a book, but if it happens repeatedly there’s some editing that needs to be done. Here’s hoping these sorts of things get worked out before the final version goes to print.

Another thing that left me confused in this book was the humor. Sometimes it was spot-on and made me cackle to myself as I read (ex: referring to a pair of heels as “high-fashion bear traps” [47]), and other times it just fell completely flat for me (“Maybe fashion designers really were magical. It would explain how they had managed to convince people to wear shoulder pads” [47] ::crickets::). Humor can be a subjective sort of thing, but I felt there was unevenness here.

I also felt the storycraft aspect of the writing could use some work. I was irked by characters being introduced only to disappear until it was convenient for them to be a part of the story again (e.g. Sadie’s roommates), and the romance between Sadie and her male counterpart transfer-student-lacrosse-player-not-buying-into-this-rich-crap Jeremy was on the trite side (although the pair of them watching a movie online together while in separate dorms was cute). There was uneven characterization and not much difference in voice between many of the main characters—you could probably give me isolated quotes from many of the Keating girls and it would be hard for me to match up who said what. Sadie herself had moments of feisty badassery, but other times I found it hard to connect with her. Additionally, sometimes there were jarring statements or turns of phrase that didn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the book (“Her voice cracked like a choirboy's whose balls were starting to drop” [138]—oddly vulgar, no?).

There was also level of unreality that I just couldn’t shake and made it hard for me to suspend my disbelief. Things like the fact that Sadie rarely ever thinks of friends back home in Portland, that she is able to identify and comment on her roommates’ habits after knowing them for about one night, a character saying he’d call Sadie even though we’d recently established that he didn’t have her phone number…I could go on. And there were loose plot threads dangling at the end—what happened to Thayer, and more importantly, Brett, who was one of the protagonist’s good friends and dealing with a (spoiler alert) abusive relationship?! I don’t know if the author is planning a sequel, but I didn’t think those things (well, mostly Brett) should be left up in the air.

Like I said, it’s hard for me not to lay this one alongside Pretty Little Liars in my mind. Both are kind of bonkers, outrageous, implausible rich-kids-at-school stories, but PLL has a gossipy, scandalous fun to it that I didn’t quite find here. There’s implausible that I can suspend my disbelief and have fun with, and then there’s implausible with mustache-twirling bad guys and a certain cardboardiness that doesn’t entice me to buy in.

That being said, it’s worth noting that despite these complaints, I did finish the book. I may not have been completely satisfied with many aspects of the story and writing, but it did pique my curiosity and pull me through the story. The writing had a humor and brightness that shone out from behind the things I found problematic, and I wanted to see the mysteries through to the end and find out how things turned out. But would I buy it? Probably not. Would I check out a sequel? Also probably not. I see potential here, but I think the book would benefit from some (a lot of) polishing and tightening.

*As ever, much as we are grateful for the copy, our review is uninfluenced by its source.