4.5 stars

THIS BOOK IS MAKING ME SO EMOTIONAL
BALTHAZAR
ALICE
DEER DIABETES
THREE TOES
EDWARD III
JULIET DESTROYING THE LABORATORY
MONTGOMERY STAYING ON THE GODDAMN ISLAND
????!!!!! ( )

It was okay.... I just kept waiting for something amazing, or intense to happen, and it never really did. Also when I read the blurb, I thought that I would be in for a story that explored, in depth, the psychological instability of a madman's daughter and her life in London, trying to hide her shadow. I think the blurb was more exciting than most of the book.

I found it rather predictable, and I could not stand Juliet (was that the main character's name? It was not important enough for me to remember.) She was an annoying character, with her constant surprise at everything and her indignation over her father's work. And her absolute lack of character and character development was frustrating.

Actually most of the characters were bland archetypes, they really did not deviate from their one dimensional nature. I think the most interesting characters were Caesar (guy with antlers) and Jaguar.... oh, and Duke. And that was only because they did not appear enough for me to become disinterested in them.

The writing style was not too bad, it was engaging enough and easy to follow. The anatomical words that appeared occasionally made Juliet seem a little smarter, and made it seem like she was actually her father's daughter. The way the characters' spoke also seemed authentic for the time period this story was set in.

Overall, I was always expecting something amazing or out of nowhere to happen. I think I feel let down, because the story was not what I was expecting, and the pace of the story was like a low frequency sine wave. ( )

I don't know what made me add this book to my TBR because usually when I see it's tagged horror by many people, I won't read it. Still, here I am writing a review on this scary story.

I have to say that I didn't like the main heroine, Juliet, very much. She is so obsessed with the idea of being monstrous because of her father's genes that it really becomes more and more annoying with each page. I'd like not to read about it so often.

The idea of the experiments her father did wasn't bad but it went too far for me and seemed far-fetched even for its genre.

But still, I was interested to know who that horrible monster was, and I was swiped away when I found out the truth about it. The love triangle was a little bit annoying too because it seemed obvious to me whom she had loved. The story is the first one in the trilogy but I don't really want to know what's going to happen next. ( )

UPDATE 08/02/2021 - Review added

CW: Vivisection, animal abuse, animals in pain/distress OP, medical experimentation on animals and humans, death of loved ones, murder, gore/blood, attempted sexual assault, sexism (of that era - challenged through the actions of the MC).

Well that was a dark and disturbing gothic YA novel.

The author has imagined a sequel to [b:The Island of Doctor Moreau|29981|The Island of Doctor Moreau|H.G. Wells|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388230211l/29981._SY75_.jpg|68894] featuring Juliet, the daughter of Doctor Moreau. I would steer clear of this if you don't like gore, and if you find animals in pain and medical experiments on animals at all distressing. There are two or three quite upsetting scenes. So the story itself is actually quite good, however it was unnecessarily long and at times incredibly boring. To be clear, I did not want more of the medical experiments, just a tighter telling of the story. I mean, there is a love triangle so the editor could have started with axing that. Also, there was some really muppet type behaviour that seemed to contradict that Juliet was a very intelligent woman i.e. running out of the safe compound into the dark when a beast is going around ripping out people's hearts. Come on lady! That's' Surviving a Horror 101' right there! I am going to read book 2 but purely because I am checking these books out for suitability for an English assessment I am curating books for. Down grading to 2.5 Stars.


UPDATE 06/02/2021 - Re-reading in preparation to read book 2 and 3.

3.5 Stars ( )

A competent re-imagination of 'The Island of Dr. Moreau.' ( )