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Thursday, March 21, 2013

Dr. Frankenstein's Daughters- Suzanne Wyn

1.5/5





I picked up Dr Frankenstein’s Daughter’s because it had the nice retelling vibe I am so keen on. Plus it was Suzanne Weyn and I usually enjoy her novels I mean The Night Dance is one of my very favorite 12 Dancing Princess retellings, and Crimson Thread was a decent Rumpelstiltskin retelling.

But oh dear Goddess this was such a DISAPOINTMENT! Basically it is the story of Giselle and Ingrid (whose names I forgot constantly) who are the unknown twin daughters of Baron Frankenstein. He kept them a secret so that the monster wouldn’t find them.

A few years after his corpse is found the girls discover they have an Uncle and he brings them good news! They are now super rich and own Castle Frankenstein. He accompanies them on their trip to the castle and begins to help them restore it and take their place in society.

Giselle wants to be Baroness Frankenstein and wants to attend balls and parties and have lavishness all around her and eventually attain a good marriage. Ingrid is serious and studious, she falls in love with a wounded young naval officer while dressing like a boy to attend medical school and absorbing herself in journals she found that belonged to their departed father.

Soon after moving into the castle Giselle begins to sleep walk again like she did when they were young and people are found murdered on the island they live on, including two ass holes who accost Giselle and try to basically rape her. (Implied of course)

Soon Ingrid, with Walter’s (the naval officer) consent begins to use a dead body and her father’s research to restore his amputated leg and hand and cure the nerve disease he is succumbing to. All of this goes on during a HUGE party Giselle is throwing. So ha ha ha ha everyone finds of what Ingrid has been up to but, low and behold it has worked! So she is praised.

However Giselle is then arrested for all the murders because she has been killing people after old repressed memories of the MONSTER trying to kidnap them as girls resurfaces during periods of intense stress. Yeah didn’t make much sense to me either.

So Giselle winds up living with nuns being too insane to stand trial, they do hypnosis to reveal her hidden memories of committing the murders. Even though Giselle does not actually remember and now will spend the rest of her life with nuns and Ingrid occasionally visiting her. While Ingrid lives at Frankenstein Caste with Walter, they do not get married because even though he is getting better he feels it is “selfish” of him to love her….douche bag

I am not sure what to write first. How about the fact that this was written in epistolary format and fails miserably since it is simply both the girls’ diaries we have to go from. Unlike great books like Dracula which managed to draw out the characters and the story line….this book, like I said, failed.

Dr Frankenstein’s Daughters was written in such a way I didn’t care about the characters and couldn’t figure out what the plot actually was until the last twenty pages. Now in a normal novel this would be a plus, predictable books are horrible…However I didn’t know what the hell this book was about because there was NO PLOT, well that’s harsh… How about there were tiny bits of plot amidst a whole bunch of nothing and then TONS of plot crammed into the last twenty pages, making the book seem choppy, rushed and carelessly put together.

I was basically bored throughout this novel…. It was too predictable in some points in regards to the daily tidbits of the girl’s daily life and the few romantic encounters that they had. This book also had one of the worse cases of insta love I have seen in a long time. Example:
1) Girl meets moody boy
2) Boy tries to get girl to leave him alone
3) Girl and boy spend time together (briefly)
4) Girl spends time trying to find boy and pinning
5) Girl and boy spend time together (again, for like two sentences)
6) Girl spends time wondering why boy won’t see her, you know cause she Lurvs him
7) Boy rescues girl
8) Girl thinks boy wants on girl’s hotter sister
9) Girl begs boy to see her
10) Boy professes undying, yet selfish love and girl abases herself, cause you know…she still Lurvs him.

Barf.

Yeah so I can’t think of anything good to say about this aside from the fact it was a fast and easy read. The language was good and it wasn’t hard to understand, the descriptions were nice to…This book was….simple. If you are a HUGE Frankenstein fan then I would steer clear of this novel, but if you don’t mind wasting the money or your library/friend has a copy and you like retelling type things then give it a go…Maybe you will like it more than me.