Review of The Monsters We Deserve by Marcus Sedwick

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Synopsis: "'Do monsters always stay in the book where they were born? Are they content to live out their lives on paper, and never step foot into the real world?'

The Villa Diodati, on the shore of Lake Geneva, 1816: the Year without Summer. As Byron, Polidori, and Mr and Mrs Shelley shelter from the unexpected weather, old ghost stories are read and new ghost stories imagined. Born by the twin brain of the Shelleys is Frankenstein, one of the most influential tales of horror of all time.

In a remote mountain house, high in the French Alps, an author broods on Shelley's creation. Reality and perception merge, fuelled by poisoned thoughts. Men make monsters; but who really creates who? A book about reason, the imagination, and the creative act of reading and writing. Marcus Sedgwick's ghostly, menacing novel celebrates the legacy of Shelley's Frankenstein."

My Review: I picked this book on the basis of being a Frankenstein/Mary Shelley inspired book and that cover is amazing! It took me a while to wrap my head around the fact that it isn't written as a traditional novel, it is more like journal entries but not entirely. I kept waiting to find the story in it but it never really came. It was a bit of an unusual reading experience but once I got over the missing narrative I was expecting, I really got into this book. It was appropriately eerie and spooky. At first I wasn't sure how I felt about the narrator/writer picking apart my favorite book in ways I had never really noticed before but I still really appreciated the different view. As the book progresses and spirals more into the obscure, it gets difficult to follow but at the same time is so engrossing that you can't put it down. I really appreciate that Sedgwick didn't attempt to re-imagine the original work but took this unusual approach to it and gave us this odd but thrilling book.

My Rating: Even after having sat on this book for a couple weeks I am still completely at a loss with whether I really loved it or whether I am still irritated and confused.  It was such a unique book and not at all what I expected, I think I have to give it a rating of Three Paws and a Stump Wag.