Of Monsters and Madness by Jessica Verday
Series Name: Of Monsters and Madness
Volume Number: 1
Genres: Historical, Horror, Mystery, Romance
Intended Age Group: YA
Publisher: Egmont
Edition: Hardcover
ISBN: 978-1-60684-463-2
Rating: 2.5/5
Amazon ThriftBooks
Description from the Book
Summoned to Philadelphia after her mother’s death, seventeen-year-old Annabel Lee hopes this new start will be her chance to make her dream of becoming a surgeon a reality.
But there are dark secrets in Annabel’s new home: whispers of strange activities, unsavory characters making deliveries in the dead of night, and a wave of murders sweeping the city. And when her father deems her interest in medicine unseemly and forbids her from practicing, she’s determined to prove him wrong.
With the help of handsome laboratory assistant Allan Poe and his unsettling cousin, Edgar, Annabel probes into her father’s research. But the links she discovers between the experiments being conducted, the stories Allan writes late into the night, and her new city’s gruesome crimes can be no coincidence. And she’ll sacrifice everything to stop them.
Inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Of Monsters and Madness is a Gothic thrill for the modern age.
Personal & Info
I’m going to warn interested readers now, this book does not have an actual ending. It abruptly stops, then has a chapter that says two weeks later. That last chapter describes the premise for the second book in the duology. The second book, Of Phantoms and Fury, has no physical copy. It’s only available as an audiobook.
Characters
Annabel Lee is the main character. The story is in her first person present tense perspective. Based on the dates the book provides, Annabel is sixteen. For the last ten years, she’s been living in Siam with her mother.
Markus is Annabel’s father. He has a twisted foot that hinders his walking. His personality is not pleasant. He used to be a doctor, and he has a laboratory in the basement.
Grand-père is Annabel’s grandfather. We never get a name for him aside from how Annabel and the servants refer to him.
Allan Poe is Markus’s assistant. Everyone considers him to be a fine gentleman.
Edgar Poe is Allan’s cousin, and Markus’s assistant. Unlike Allan, he is not a gentleman, and everyone in the house avoids him.
Maddy is Annabel’s dressing maid. She is kind and apparently short.
Cook and Johanna are the house chef and chef’s assistant. They are both kind and hard working.
Mrs. Tusk is Annabel’s tutor. She is the former headmistress of Menard’s School for Girls.
Story & Thoughts
The story takes place in Philadelphia in 1826. Annabel has lived in Siam with her mother for the past ten years, until her mother fell ill and died. The book starts with Annabel arriving in Philadelphia by ship, payed for her by her father, whom she’s never met. She has been invited to live with him in his house that is completely different from her usual lifestyle.
From there, the story is rather simple. Annabel adjusts to living in a large house that has servants. She hardly ever sees her father, because he’s so busy with his work. During her free time, Annabel explores the house and discovers there are suspicious activities and secrets.
Edgar Allen Poe’s work is actually incorporated into the story. I didn’t catch on right away, because I’m not into poetry or classic literature. Some of the more common references jumped out at me and then the story started making more interesting sense.
I don’t want to say too much about anything, because it would be so easy to spoil the entire story. All I can really say is it’s definitely Edgar Allen Poe and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde smashed together, but it works. If you like one or both of those, then you might like this book. It’s just okay to me, but I’m not terribly familiar with either source material.
It bothers me that the book doesn’t have an actual ending. A more solid wrap up would probably earn it some extra points. The story also feels a little slow, because it’s the kind that builds things up until closer to the end. Nothing is very surprising, either, because knowing the inspirations for the story makes the bigger plot points obvious.