Kathryn Harkup

A thrilling and gruesome look at the science that influenced Mary Shelley's classic Gothic novel, Frankenstein.

The Science Behind Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

Making the Monster

Lacy W

A special thank you goes to Netgalley and Bloomsbury Sigma for the eARC of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This book was a monster. (haha, did you see what I did there??) It took me over a week to read this book and it wasn't even that long, which is unheard of for me. The last time I took that long to read a book, I read Roots which took me a month and was back when I was in high school.

Basically, the premise of this book was conveyed in two fold. First, we have the somewhat biography of Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. It wasn't complete by any means but it gave quite a bit about her life and how the events in her life contributed to  Frankenstein. That was my favorite part because I just really love biographies. I knew nothing about Mary Shelley. Just the rumors that she kept her husband's heart in a jar when he died. Which, spoiler alert, actually happened. 

The second part was the science behind Frankenstein. This is where the book lost me a little. I appreciate the hard work Kathryn Harkup put into researching the science but it was so dense. Everything was explained and I mean everything. Every single inventor, scientist, chemist, you name it, was given a mini bio and an in depth analysis of their experiments and how they contributed to the science behind Frankenstein. It got to be a bit much after a while. I think I glossed over a lot of it, which is unfortunate because I was generally curious about it. But I just couldn't get my brain to accept what I was reading. 

But this book really helped me understand Frankenstein better. Even though, I think Victor was still an idiot, I understood him better. I think this would be a great supplement to have while reading Frankenstein, if you wanted to understand the science. I wish I had read this right after, as I would think my rating and overall likeness of the book would have been higher. I highly recommend this book for those that liked Frankenstein, enjoy learning about science or interesting in learning a little bit about Mary Shelley.

Making the Monster The Science Behind Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

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