A Review: Unnatural Creatures: A Novel of the Frankenstein Women By Kris Waldherr

 

Kris Waldherr's Unnatural Creatures takes place in 1790s Geneva, while the revolution progresses in France.  Told from the female perspective of Victor Frankenstein's mother, Caroline Frankenstein, his bride Elizabeth Lavenza and his servant, Justine Moritz.  

Some tales aren't what you think.

For the first time, the untold story of the three women closest to Victor Frankentstein is revealed in a dark and sweeping reimagining of Frankenstein by the best-selling author of The Lost History of Dreams.

Stunningly written and exquisitively atmospheric, Unnatural Creatures shocks new life into Mary Shelley's beloved gothic classic by revealing the feminine side of the tale. You'll never view Victor Frankenstein and his monster the same way again.

ISBN-13:	9798985351200
Publisher:	Muse Publications LLC
Publication date:	10/04/2022
Pages:	370

Have I cursed her?

 

No answer ever came, for her room flared with a light more brilliant than any she'd ever witnessed. Suddenly she sensed the threads of her past and present braid with the future. There she was, a girl trapped by her father's ruin of a life inside that vermin-laden cottage, then later with Alphonse and their babies. A shadowy figure followed them, the one she'd dreamt of that day in Plainpalais. 

 

Whoever he was, his face was scarred. Black flowing hair. Flesh the hue of bone. What had he to do with Victor? Or Elizabeth?

 

He'll be with them on their wedding night.

All of a sudden the shadowy figure was gone and so was the light. Caroline stretched her arms toward the void, as though she could halt fate from colliding with time.

I loved getting to know all three women; especially their roles in Victor's life, education and obsessions. Caroline was haunted and grieving yet motherly and deeply afraid of the wounds she carried within herself. Her marriage and relationship with Alphonse shone a light into Victor's obsession with science, life and death. 

My favorite character is Elizabeth because of her fortitude when it comes to love. Her loyalty to Victor was tested and although her heart remained always with Henry, Victor's obsessions with his monster and secret keeping always got in the way of everything else in his life. 

Justine is a character I struggled to like and understand. My heart broke for her terrible childhood but leapt at Caroline's rescue.  She was given a second chance at a real family, one she took wholeheartedly. Without giving anything away, I truly did not like her 'survival' and I'll leave it at that. 

 At the heart of Unnatural Causes are the themes of familial abandonment, betrayal, and the scientific archaic demonic ability to hold a humans fate in your hands and play at life and death as if you were God or Lucifer.  So many deaths so many lives taken senselessly at the hands of a monster all in the name of a promised love that was killed before it could live. 

In the end there was a sole survivor but at the cost of the death of too many lives. Victor Frankenstein’s obsessions killed his family and those around him.  Unnatural Causes is a page turning book, very dark themes, very gothic in nature. 

Unnatural Creatures is a breathtakingly beautifully written novel that envelops you and won't let you go until its good and ready!  I highly recommend it to all Mary Shelley lovers out there. 

You can find more information about the author and her books on her website, Kris Waldherr

 

 

 

Review: The Lost History of Dreams by Kris Waldherr

All love stories are ghost stories in disguise.

When famed Byronesque poet Hugh de Bonne is discovered dead of a heart attack in his bath one morning, his cousin Robert Highstead, a historian turned post-mortem photographer, is charged with a simple task: transport Hugh’s remains for burial in a chapel. This chapel, a stained glass folly set on the moors of Shropshire, was built by de Bonne sixteen years earlier to house the remains of his beloved wife and muse, Ada. Since then, the chapel has been locked and abandoned, a pilgrimage site for the rabid fans of de Bonne’s last book, The Lost History of Dreams.

However, Ada’s grief-stricken niece refuses to open the glass chapel for Robert unless he agrees to her bargain: before he can lay Hugh to rest, Robert must record Isabelle’s story of Ada and Hugh’s ill-fated marriage over the course of five nights.

As the mystery of Ada and Hugh’s relationship unfolds, so does the secret behind Robert’s own marriage—including that of his fragile wife, Sida, who has not been the same since the tragic accident three years ago, and the origins of his own morbid profession that has him seeing things he shouldn’t—things from beyond the grave.

• Product Details:
• Publisher: Atria Books (April 2019)
• Length: 320 pages
• ISBN13: 9781982101015

"I'd like to believe death contains a logic the living cannot comprehend.

That the dead surround us. That those who truly love us never truly leave.

They care for us in their way."

Encompassed within chapters of this gothic debut novel are love poems embodying aspects of Ovid's Metamorphoses as only protagonist and poet, Hugh de Bonne can write. The Lost History of Dreams is a love story or is it? Love is just one of the themes amongst two couples, two sub plots; Ada and Hugh de Bonne as well as Hugh's cousin, Robert Highstead and his wife, Sida. Pay close attention readers as to the many themes found throughout this novel i.e. Death, tragedy, illness, grief and obsession.  When Ada's niece, Isabelle enters the frame it couldn't get more complicated. Reminiscent of one of my favorite novels, Byatt's Possession, I saw a few parallels. 

I could not put this novel down and I rarely say that! Reading The Lost History of Dreams is akin to walking through a labyrinth filled with twists and turns where nothing is as it seems. Author, Kris Waldherr has written a beautiful debut novel filled with all the gothic elements I love: British countryside, house on the moors, family secrets, tragic illness, terrible death and ghostly visits! However, a stroke of genius was the use of daguerreotypes and a relative trying to earn a living as a post mortem photographer. I loved those chapters. The subject matter brought a very interesting viewpoint to the storyline and characters.

If you enjoy the gothic elements found in du Maurier novels and Wilkie Collins's A Woman in White than I have a feeling this is for you. I hope you read it and savor it as much as I have.

Thank you to Kris Waldherr and Touchstone for my review copy.

To pre-order the novel  Amazon