The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll & Mademoiselle Odile

by James Reese

It's 1870, and a young woman named Odile is fighting to survive on the blood-soaked streets of Paris. Luckily, Odile has an advantage and a bizarre birthright. She is descended from the Cagots, a much-despised race whose women were reputed to be witches. Were they, in fact? This is the question Odile must answer--about her ancestors and herself--while she uses her talents to help a young Doctor Jekyll who seems to be abusing the salts that she gave him in a most disconcerting way.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Young Adult, Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Retellings, Science Fiction Fantasy

368 pages, Hardcover

First published April 10, 2012

About the author

James Reese was born on eastern Long Island. He attended the University of Notre Dame and the State University of NY at Stony Brook, where he received an MA in Theatre. As an undergraduate, he had a play staged off-Broadway at the Actors Repertory Theatre. While living in New York, New Orleans and Key West, Reese held various jobs in the non-profit sector, working on behalf of the arts and the environment. He has also lived and traveled extensively in France. Presently, James Reese splits his time between Paris and Tampa, Florida, and is working on more novels. Additionally, he has just published a Shakespeare-themed app called Shakespeare300 offering concise (300 word) intros and synopses, as well as infographics, of all Shakespeare's plays. More info can be found at www.shakespeare300.com

Reviews

[Dark Faerie Tales · Rating 2 out of 5]

Review Courtesy of Dark Faerie Tales

Quick & Dirty: A new character is added to the Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde outfit when Odile Ricau retells how her family secret lead toDoctor Henry Jeckyll first transforming into Mister Hyde.

Opening Sentence: The two men mistook me for dead; but I was very much alive. And regrettably so.

The Review:

The first thing I must mention is that I had to look up her name pronunciation on a translator application because I kept reading it like crocodile instead of daffodil without the “daff.” Anyway, overall the book had a slow start, a sloppy middle, and a kind of hazy ending. The book starts with a sad recounting that establishes our narrator as Odile Ricau, a former homeless orphan living on the streets of war torn 1870 Paris and the time she spent with Doctor Henry Jekyll.

Odile and her brother Greluchon are homeless and orphaned after their parents were killed far away from Paris where they currently live. Odile experiments with their family secret in an attempt to heal her sick brother who is wasting away from hunger and sickness. Her brew mishap in the zoo causes Henry Jekyll and his manservant Poole to be interested in what the young woman was capable of, which leads her to ask for the doctor’s help in curing her brother.

Jekyll is British, but in France during wartime because he was disgraced for his unorthodox scientific opinions and experiments. They bond as Jekyll tries to diagnose Greluchon and Odile experiments more with her family craft. We find out that Jekyll knows about Odile’s salts and he steals the potions that turned a monkey mad and causes her brother to transform almost permanently into a government killing machine. Jekyll transforms to a completely different person nicknamed Edward Hyde, a coarse larger than life personality that fulfills Henry’s deepest desires.

Odile, to me, was a rather over dramatic, and pretentious narrator. Half of her paragraphs seemed to start with “Dare I say…blah blah..” and “No doubt..blah..” Odile does care very much for the welfare of her brother, and puts herself in harms way for his benefit more than once. The whole time she is trying to figure out what the books left behind by her murdered mother mean for her future while Doctor Jekyll gets the recipe for more salts to turn into his Mister Hyde side whenever he wants.

There is a predictable romance on the side that ended up with the two people, Odile and Julien, the first nice person she met in Paris, falling in love and staying together through the end. Speaking of the ending, the plot ends abruptly and we don’t find out why Odile is narrating from the present, but speaking from the past. I assume the series will continue as there is one listed, but I have no clue where the author could possibly be going with this story.

I found the writing overly burdened by endless dependent clauses, and sometimes the italicized French got a bit away from me, and I would have to look up a translation into English. The book has an interesting premise, but the narrator is not strong enough until hardened by death in the end to be really interesting to read overall.

Notable Scene:

Whoever, whatever it was had risen to bedevil my bother had, yes, struck me to the floor when I had more pointedly, more purposefully put myself between him and the remaining vials. He’d have them. That much he made perfectly clear.

I felt no real pain, though he’d caught me with a claw, and it is perhaps more correct to say he shoved me to the floor. Regardless, from that position I tried again to defend the brew. I grabbed Greluchon’s leg: and his knee gave, or rather transformed with a hollow pop, which rang in my ear like the report from a pistol. I all but climbed that leg, trying to pull myself to my feet, the better to see what he was about, the better to somehow stop him. I could not let him progress through the three vials more, no. But each time I tried to rise, he shoved me back. He did so casually, as though he were a hungry child and I were but a wasp buzzing around his jam sandwich; but in so doing he caught my neck with one of his…claws, and he cut me. I must have then cried out his name; for, from my vantage point upon the laboratory floor, I watched as he turned to stare down at me over his hunched shoulder. The look was horrific. Steam came from between the lips he now licked–he’d bolted back more of the brew!–and as our eyes met, I saw that his eyes were changing still. At first I thought he was crying, and so I heartened somewhat, thinking that now I might reason with him; but now his eyes were reddened not by tears of remorse, indeed not by tears of any type. Rather, his eyes had reddened, were reddening still, as the chimpanzee’s had. How I wished then that he might settle that eye patch back into place, sparing me at least half of his ruby-eyed stare.

I fell back upon the floor, thinking all hope was lost. Yet in the moment before I began to fear for my own safety–and fear I most certainly would–I clung to a last scintilla of hope: If perhaps I could impede his progression through the remaining vials unto (and including) the sixth, then mightn’t the transformation be incomplete, mightn’t I preserve something of my brother’s presence withing the…thing?

The Shadow Sisters Series:

1. The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll & Mademoiselle Odile

FTC Advisory: Macmillan/Roaring Brook Press provided me with a copy of The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll & Mademoiselle Odile. No goody bags, sponsorships, “material connections,” or bribes were exchanged for my review.

[Alicia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the writing style at the beginning but the use of some specific words over and over became too tedious and repetitive so I enjoyed the story less as it went along.

[Kellie13 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, this book was fantastic. It kept me very entertained and fascinated by all of the French. It very much made me want to learn French, so I could fully understand the text and be able to make better inferences. Furthermore, I really enjoyed the unbelievable plot twists that constantly made me want to turn the page and keep reading. Right from the beginning, I knew that I was going to really enjoy this book because it is historical by taking place during the French revolution and it was a science fiction, fantasy book. I was extremely curious about the ending of this book when in the beginning I read: “I’d stood there watching (what else could I do?) as the chimp’s limbs grew longer, hairier, with its muscles seeming to rise up in knots” (Reese 17). This quote got me really sucked into the book because I wanted to find out how this chimp was able to do that and why he had done. In my mind, I thought it was magic. Another plot twister was “ Had he transformed or… or somehow split into two selves?” (Reese 167). This surprised me the most because I never would have guessed that Dr. Jekyll would have drank the salt solution without knowing the side effects. I would have never guessed that the book would have ended the way it ended and I can’t wait to get my hands on the sequel.

[Jessica at Book Sake · Rating 3 out of 5]

Book Review (ARC)
This book featured a small cast of characters, but even then I don’t feel that I know enough of any of them to talk about them individually. I wasn’t captured or enamored with any of them, and this might be because there was no one that was really doing the right thing the entire way through. Even Odile who is trying to help her brother had many flaws that I couldn’t get past in order to care enough about her. Characters aside, this is an intriguing take on the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story. Throwing someone else in as the creator of Mr. Hyde is interesting and the fact that Odile tries to maintain control over the situation is amusing to watch. I do wish the characters were more endearing though.

Reviewed by Jessica for Book Sake.

[Lia Marcoux · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book wasn't so much as bad as ineffectual. The narrator is constantly justifying herself to the reader, probably because her actions don't arise naturally from the context. The character as a result seems shallowly written, and since the story is from her perspective, so as a consequence does everyone else. Reese also uses "literally" on almost every page. Odile waits until "the dust literally settled" - really? Why not just until the dust settled? Nearly every idiom had a "literally" appended. For goodness' sake. On a style note, Rees has a habit of using...italics, after points of ellipses in a way that would drive me crazy in written or spoken narration. Finally, do we really need a non-canon Jekyll and Hyde prequel in which Hyde's name is used incessantly as a pun? Alors...non, as Odile would say.

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mademoiselle Odile is an intriguing book with several problems but ultimately an interesting plot and a fascinating historical backdrop. I found this book by chance at my local library and, being a fan of the original Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde story, thought it might prove interesting. It's a short read and much of it can be skimmed, and I enjoyed seeing the story unfold despite the things I disliked about it.

Set in Paris, 1871, the story follows Odile Ricau, an orphaned Cagot girl who fled to Paris with her younger brother Gréluchon to escape persecution and now finds herself dependent on the help of her only friend, the butcher's son Julien Deboos. However, Odile has a special hereditary gift that allows her to perform witchery, and a chance encounter with Dr. Henry Jekyll (he of the Robert Louis Stevenson story about thirty years younger) allows Odile to spend her days experimenting in the doctor's laboratory in hopes of restoring Gréluchon's failing health. Disaster strikes when the potion Odile cooks up for her brother unintentionally turns him into a monster, and her potion is seized by Jekyll, who hopes to use it to manage his own transformations into the notorious Mister Hyde. What follows is a desperate attempt by Odile to save her beast-like brother from destruction in the Siege of Paris, to maintain control over Jekyll and Hyde's nefarious escapades, and to find a way out of her terrible situation in the face of a war-torn city.

James Reese is a good writer, but the primary issue of the novel is the writing style he uses in this novel — every sentence is punctuated with so many interjections and nonessential clauses that you have to reread the sentence to figure out what he's trying to say. His penchant for using italics and ellipses to emphasize every other sentence also becomes very redundant and annoying. Reese also has a habit of constantly foreshadowing what is to come next — to the point that every single section and chapter ends with some cryptic statement like "Little did I know how true that statement would be" or "How could I have known what the next ten minutes would hold?" This habit, combined with the very predictable payoff for each of bit of foreshadowing, make the novel difficult to get through sometimes.

Furthermore, Doctor Jekyll, who by rights should be one of the main characters in this book and should receive a great deal of characterization to make him interesting and developed from the original story, often appears as an afterthought. The book absolutely wastes his potential for complexity and uses him as an occasional foil to Odile, who is always smarter and more capable than he. The cast of characters is very small anyway (limited to maybe six speaking characters), so having Jekyll so misused is criminal.

On the positive side, Reese does tell a good story that ties in very nicely with the original Jekyll and Hyde story, providing answers to some questions about how Hyde came into and maintains existence. The historical setting, the Siege of Paris and the rule of the Commune that followed, make for an interesting, rarely-used backdrop that play an integral role in the story. Odile's characterization is strong if erratic, and I really enjoyed the development of the characters Poole (who also is from the original story) and Cézette, whose blossoming friendship with Odile is a pleasant surprise. I also appreciated the absence of forced romance between Odile and Jekyll, the developing relationship of Odile and Julien, and the possible implications of Odile's name. (Odile is the name of the Black Swan in the ballet Swan Lake, who is the White Swan Odette's evil alter ego who steals her happiness. I'll let you draw the parallel yourself.)

Overall, I'd recommend this book because it does have some excellent historical content and is effective in creating a backstory for how Hyde came into existence, but be forewarned that it isn't up to the caliber it could be. Despite its flaws, it's a decent book.

[valentina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Creí que iba a estar mejor desarrollado, de forma más emocionante, pero se perdió un poco.

[Brenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I first came across this book, I was surprised that there weren't very many people talking about it or who even seemed to know about it. This just seems to be one of those YA books that flew under the radar for most people

Strange Case is an interesting blend of a retelling and historical fiction, going back to explain the story behind Dr. Jekyll's transformation into Mr. Hyde by introducing another character, Odile, set in Paris in the 1870s, which was a very difficult time for Paris.

Reasons to Read:

1.A book with ambiance:

I was really impressed with how well James Reese was able to set the atmosphere for his book with his writing. Odile has such a distinctive voice as a narrator, and the setting he uses for Strange Case in 1870s Paris is richly described and the pages give off the right sense of desperation.

2.An interesting spin on a familiar story:

I'll admit right now that I haven't read Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but I can say that my interest in it has been piqued since reading James' Strange Case. I thought the backstory he provided to the transformation potion, as well as Odile's past and being Cagot was an intriguing and great way to add some backstory to this familiar tale.

Yet while I had a hard time putting this book down, there were a few things I didn't enjoy nearly as much as well. The writing, for one, while interesting could be confusing at times as Odile seems to jump around as a narrator. She isn't linear at all while telling her story, and hints at some event then saying she won't explain it right now. As well, there were a few times when it just wasn't entirely clear what was going on so I had to go back and reread it.

But more importantly, I wasn't impressed with Dr. Jekyll as a character at all in this story. There didn't seem to be enough of a contrast between Dr. Jekyll and his evil counterpart, Mr. Hyde, and Dr. Jekyll just came across as being slightly less evil, but still a terrible person in a more sublte way. And that just didn't seem to fit the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde because they really didn't balance each other out in any way in this retelling. So while I thought that it was a great way to answer some questions that the original story leaves unanswered, I don't think it did Dr. Jekyll justice at all.

Yet I still found it an enjoyable read, and something vastly different from most books I've been reading lately so it was a nice break from those, and I enjoyed reading it althought I don't think I'll be rereading this one.

ARC received from Raincoast Books for review.

[Mara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was wary of this book when I picked it up - people always take a lot of liberties with R. L. Stevenson’s famous short story. But considering that this is supposed to be a “prequel” to "The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll & Mister Hyde" made what liberties the Author took much more bearable. At least he got Hyde moderately correct. So many movies and retellings depict Mr. Hyde as a giant ape-like person, when in fact he wasn’t at all. Hyde was a short and stocky young man. The Author kind of depicts Hyde like that, but not quite as badly as others, so I excused it.

Odile is a great heroine: strong and resourceful. While she makes many mistakes, she tries her best to set them right. I’m still not entirely certain how I feel about the Author making Doctor Jekyll into such a weasely and deceitful person. He seems to completely ignore the whole point behind Jekyll’s experiments - to separate the good in man from the evil - and claims that Jekyll is just trying to impress the Royal Society. But, again, this being a prequel, one can theorize that Jekyll did not begin to have such an intense interest in the nature of man until later.

The backdrop for the story is a good one, and lends to the excitement and gritty feel of the story. The writing style, too, is fairly good. At times the sentence structure is a bit strange, but it lends to the feeling that Odile is verbally telling her story to someone, rather than writing it out, and while I don’t normally like that particular style, it worked for this story. The Author also uses many French words in the dialogue, but thankfully he offers in-text translations, and it adds to Odile’s authenticity rather than bogging the narration down.

The end of the story is more than a little sudden, as are a couple of the twists. They are good twists, but they are delivered in a way that leaves the Reader blinking in confused surprise. I can’t help but wonder if there is going to be a sequel, since it more or less ends on that sort of note.

[Tammy Walquist · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like Mary Reilly, this book is one that adds to or builds upon the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. However, this one takes place years before the events in that book. It follows Odile, a young orphan in Paris who has strange magic/remedies she learned from her mother that others tend to refer to as witchcraft. Dr. Jekyll discovers her secret, allows her to come live in his house and work on her experiements in his well-stocked lab. He also tries to help her younger brother, Greyluchon, who happens to be very sick with an ailment to his eye. When one of Odile's remedies goes wrong with her brother, it has futher-reaching consequences than she could've intended.

This story was a little too slow-moving for me, and I found Odile very difficult to relate to as the "heroine" in the story. She is a little too impulsive for me, and I could never understand why she gave her brother the remedy in the first place when it was pretty much untested and had very bad consequences for the animals she tried it on at the zoo.

The plot moves fairly slowly and takes place over a series of months. Sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn't. In this case, I felt like it didn't work so well, set against a backdrop of the Prussian siege of Paris, which was so bad they started eating the animals in their zoo. Gross! It was a somewhat interesting story, which is why I finished it, but it wasn't a page turner I couldn't wait to get back to either. On the whole I thought it was just all right.

[pam · Rating 5 out of 5]

The narrator of the story, Odile, is fast-paced and full of details. While there is plenty of foreshadowing, there were also many turns and twists that I could not have guessed. The liberal sprinkling of French words adds to the atmosphere, and the context of each word easily helped me figure out what those words mean without knowing much French. Easily my favorite aspect of the book was the constant word plays that figured into the plot itself - very fascinating, indeed! I don’t want to give too much away, but for lovers of language, this book should prove interesting!

Mr Reese's writing style lends this story a strong sense of verisimilitude, and the research involved (as explained in the author’s note)  is staggering to fathom and illuminating as to the writing process. I only wish Mr Reese had expounded upon his research methods, as I found them nearly as fascinating as the book itself!

On the whole, Mr Reese seamlessly inserts Odile’s story in tandem with Dr Jekyll’s more familiar storyline, and yet, there were plenty of surprises in store. I've heard Mr Reese's novels described as being no "book snack," and it's still true of this book, as it’s not light reading like other popular books. Reading this story may take effort for some (like it did me), but in the end, I predict many readers will have been edified by the rich and authentic vocabulary, sentence structures, and descriptions.

My review is based on an advance readers edition.

[J · Rating 1 out of 5]

France 1870...
They're eating the dogs, they're eating the elephants.

Enter M. Odile...where to start.

Imagine a Christmas Carol where Scrooge, by the end, never becomes a better person, and in fact old Chucky D tells us that "Scrooge never had to change it's society that's the problem"and for added flavor,there are some cheesecake shots of Scrooge in his nighty. We'll Josè Luis-Munuera is your guy, but I digress...
The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mademoiselle Odile... isnt as bad as that, but it has its own brand of awful.
The kind where theme and nuance is stripped away and ultimately what were left with could be found in any run of the mill fanfic.
Jekyll potion is an invention of Odile (Yes really) and it makes people into savage apelike creatures (Yes really).
Did Reese...ever...read the original novel? What happened to "if Jekyll had approached the potion with good intentions, he would have emerged a saint?" To paraphrase a throughline in the original novel.
Is Reese's pieces only exposure to the Jekyll and Hyde mythos Van Helsing and the LXG movie?
Methinks so.

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Last year I read Kenneth Oppel's This Dark Endeavour, which imagines Viktor Frankenstein's young life and the events that inspire him to create his monster. The gothic horror story isn't usually my kind of book, but surprisingly, I rather liked it. Consequently, I thought I'd give this one a try, since it also imagines a backstory for one of literature's well-known monsters. However,I didn't enjoy this book as much as I had hoped. There are too many asides to the reader, too many ellipses, too many exclamations of "Alas!" And there are instances of anachronistic speech that bothered me. For example, I find it hard to believe that a girl in 1871 Paris would say "okay," or that she would refer to a man's pants as "slacks" (what, it was too difficult to come up with "trousers"?). I found myself skimming to get to the end, not reading rapidly to turn the pages to find out what happened next.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes when I'm walking the isles at the library (and Molly isn't pulling books off the shelf or being a nuisance) I'll pick a random book off the shelf. This was my latest aquisition. The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll & mademoiselle Odile is (obviously) a take off of the classic. But this story apparently stars a younger Doctor and takes place during the French Revolution. I have never read the original Robert Louise Stevenson novel so I cannot make any comparisons on that accord, but as a separate book, this one is cleaverly written. The author, James Reese, has literary talent which showed throughout the book but I thought the first half of the story was more interesting than the second half, where I felt the story stalled for a while before the conclusion - which ending felt almsost abridged...as if the book was slowly slipping into an epilogue.

[Dee · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book claims to be a YA version giving the backstory of how Dr. Jekyll became Mr. Hyde. Credit is given to a "witch" named Odile, who has escaped persecution in her hometown and now lives on the outskirts of Paris in 1871.

Odile discovers a family secret giving a human the ability to transform to a more baser version of "self". Unfortunately, the price she pays for the knowledge is too high and her life runs out of control during the starving time during the Prussian control of Paris.

The book is slow, could have benefitted from additional editing, and used way too much foreshadowing. Not sure why this is marketed to YA, perhaps due to the age of the main character, but the text will meet the reading needs of very few YAs.

[LaQuita · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is certainly a twist on a classic story. The setting of war torn Paris in the late 1800’s is extremely well depicted, with views and experience hardly heard. The author goes into great detail while setting up the characters and the scene. While also giving hints of things to come since the narration is of Mademoiselle Odile herself retelling the horrible events of years past.

It is quite a story, leading the reader through the emotions of Odile, and state of mind of rebellious Paris. A well written adapatation of a timeless classic, a great addition to any library.

http://www.justusgirlsblog.com/2012/0...

[Mrs. Palmer · Rating 3 out of 5]

An alternate version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde set in France during the "Paris Commune" era. I liked the historical setting. I knew very little about it. I am familiar with the classic Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde story, so that part wasn't very interesting to me, to be quite honest. The narrator, a 16 year old witch who has special salts that she shares with Dr. Jekyll, did a lot of weird sort of flash forward narrating, as in, "Oh, but I would live to lament that later on!" It was annoying. Perhaps it was supposed to be reflective of the writing style of the late 19th century? I don't know, but I just didn't find the story that exciting or fresh.

[Brandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the idea behind this book. A young witch not yet well-versed in witchery tries to do good and ends up creating a monster instead. While there is plenty of tension to move the story forward, there are several factors of the book that go undeveloped. It is clear that events in the story do not follow actual events (for instance, a war that apparently leaves the people so hungry that they've resorted to eating zoo animals), yet the author does very little to explain or set up this world (there is no explanation for the starvation and very little is told about the war). Far too many questions are left unanswered.

[clairette · Rating 5 out of 5]

Paris, 1870. Odile is fighting for survival in revolutionary Paris. Luckily, her mother's family has a talent- well, some might call it witchcraft.
But were her mother's family really witches? That is the question Odile is trying to answer when she uses her talents to create salts for young Doctor Jekyll, who seems to be using them in a most disconcerting way.
A different take on the story of Jekyll and Hyde, Odile tells her story in a way that will have you laugh, rejoice, and despair with her.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a "prequel" to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and explains how that strange situation came about. The story is set in 1870s Paris and Reese is true to the history. However, I had a hard time getting into this story and failed to identify or empathize with any of the characters. I will be the first to admit that Gothic novels are not my favorite genre.

[Brandi Young · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an interesting take on how the normal Dr. Jekyll turned into himself and Mr. Hyde. It all has to do with a girl, Odile, and the salts spell she creates in order to try and save her brothers health. There is a ton of fluff in this book and the story doesn't pick up until 3/4 of the way through the book.

[Ashley Choo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did enjoy this book, it was a really quick read, and full of excitement, but when I finished it I felt that I wanted to know a LOT more about the Cagots. Do they burn each of their dead and use the ashes for experiments? How do the Cagot ashes work such that they have the magical abilities to transform a creature into a hulkish brute? And who was the one to discover these morbid salts?

[Nicole]

Review Pending!

[Evie]

ACK! I won this from Goodreads First Reads giveaway! Can't wait to get it. Thanks, Goodreads!

[Dawn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Retelling of Jekyll and Hyde story in a creative way. I read the pre-pub version of this and so it had some scenes that I thought were repetitive but may have been cut from the published version.

[Gen Mclaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was very odd but awesome. Read it if you'd like a strangely enticing book

[Jen Hossack · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book but it was a little slow in some places. I plan to read "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" now as I'm sure this book would have been better if I already knew the original story.

[Brooke · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. I had a really hard time finishing this. The story was a good idea, but the book just lacked that draw.

[Alice · Rating 2 out of 5]

Supposed to be a YA novel but it's really not...

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars