Hideous Love: The Story of the Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein

by Stephanie Hemphill

From award-winning author Stephanie Hemphill comes the fascinating story of Mary Shelley, a brilliant teenager who wrote one of the greatest literary masterpieces of all time: Frankenstein.

An all-consuming love affair.

A family torn apart by scandal.

A young author on the brink of greatness.

Hideous Love is the fascinating story of Gothic novelist Mary Shelley, who as a teen girl fled her restrictive home only to find herself in the shadow of a brilliant but moody boyfriend, famed poet Percy Shelley. It is the story of the mastermind behind one of the most iconic figures in all of literature: a monster constructed out of dead bodies and brought to life by the tragic Dr. Frankenstein.

Mary wrote Frankenstein at the age of nineteen, but inspiration for the monster came from her life-the atmospheric European settings she visited, the dramas swirling around her, and the stimulating philosophical discussions with the greatest minds of the period, like her close friend, Lord Byron.

This luminous verse novel from award-winning author Stephanie Hemphill reveals how Mary Shelley became one of the most celebrated authors in history.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Young Adult, Poetry, Historical, Romance, Fiction, Novel In Verse

320 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2013

About the author

Stephanie Hemphill's first novel in poems, Things Left Unsaid, was published by Hyperion in 2005 and was awarded the 2006 Myra Cohn Livingston Award for Excellence in Poetry by the Children's Literature Council of Southern California.

Her second novel, a verse portrait of Sylvia Plath, Your Own, Sylvia was published by Knopf in March 2007. A third novel in verse for teens, Wicked Girls, a verse story of the Salem witch trials, will come out from Hyperion in the spring of 2009.

Stephanie received an SCBWI Magazine Merit Award in Poetry and chaired the PEN Award's Children's Literature Committee. She has been writing, studying and presenting poetry for adults and children for many years at UCLA, the University of Illinois (where she received an award from The Academy of American Poets), with Writers at Work and at conferences across the country. Stephanie lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews

[Emily May · Rating 1 out of 5]

I Am Emily

I want to be a millionaire
but I am not.

I want to travel to another galaxy
but I cannot.

I want to constantly burst into song
but I will not subject you to that.

I want to love this book
but I do not.


The Day Starts

We begin our day with
breakfast.
Then we take
a stroll
out by the lake.
I keep a journal
with me
just in case.
In my journal
I write but few
words per line
and call
it
poetry.


Hideous Love

Hideous love is
as exciting
as watching paint dry.

Hideous love is
as deep
as a tablespoon.

Hideous love is
as moving
as a mountain.

Hideous love is
as memorable
as where I put my keys.

Hideous love is
as well-written
as this review.

[Bonnie · Rating 1 out of 5]

A copy of Hideous Love was provided to me by Balzer + Bray/Edelweiss for review purposes.

'November brightens my spirit
as I let go my fears
and agree to travel
to London to be with my Shelley.
I visit Skinner Street
and the Hunts.
Also History of a Six Weeks Tour,
my first book, appears this month,
again with an anonymous author.'

*snore*...

I didn't go into this surprised that this was verse and immediately discount it. I adore novels written in verse (well, as long as they're well done.) When done right, novels written in verse have the ability to evoke such beautiful emotion, flawlessly. Verse is essentially narrative poetry: beautiful words that flow, words that can hold you captive in their power, but words that also tell a tale.

I understand that verse is the next big writing style, but verse writing requires a certain finesse. You're not just telling a tale and you can't take your sentences, chop them up into tiny bits and format them to appear as poetry and call it verse. To me, this is exactly what happened with Hideous Love. The writing was choppy and stilted and didn't allow me to connect with the story. It also lacked any sort of emotion, which is the most vital and important part of a verse novel. There were no beautiful descriptive passages, it was simply a long line of 'this happened, then this happened, then this, and now that.'

Suffice it to say, I was extremely disappointed. I think choosing to write this novel in verse was a huge decision and definitely the wrong one. Unfortunately, I don't recommend this one at all.

[Catherine Linka]

I plucked HIDEOUS LOVE out of a box from HarperCollins, because the title was so odd. Then I noticed it was about Mary Shelley and saw who wrote it: Stephanie Hemphill. A novel in verse about the girl who wrote Frankenstein? Hmm. I'd give it a few minutes, because it was Stephanie Hemphill after all.

An hour later, I realized I'd been completely sucked in. Hemphill makes Mary Shelley come alive. Her voice, her passion, her emotions are beautifully captured in Hemphill's verse.

And the story of her life with Percy Shelley is unbelievable. It's a soap opera. You will be appalled by how Percy treated her, but you'll probably loathe Lord Byron even more.

This book was an unexpected treasure.

[Mara · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am super torn about this one. While I hated some aspects of the writing (“my Shelley” always made me roll my eyes and the prose isn’t prose but just sentences divided by paragraphs) I still thought that this highlights Mary’s passion and youth quite well. She was after all a teenager AND a writer. The loss of her children was done super well and tasteful as well, so this gets 3 stars after all.

[Kyle · Rating 1 out of 5]

This review and more can now be found over at Book Probe Reviews where I'm now co-blogging!

1.5 stars

I recieved a copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss. Thanks so much! : )

Oh dear Lord, what the heck did I just experience?

Hideous Love wasn’t a book that I ever really planned on reading exactly. It was one of those, if I can get it from the library or it ever becomes free on Kindle and I’m looking for a quick read in verse. However, once I saw that I could read this for free and be able to get my opinion about it out early before it’s release (and I was about to go on an overnight trip to my aunt’s post-Independence Day with my parents), I decided that a book in verse was the perfect read for a 2 hour car ride.

What ensued was an overdramatic tale of forbidden true wuv, musings about love, jealousy, wonderings if Mary’s husband was cheating on her with her step-sister, drama-fests, constant traveling, and the occasional mentionings of writing.


Now, I haven’t read ANYTHING by Shelley, not even her famous Gothic Frankenstein, but reading this has motivated me beyond belief to read some of her works, because while the actual story was far from enjoyable, nor does this book make me think that Mary is somebody I would’ve liked in real life, the parts about her writing are definitely the highlights of the book.

The parts about her and Shelley growing closer and traveling with Mary’s step-sister (whose name I’ve actually already forgotten not even two weeks after completing this) were so boring, and so tedious, and seemed to add nothing to the plot except for a rift to grow between Mary and her step-sister. I mean, the writing of Frankenstein and the rest of Shelley’s subsequent novel is definitely left as a sub-plot when I would’ve preferred it to be the central focus of the story.

I believe one of the weaknesses of the plot actually was the lack of structure. What was the central focus? If it isn’t the writing, then it had to have been the romantic drama, and even that only lasted a little while before it ended and Mary’s step-sister had moved on. It couldn’t have been Shelley’s multiple miscarriages, for while as tragic as it was, it hardly makes for interesting reading in YA (as a side note, none of this is really a spoiler. You can hear plenty about Shelley’s miscarriages on her Wikipedia page. I sure did).

Unlike most verse novels, this was not completed quickly and swiftly. Even other boring verse novels for me have flown by. Now maybe it was because of how busy I was sitting with the adults being the only kid in the house, being bored out of my mind by family gossip I didn’t care about, but I had plenty of time in the car to finish this sucker quickly.

Yet the boredom that overcame me was so powerful that the mindless family gossip was more appealing than going back onto my Kindle.

And my family gossip is boring.

Really boring.

So boring that I would rather learn about algebra for another eighty minutes then go through that torture again.

I’ve found that in really successful cases of verse novels, the verse style actually enhances the writing. This has been repeatedly proven to me in most of Ellen Hopkins’s novels, and once by Lisa Schroeder’s The Day Before. Stephanie Hemphill’s writing, just like her plot, is rather bland, un-evocative, and boring.

Really I could keep going on and on and on about how boring this was, but I’m just going to end it here with one last warning:

I would much rather suggest reading something else besides this when it comes out October 1st of this year. I mean, if you’re a Frankenstein fanatic then absolutely go for this, since it does cover the background of why she started writing it. It may have been a small part of the book, but if you’re willing to spend $20 on this book to see Hemphill’s version of it, then go ahead.

I’m just afraid I won’t be joining you on this one, or any of Hemphill’s books again.

[Kayla · Rating 3 out of 5]

For those that have been following my blog for a while, you'll know that my major goal this year was to get my TBR all caught up. As we near the end of the year, that looks like it's a goal that I'm going to be taking into 2019 with me. Anyways, I recently decided to read Hideous Love because it had been on my TBR for a couple of years. Unfortunately, it was just okay.

Hideous Love had some interesting parts, and some boring parts. Unfortunately, the boring outweighed the interesting. I didn't know anything about Mary Shelley's life prior to reading this book, other than she wrote Frankenstein. I'm not sure how historically accurate Hideous Love was, but I found it very interesting that she fell in love at such a young age, and experienced so much in life before she even hit her mid twenties. She was a very strong, admirable woman. She survived more hardships in her twenties than most people do in a lifetime, and never let it get the best of her.

Other than learning little tidbits about Mary Shelley's life, the rest of the book was entirely boring, and slow. There was a lot of gossip about side characters and putting them down, which I didn't care for at all. I could have cared less about the rumors about who was sleeping with whom. When those parts happened, I found myself skimming through them, or rolling my eyes. I just wanted to get back to the interesting facts about Mary Shelley. I also didn't like the way her husband treated her at all. I thought it was a selfish, pompous asshole that put his needs above hers, especially when she really needed him. In fact, I think Mary might be the only character in this book that I actually liked.

All in all, Hideous Love was just okay. I'm glad that I read it because it puts Frankenstein in a whole new perspective for me. However, it's definitely not something that I would pick up again to re-read. I think if someone wants to learn more about Mary Shelley, I would encourage them to pick up a biography of her instead. I know I'll definitely be reading one when I come across it in a book store or library.

[Christie Angleton · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

Meh. The author paints Mary Shelley as a simpering, lovelorn teen who only writes as a means of distracting herself from pining after her moody partner, Percy Shelley. Maybe I’m being hard on this, having so recently was Charlotte Gordon’s Romantic Outlaws, but I don’t think this is a fair depiction of the fiercely independent advocate for women’s rights that I know Mary Shelley to have been.

[Nadina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was bizarre, it makes me want to know the true biography/history of Mary Shelley. I liked that it was written how it was, I listened to the audiobook and while it did not feel like poetry necessarily, it did not feel like a traditional story.

[Mikala · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the PERFECT book to start with in my journey to read Frankenstein for the first time!!!!

I learned SO much about Mary Shelley and I just want to learn more now. I feel like this was such a successful book because it just made me fall in love with the subject and got me interested in researching more.
I LOVE MARY SHELLY. She is so interesting and smart and a pioneer for women!
Novel told in verse.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps it's fitting to have a book about the tempestuous relationship between Mary Wollstonecraft and poet Percy Shelley written in free verse?

A lot of grief (miscarriages and dying children) and drama and a constant pall of family scandal all mixed up here. I probably found the annotated bibliography of works at the back to be the most interesting part.

As with pretty much any novel in verse (think Audacity or Brown Girl Dreaming), it doesn't take long to read.

[Christine Kallner · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've been on a novels-in-verse kick lately and had been meaning to try this author's books for some time. This one actually seemed the least interesting to me just from the summary, but then I listened to an episode of Book Riot's new Annotated podcast about Mary Shelly and the writing of Frankenstein and my interest was piqued. I sort of wish I just left it at podcast though which was really well done and fascinating.

This book was perfectly fine, but it's chock full of misery, tragedy, scandal, death, betrayal, and repeated mentions of money trouble. I recognize that this book is based on real people and these things really happened in Shelley's life, but I had a hard time with this story. I can certainly appreciate how Shelley's tumultuous young life and all the things she lived through shaped her writing -- but I wish there had been more about her actual writing, which seemed to take a bit of a back seat to all the other things going on around her.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good but not great. I liked the writing style, but "my Shelley" made me want to throw up every time my eyes passed over it. The ending felt less like an ending and more like I was thrown into a brick wall. There was a lot that could have been done with the book that just... wasn't. I feel like for the last 50 or so pages the book was wound down as much as it possibly could have been, and that it easily could've been condensed for a more satisfactory ending. I wish there was more about how Mary went on with life after the events that happened towards the end of the story.

Overall, the book was solid. Would I read it again? ehhhhhh probably not.

[Hannah Rey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do not often finish a book in one day. The story, plus my lack of motivation for others tasks, made it a painful ache in my mind to put down. The story continues on a current traveling different directions. It shows the human truth of humanity, loss, passion, irritated with family, and more. It was not a light hearted read. Poetry is not meant to be light but demands to be felt in a part of our being. I truly enjoyed this book. It was not a peaceful ride down the stream but took me away from my own tiny bits of current misery. Highly recommend.

[Mackenzie Taylor Reid · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Victor wants to bestow animation upon lifeless matter like a God, and he learns the limitations of such an endeavour when he finds his creation to be hideous and out of his control. Does not an author wish to do the same with her pen? We may think ourselves Gods of creation from time to time, but are we not merely humble scholars of the word?"

[C. A. · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was supposed to be a historical fiction in verse and while it was a historical fiction, the verse fell a bit flat for me. Interesting take on the life of Mary Shelly not executed very well.

[Christy · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5, i guess?

meh. pretty straight forward re-telling of Mary Shelley's life told in verse. it's fine, but it didn't really bring anything fresh to the story?

[Ksenia]

While I enjoyed the author's Wicked Girls more, this exploration of Mary Shelley was quite intriguing but also frustrating because you saw how much Mary LOVED Percy and how it was thanks to her that he became so renowned after his death. So the frustration comes from the whole "behind every great man there is a woman" idea. Not the author's fault obviously because that's how it was, but it just really hits home today and makes you want to just boost Mary Shelley even more! OK, ramble done.

[Zemira Warner]

It's hard for me to write a negative review when I request a title from the publisher and especially when other reviews aren't doing it any favors.

I'm a huge fan of retellings of other books and also retellings about the author's life. There's something special about seeing another side or someone's take on the said story which always makes me come back for more.

Hideous Love is a story about Mary Shelley, the mastermind responsible for Frankenstein. To be completely honest this is my first Frankenstein retelling novel I've ever seen. Most people write about Austen's or Bronte sisters' work. So you can guess I was really interested to see what Hemphill has to say about Mary Shelley.

Mary Shelley lives with her large family when one night Mr. Shelley comes to dinner and her world changes completely. They fall in love and decide to run away to be together even though he has a wife. Their relationship isn't perfect. Mary has an abortion and her sister is in love with Shelley.

Books which feature cheating can go two ways with me.
author does a great job and I like them and accept the fact they are going behind another person's back
author fails and I can't help to judge and despise the characters for the decisions they made

Hideous Love sadly goes into the second category. I didn't feel the connection with the characters. The prose didn't help either. It was distracting and frankly, I had a feeling author was kind of winging the whole prose. Like she thought it was ok to write a couple of words in each row and they will magically become a verse.

I really wanted to give this book the benefit of the doubt and not trust the reviews but it just wasn't the type of book for me.

[Savannah (Books With Bite) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alright. This book is way more than what I thought it be. For sure, I love the writing. But the characters had my stomach in knots.

Love: Let me tells you the way this love is hideous. This love is doomed from the start. And iffy guy attracted to a young girl, romance moves fast. Oh and did I mention he is STILL married and has a child on the way while he is pursuing her. Yup.Cause he is. And I knew as soon as she feel for his antics there was no going back. This love isn’t one I enjoyed but really cringed at. There were so many underlying lies and betrayals, yet once she was married to this man she looks the other way. I mean, in this time period you have too. She is woman and women in that time period solely relied on their husbands. But man, I felt sorry for this girl and what she went through.

Plot: This story is told in verse form. Like a poem. So it was a quick read for me. Each poem was written beautifully with full detail of what is happening in her life. From her courtship, to marriage, to giving birth, to struggles that any married couple goes through. Still, I think had this girl not been so infatuated with this man, she could of saved herself a lot of heartache.

Frankenstein: Because of that heartache, she is fueled to write. And write she does. She creates this magnificent story that goes on to successful. Even more successful than what she every thought.

Overall, I enjoyed this story. Though I would of preferred a more detail story rather than verse form. I mean, it does give good detail in verse but I think in a novel form it would have been richer. If you like verse form with plenty of drama, check this book out. Hideous Love is good.

[Alicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't make the connection that Hemphill also wrote Your Own, Syliva, which I adored until after I read the book. This one is similar in that it's a verse novel, based on a literary figure, in this case Mary Shelley and her intriguing life.

Her family disowned her early on when she took up with Percy Shelley, who was still married with children when they pledged their love to each other. Mary's father disowned her and his friendship with Percy because of the indecency. Mary knew/thought she was in love, but they also escaped with her 'sister' as well, who became an important piece in her life, both for her annoyance as well as her moods and the fact that it was rumored most of their life that she and Percy were having an affair. It's about Mary's writing, Percy and her relationship that ran hot and cold for Percy seems like an intelligent, sickly, but provocative character who enchanted many, including other women, possibly. There was devastation as Mary ended up losing three children at different stages of their childhood to illnesses, that went almost unrecognized by Percy or other family. It was only after Mary and Percy's actual marriage (after his wife committed suicide) that her father, Mary's greatest influence, came back in to her life because their union was legitimate. It's about the literati of the time who wooed and spent extravagantly, but also had the craziest lives. Affairs, children, moving here and there, finances (mostly the lack of) and more.

A beautifully written verse that glimpses Mary's life and how Frankenstein probably came to be.

[Nina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got this book as an ARC from my local library and I'm so grateful to have picked it up. The minute I started reading, I was hooked on the sparse prose and the strength of the main character.

I didn't know a thing about Mary Shelley prior to this but I now realize that she was an incredibly strong woman, and that her strength came from her faith in her writing and her love for her husband. As you will find out when you read the book, these things was tested time and time again. It's obvious Hemphill did her research, but the real skill was condensing eight incredibly tumultuous years of Shelley's life into a novel of such brevity.

By writing this novel in verse, Hemphill is making Mary Shelley accessible to many teens who might not otherwise read about her. And while this book would be great for reluctant readers due to the large amount of white space, I could also see this being used in an Honors English class as a study of this historical literary figure and her times. Like any good historical fiction novel, it educates the reader without seeming like a history lesson and makes them want to know more.

Next up, I plan to learn about Sylvia Plath through Hemphill's other novel, Your Own, Sylvia.

[WTF Are You Reading? · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is so much to say about the story told within this book's pages.
A tale told completely in verse; Hideous Love chronicles the young life and love of Mary Shelley.
This is a story rife with scandal.
1. Mary's elopement with the already married Percy Shelley.
2. Attempts by the two at "free love".
3. The rather ambiguous nature of the relationship between Percy and Mary's step-sister Jane.
Tragedy
1. The death of Mary's mother when Mary was but 11 years old.
2. The death of Mary and Percy's first child.
3. The estrangement of Mary from her father and family as a result of her relationship with Shelley.
...and Love.

As is often the case with young sheltered girls, Mary's love for Percy is idealistic and knows no bounds.
This is however, the only negative in this fascinating look into the life of a literary legend.
This is a surprisingly fast read, given the depth and breath of it's content.
This book is an inspired answer to all who have puzzled the life that shaped "The Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein".

[Brooke R. Busse · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love verse novels. They're up there with fairy tale retellings. It doesn't matter what the subject is, if I find a verse novel, I read it. HIDEOUS LOVE had the added bonus of having an intriguing premise.

Mary's husband's portrayal in this book was not something I expected. Seeing his actions through Mary's eyes added whole other layers of meaning to them. My opinion of him wavered throughout the novel, which leads me to believe Hemphill did a great job with his character. [SPOILER]It also adds a whole new line of thought to the book when you think about how "the story of the girl who wrote FRANKENSTEIN" began with her meeting Percy Shelley and ended with his death.[/SPOILER]

Overall, I think this book's strengths were 1) its character building and 2) its emotional plot.

Score two for Stephanie Hemphill. Looking forward to reading WICKED GIRLS.

[Jan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hemphill has a gift for prose poetry, which is not as simple to do as it looks. Hideous Love, told in prose poems, is the story of Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein and wife of the Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley. It is a fascinating look at an era when women were beginning to assert their independence and ambition, but were still really beholden to men for their very existence. Although Percy Bysshe Shelley encouraged women to be independent and throw off their marital shackles, he was still someone who expected his partner to subsume their own ambitions for his. You can be sure he wasn't offering to change diapers or handle household matters while Mary was writing! Some 200 years later, women are still struggling with many of the same expectations, which makes this novel both fascinating and timely.

[April · Rating 3 out of 5]

I get kind of excited about books that take on historical figures and really sort of bring them to life. I love learning about the lives of real people from the past. Stephanie Hemphill takes on the story of Mary Wollenstonecraft Shelley in Hideous Love, a young adult verse novel. I am on the fence about this book, I don’t necessarily agree with the not so positive reviews I’ve read BUT, I am not about to fawn all over Hideous Love, to me, it’s just an okay read and one that honestly won’t linger in my brain long after I finish typing this review.
Read the rest of my review here
Review goes live 9/24/13

[Christina (Ensconced in Lit) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think Mary Shelley's story is fascinating and perfect book to write about. I've gotten more into historical biographies more as of late, and this was a nice foray into that. The fact it was written in verse particularly since her great love, Percy Bysshe Shelley, was at the forefront of this story makes sense. That said, just a personal opinion, I got tired of reading it in verse, because that is just not how I read books, not because it was a problem with the book. It made sense to do it for this book artistically and risk wise, which I really appreciated, but I don't think I'll be picking up a book in verse in the near future. (I've read two recently, and while both were good, it's just not my standard fare).

[Demi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a latecomer to a love of Frankenstein; I rebelled against reading it in high school and have only recently come to appreciate it and Mary Shelley. I think the choice of verse for this novel is a great one--Mary spent much of her early life in the company of Percy Bysshe, and there is an element of the romantic in the repeated tragedies of her youth. I enjoyed Hideous Love a great deal as a result.

[Lupinus Texensis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Why isn't there more YA about the 19 year old who invented science fiction while she was on vacation with her narcissistic and married boyfriend?

This was a lovely audiobook, even if the text was a little simile heavy. I enjoyed it and I admire Mary Shelley even more now. Who lives, who dies, who tells your story? Mary. And she'll release your annotated poetry and make sure your name is remembered as one of the greats.

[Duks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, this is my first book that I read in verse. I found it interesting,

Mary went through a lot, this resentment that her stepmother had towards her, her father ignoring when she left with Shelley. The death of her children and the unexpected death of him.

Her Shelley was an ass...

[usagi ☆ミ · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5 stars. Review to come!