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Frankenstein: Unleashed (Monster Romance): A Dark Erotic Retelling of Frankenstein
What separates man from monster? Elizabeth's dreams are haunted by visions of murder. She keeps her family secret well. You see,Elizabeth is the last in a long line of witches, and her visions are prophetic.She knows that men are being murdered, exactly as she sees in her dreams, but she has not the means to stop their slaughter. After being engaged to Victor Frankenstein for years, (unaware of his true self) she has begun to believe that her destiny lies elsewhere. To her horror, that destiny is revealed to her in one instant, and taken away in the next. Grief-stricken and afraid, she follows where her heart leads ... to the body of Victor's latest experiment. Scarred at a young age by the death of his beloved mother, Victor Frankenstein has become fascinated with the possibility of bringing the dead back to life. After years of research,he has achieved some small measure of success. Though, he should have been more careful when he chose his last victim. When Elizabeth accidentally gives life to the creation that Victor could not, he awakens with no memory, and only the name that she gives him ... Lucian. This story contains graphic violence, sex, and some graphic language.
356 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 13, 2014
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45 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 10, 2025
I bought this book and a Dracula retelling in one book collection and I was looking forward the most to this. After finishing it it felt like a 3 stars but after thinking about it it's closer to 3.5. The romance and plot wasn't as addictive as her other works. But I still find myself thinking about the characters afterwords. I really like T.K Harding's books. But don't seem to be any more books under that name. Know the author have published more under Tracey H. Kitts. But I think those as a diffrent romance genre and vibes so not sure if I would enjoy them as much.
July 14, 2023
CW: blood, murder, choking, attempted rape, infertility, death of pregnant woman, rough sexual content
How disappointing. No offense to the author, writing a book is hard and self publishing a niche book is even more difficult, but Hardin completely destroys the complexity of Frankenstein, narratively, thematically, and character-wise. If you are a fan of Mary Shelley’s 1818 Frankenstein, do not expect a level of quality anything close to the original. I expected so much more from this story, and it continued to disappoint with every new page. Expect an amateurly written OOC fanfic INSPIRED by the idea of Frankenstein. Let it be known, this novel is NOT a hard read, maybe it’s a cringey read, but it’s easy to digest and provides simple, guilty-pleasure entertainment. However, it severely lacks plot wise and character wise.
!!!Spoilers ahead!!!
/Plot
Everything happens for a reason because it's convenient. Elizabeth is a witch (who doesn’t actively practice, mind you) who somehow has the know-with-all to perform powerful spells, like bringing a mish-mash dead body back to life. The inclusion of magic completely strips the plot of any reason, and misses the themes of the original text. The creature being re-alived is no longer disbelief-suspending, crazy God-like science- he’s alive because of Elizabeth’s unintentional magic. The only reason she knows about Victor’s experiments is because she just knows that the man she saw in her dreams is her destined love, and she just feels compelled to go to the far side of the castle grounds. At night. In the pouring rain.
The romance has absolutely no buildup because of this ‘destiny’. The audience knows immediately that there will be no conflict, tension, or learning to love despite one’s self in Elizabeth and Lucian’s relationship because they are supposed to be together. The only thing standing in their way is Elizabeth’s loosely insinuated betrothal to Victor, and Victor’s cartoonish villainy. The cover page (did you notice he’s holding a cross?) is not relevant to the plot at all.
Character
Every character in this novel is the flattest, most one-dimensional caricature of a typical ‘forbidden romance’. Elizabeth is the pure virgin with a secret. Lucian is the Perfect Man. Victor is a literal cartoon-ass sociopathic, self absorbed, sex dungeoning murderer who cares about nothing but himself and his power. All of the moral complexity of the original characters is thrown out the window. The creature is not an ugly monstrosity, outcast by all of society because he’s a literal walking quilt corpse. There's no moral downfall; he kills only bad people who try to hurt Elizabeth. He feels kinda bad about inhabiting a body that once killed people, but he gets over it pretty quickly (almost as quickly as Elizabeth is down to snog that dead, dead meat). Victor’s moral compass is pointing straight to ‘how much more terrible can I get?’ He doesn’t question his actions because he didn’t actually re-alive the creature.
Not to mention the abhorrent treatment of the minor characters. Victor’s brother, William, former 6 yr-old innocent child, is now a 20-something alcoholic attempted rapist. Justine, Elizabeth’s closest friend, defends William’s rapey-ness and then kills herself because she couldn’t live with the fact that she fell in love with and was pregnant by her ‘friend’s’ attempted rapist.
None of the characters are that interesting. I don’t care about any of them having a happy ending.
Writing
I feel bad for saying this, but this book is self-published for a reason. It's terrible in quality equal to Fifty Shades of Grey or Twilight, but not nearly as commercially sellable. Besides the poor characterization and lame plot, the actual quality of the writing needs serious editing. Way too much is said through dialogue, making every conversation sound dumb, unrealistic, or weirdly exposition-y. The characters repeat plot points like the reader could possibly forget that Victor sucks or that the creature crawled out of a grave or that the creature’s body was a murderer. All of the main three POVs (Elizabeth, Victor, and Lucian) have fairly similar narrative voices, making each individual chapter near indistinguishable from the others- save for Elizabeth’s constant reminding of her magic, Lucian constantly reminding of his ‘birth’, or Victor’s crazy evil person internal dialogue.
At one point, the author includes some pro-life sentiment, which is weirdly on theme, but that never gets brought up ever again. It's a throw-away opinion line between Victor and his fav prostitute. Did I mention Victor’s into master/slave BDSM sh*t? Oh yeah, Henry’s there too sometimes.
Smut
I know some of you are here for some monster effing, but beware! The real monster was the scientist all along, lol.
No seriously there's not much smut in this book and somehow it's almost all Victor whipping some girls’ arse and saying the cringiest lines.
How disappointing. No offense to the author, writing a book is hard and self publishing a niche book is even more difficult, but Hardin completely destroys the complexity of Frankenstein, narratively, thematically, and character-wise. If you are a fan of Mary Shelley’s 1818 Frankenstein, do not expect a level of quality anything close to the original. I expected so much more from this story, and it continued to disappoint with every new page. Expect an amateurly written OOC fanfic INSPIRED by the idea of Frankenstein. Let it be known, this novel is NOT a hard read, maybe it’s a cringey read, but it’s easy to digest and provides simple, guilty-pleasure entertainment. However, it severely lacks plot wise and character wise.
!!!Spoilers ahead!!!
/Plot
Everything happens for a reason because it's convenient. Elizabeth is a witch (who doesn’t actively practice, mind you) who somehow has the know-with-all to perform powerful spells, like bringing a mish-mash dead body back to life. The inclusion of magic completely strips the plot of any reason, and misses the themes of the original text. The creature being re-alived is no longer disbelief-suspending, crazy God-like science- he’s alive because of Elizabeth’s unintentional magic. The only reason she knows about Victor’s experiments is because she just knows that the man she saw in her dreams is her destined love, and she just feels compelled to go to the far side of the castle grounds. At night. In the pouring rain.
The romance has absolutely no buildup because of this ‘destiny’. The audience knows immediately that there will be no conflict, tension, or learning to love despite one’s self in Elizabeth and Lucian’s relationship because they are supposed to be together. The only thing standing in their way is Elizabeth’s loosely insinuated betrothal to Victor, and Victor’s cartoonish villainy. The cover page (did you notice he’s holding a cross?) is not relevant to the plot at all.
Character
Every character in this novel is the flattest, most one-dimensional caricature of a typical ‘forbidden romance’. Elizabeth is the pure virgin with a secret. Lucian is the Perfect Man. Victor is a literal cartoon-ass sociopathic, self absorbed, sex dungeoning murderer who cares about nothing but himself and his power. All of the moral complexity of the original characters is thrown out the window. The creature is not an ugly monstrosity, outcast by all of society because he’s a literal walking quilt corpse. There's no moral downfall; he kills only bad people who try to hurt Elizabeth. He feels kinda bad about inhabiting a body that once killed people, but he gets over it pretty quickly (almost as quickly as Elizabeth is down to snog that dead, dead meat). Victor’s moral compass is pointing straight to ‘how much more terrible can I get?’ He doesn’t question his actions because he didn’t actually re-alive the creature.
Not to mention the abhorrent treatment of the minor characters. Victor’s brother, William, former 6 yr-old innocent child, is now a 20-something alcoholic attempted rapist. Justine, Elizabeth’s closest friend, defends William’s rapey-ness and then kills herself because she couldn’t live with the fact that she fell in love with and was pregnant by her ‘friend’s’ attempted rapist.
None of the characters are that interesting. I don’t care about any of them having a happy ending.
Writing
I feel bad for saying this, but this book is self-published for a reason. It's terrible in quality equal to Fifty Shades of Grey or Twilight, but not nearly as commercially sellable. Besides the poor characterization and lame plot, the actual quality of the writing needs serious editing. Way too much is said through dialogue, making every conversation sound dumb, unrealistic, or weirdly exposition-y. The characters repeat plot points like the reader could possibly forget that Victor sucks or that the creature crawled out of a grave or that the creature’s body was a murderer. All of the main three POVs (Elizabeth, Victor, and Lucian) have fairly similar narrative voices, making each individual chapter near indistinguishable from the others- save for Elizabeth’s constant reminding of her magic, Lucian constantly reminding of his ‘birth’, or Victor’s crazy evil person internal dialogue.
At one point, the author includes some pro-life sentiment, which is weirdly on theme, but that never gets brought up ever again. It's a throw-away opinion line between Victor and his fav prostitute. Did I mention Victor’s into master/slave BDSM sh*t? Oh yeah, Henry’s there too sometimes.
Smut
I know some of you are here for some monster effing, but beware! The real monster was the scientist all along, lol.
No seriously there's not much smut in this book and somehow it's almost all Victor whipping some girls’ arse and saying the cringiest lines.
September 29, 2020
Great read
Nice follow up if you have read Dracula. Frankenstein keeps the same feel. Familiar details from books and movies intertwined with new details to make this a fresh story.
Nice follow up if you have read Dracula. Frankenstein keeps the same feel. Familiar details from books and movies intertwined with new details to make this a fresh story.
December 1, 2020
An excellent rendition of the Frankenstein story surely to become a favorite amongst many. The characters are richly described and the pace is easy enough to keep you moving along. I agree with another reviewer, it is too bad it was not a series of books and seemed to end too quickly.
January 31, 2017
The book was okay, but not one I'll be rereading. The sexual perversions of Dr. Frankenstein himself just seemed to be included to spice the story up a bit - it did make him less sympathetic... The love portion between Dr. Frankenstein's fiance and the monster was okay... It just didn't wow me.
September 22, 2014
Lucian is quite the keeper in this tale. The classic Frankenstein monster story, with a couple of twists. It kept me quite intrigued throughout.
December 6, 2014
if only it was longer!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews