Adam, Mine.

by K. Ancrum

From acclaimed author K. Ancrum, on the National Book Award longlist for The Corruption of Hollis Brown, and Lambda Literary Award winner for Icarus, comes a queer romantic horror thriller that is a love letter to Frankenstein about the consequences of our decisions, the legacy of family, and the depths we’ll go to be forgiven. Victor Frankenstein is a young, wealthy, and brilliant prodigy who wants nothing more than to prove himself and change the world. His plan to right what he feels is wrong with the world? Reanimation of the sick and dying, bringing them back to life. But no one will give him the chance to prove his genius. However, one drunken night a bet is made, one that will cause Victor to do the take a teen boy from a small, neighboring village, and experiment on him under the dark of night. Elias Hilfiker. The boy who would become his monster. His curse. When Elias awakens, his voice is gone, his skin is stitched, scarred, and branded with strange symbols, and he’s abandoned by his loved ones. Meanwhile, Victor embarks on a journey to discover how to reverse the horror he’s unleashed, visiting dark alchemists in lands far and wide, gripped by fear and guilt.

But Victor’s act of resurrection creates a tether to Elias, leaving them feeling each other’s pain, joy, and regret, as the two each seek a way to end the other. As the two bound boys continue to search for answers and forgiveness, vengeance and mercy, the boundaries between what makes a man and what makes a monster will only get more blurred.

Genres: Horror, Young Adult, Queer, Retellings, Historical Fiction, LGBT, Gothic

Audible Audio

Expected publication September 8, 2026

About the author

K. Ancrum, is an author of award winning speculative contemporary YA notably THE WICKER KING, DARLING and most recently the critically acclaimed ICARUS. K. is a Chicago native passionate about diversity and representation in young adult fiction. She currently writes most of her work in the lush gardens of the Chicago Art Institute.

Reviews

[anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

“why does tragedy exist? because you are full of rage.
why are you full of rage? because you are full of grief.”

[annes_mesmerizing_books]

I’m a huge fan of K. Ancrum’s writing, and the first two chapters immediately reminded me why. They kept me on the edge of my seat and made me curious about the rest of the story.

But while reading I started writhing, because Elias was so sweet and (even though I knew this was coming) Victor was so incredibly cruel. It broke my heart.

Then the hunt began and Elias started killing too. I still loved him, but something shifted in me, just like something shifted within Victor and Elias. I wanted them to meet again, but I had to follow their separate journeys first, toiling through the footnotes I refused to check. I kind of hate footnotes. On the other hand, I loved the use of different languages that others complained about. I didn’t even notice the first German texts at first 😂.

Anyway, I pulled through, and in the end the story became so incredibly soft. I really wanted them to meet again earlier.

And now I don’t know whether to round my 3.5 star rating up or down.

Thank you, HarperCollins Children’s Books and NetGalley, for this ARC.

Follow me on Instagram

[ッ]

i will read anything by k. ancrum <3

[Eva B.]

K. ANCRUM IS WRITING A FRANKENSTEIN RETELLING?! TAKE ALL OF MY MONEY.

[katarina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lowkey speechless.

K. Ancrum never ceases to amaze me. Her writing style is so choppy yet effective. You feel sort of thrown into Elias and Victor's world but in the end everything starts to all make sense and come together. After finishing I had to reread the first couple chapters immediately.

The structuring of this story was so interesting in a dual POV as Elias and Victor race against each other to meet all these different alchemists following Victor’s crazy procedures on Elias. They each went on their own journeys through growth being connected by emotions and forced to understand each other on another level.

I love Elias so much, he is now a part of my hall of fame of favorite characters of all time. I feel so emotional just thinking about him and I did in fact shed some tears in his honor. He deserves the world and then some.

I’m keeping this at a four star rating for now but I definitely think that on a reread it could become a five.

Thank you so much to HarperCollins for providing me with this eARC.

[Tegan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for an honest review, and thank you to the author herself for the Google Docs version two years ago that I devoured in a day.

It is such a relief to be able to talk about this book in more detail after I fell in love with a first draft over two years ago. This book is K. Ancrum's twisted love letter to horror and curiosity, and it's unafraid to pay tribute to what I love so dearly about the source material (Victor Frankenstein being a whiny teenager). It's a different take on the story in comparison to the Frankenstein renditions that we may already know, but the focus on what it means to be human and the cruelty of human ambition remains prominent. And I feel like Ancrum's rendition dives more into Victor's abhorrence and the way that he thinks, driven by this desire to be understood and proving himself to his peers, no matter the cost or the unforgivable acts he will commit. It’s a version of the story that focuses on the parts that readers may not remember. Most of us know the monster, the murders, and the ice. Fewer of us remember the elaborate speeches, the travel around the world, and the framework through which the story is being told to a horrified listener, and these half-forgotten moments are what Ancrum brings to the forefront of her reimagining.

He knew it was time to face the music; he knew Elias would come for him. The way Elias’s eyes burned as they stared at each other in the belly of Victor’s lab, Victor knew with certainty that he was about to be hunted.

Adam, Mine feels entirely different to anything she's published before, but it's still so unflinchingly her in a way that I will adore forever. This is a book where Ancrum took all of the skills that have made her previous books evocative, romantic, and exciting, and used them to make this book painful and isolating. There's a lot of emotional chaos in it as usual, but all of it is punishment and devastation. Victor has a lot of scenes that could have functioned as a kind of bonding in another book, but here it's a type of flogging: theatrical in its violence and well deserved. And the monster experiences the struggle of loss and a longing for death that's as explicit as any romantic scene Ancrum has ever written, but not at all the same. Elias isn't energised by his agonies; they drain him, and he drags them around like a ball on a chain. He spends the story mourning the life that he had lost and fighting the urge for vengeance that threatens to strip all the remaining softer parts of himself that made him his mother’s son. It’s especially important to me that Elias is disabled, as someone living in a body held together by painkillers and wishful thinking, and it’s no surprise that Ancrum has chosen to write about these fragile bodies. Her interpretation of Frankenstein’s “monster” is an eighteen-year-old village boy who is taken advantage of in the pursuit of a merciless stranger’s goals.

”If you had been born rough, perhaps you would know the price of work and what it means to have family, to bow before destiny in supplication. You could be a man at that age then. But you are a gentleman. And for men who do not have to grovel for bread, seventeen is a child.”

What I remember best about reading Frankenstein is that, before anything else, Victor Frankenstein is a boy. He’s seventeen, rich, arrogant, and merciless. He’s a talented child amongst adults at his university, and his desperate longing for approval from his peers sets him on a course he can’t—or won’t—turn back from. This acknowledgement of Victor's youth is something I find lacking in most recent adaptations, so it warms my heart that Ancrum placed such emphasis on it. The scientists and alchemists Victor encounters throughout his journey take continuous responsibility for treating him as an equal in both intellect and life experience, and for gifting him knowledge he was not responsible or mature enough to treat with care. With this knowledge, he invents machines that would be miraculous for medicine at that time, but he ultimately uses them to create his "monster" and impulsively impress his peers rather than channel that ambition for the greater good.

"Manipulation of the human form is...dark arts indeed."
"Do you have that same opinion on blood transfusions, a thing that would have been considered obscene last century, that has since saved thousands of lives?"

In this book, the lines between alchemy and chemistry are blurred, and there's emphasis on how magic is untimely science. In a sense, Victor is right in the theories that lead to his public humiliation: he can and will succeed in performing metaphysical acts upon the body. There are also a lot of people who are as invested in this breakthrough science as he is, and the consequences of his pride and vanity (and the fact that they all hate him) stop him from joining them professionally. Frankenstein 1818 Victor uses lightning to raise a body from the dead, and this is the greatest example of blurring the line between science and magic, wisdom and witchcraft. Ancrum's reimagining of that story just adds other very qualified people who know how to manipulate the spiritual energy in blood or rip a hole in your soul while leaving your body intact, and these people serve as an example of what Victor could've become if he used his talent for literally anything other than impressing his friends. And there's poetic justice in this rich and pretentious version of Victor being bad at spiritual science and his “monster” (very smart, but undereducated and illiterate) being so good at it.

My only notable flaw with the book is how the non-linear timeline and jumps between Victor and Elias’ perspectives left me lost in a few chapters. They visit many of the same alchemists, and there are times when Victor shows up and discovers Elias has already visited, but we don’t see Elias’ visit until later in the book, and this felt slightly disruptive to my reading experience. My Kindle was also displeased with being asked to jump between my current page, a footnote, then back again, so there are some translations I missed out on.

Ultimately, this story is about how deciding to try to understand each other makes us into people with a capacity for love that respects the vulnerability involved in denying hate. It’s about the effort involved to heal the wounds we deliver out of carelessness and selfish cruelty.

---

original review january 2024:a twisted love letter to horror and curiosity, and unfraid to pay tribute to what i love so dearly about the source material (victor frankenstein being a little bitch)

saving my official review and ranking for when the book is complete and in my hands, but i wanted everyone to know that this book is still so unflinchingly Ancrum in a way that i’ll adore forever

[Minna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Elias, I would go to war for you 🥹

[Christiana Joy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not going to pretend to be unbiased about the author, narrator, or Frankenstein in general. I’m a big fan all around, and expected to love this, which I did.

As far as retellings go, this was brilliant. It’s about 50/50 its own story and faithful retelling. The host of characters were entertaining and engaging, and traveling to different parts of Europe was unexpectedly fun considering the circumstances. My heart is at once full and sore, I think I need to lay down. (No Kaci, it’s not scary. It’s a bit gross, angsty and chock full of heart.)

Will Watt delivers a masterclass on narration, I’m not sure how many characters and accents he did in this performance. But it was stellar, no notes. There is only applause.

[g · Rating 5 out of 5]

thank you to NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for a review.

betrayed, taken against his will, and desecrated at victor frankenstein’s altar of pride, elias wakes as a monster undead and unholy. “adam, mine” follows the stories of victor and elias as they travel the globe in search of answers and justice for what either of them have done, to see if there’s anyway to wash off all the blood. if elias has his way, frankenstein will ask for forgiveness and know in the same breath he’s earned neither it nor mercy. but suffering comes easy while rage does not and revenge takes more rage than elias has ever been able to carry.

i don’t even know where to begin. this was so so so good. it’s fundamentally altered my view of victor frankenstein the man (who in the original text is an insufferable bastard and in other retellings he’s a monster of biblical portions). and despite the humanization of victor and the compassion you can feel for him, ancrum never asks you to forgive him—just understand him, you can keep hating him if you want. i wore elias’s fragile rage like a perfectly fit jacket but his sorrow like lead weights and ancrum doesn’t ask if you want to feel his sorrow and loneliness because you have no choice in the matter. i felt like i was climbing the walls and eating cement. i felt untethered at best. it’s a book written about an immutable bond made in blood, betrayal, and pride that becomes a thread of penance and and justice between elias and victor. and the lies we tell ourselves to achieve our own ends. brother i don’t know what more i can say or do. sometimes you just gotta rip your hair out in atonement, lay down in a creek, and wrap yourself so tight in a blanket you can’t escape what comes next. oh this is irrevocably shifted the fabric of my identity

[Tye Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adam, Mine is a love letter to Frankenstein, and as someone who adores Frankenstein retellings, I absolutely devoured this. The writing is superb, the emotions are incredible, and the story is at once creative and respectful of the original. This is beautiful and you should read it.


Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for this audio arc!

[Lena]

Had the immense privilege of beta reading this. No rating/review because it was an early draft. You should all be adding this to your want to read tho!!

[Maëlys]

i’m seated. the bookstore employees are scared and asking me to leave because it "doesn't even have a cover yet" but i’m simply too seated.

[nadia | notabookshelf]

an author who astounds and Makes Me Feel Things consistently is doing a frankenstein retelling oh i am so normal about this sooo so normal so okay

[Danielle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Firstly, thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for allowing me the opportunity to read an early copy of this book! I loved K. Ancrum’s The Corruption of Hollis Brown and was very excited to dive deeper into the author’s other works.

I really loved the depth and complexity that the author brought into the story of Frankenstein and his creation. It’s a very different rendition than the ones we’re often familiar with, but also the same in its pull to have the reader understand what it means to be human and the cruelty that often follows human ambition. Although Victor continues to be an absolutely abhorrent character, it is interesting to dive into what makes him tick. The desire to be understood and the fixation on proving himself, ultimately leading to an unforgivable act of ultimate selfishness.

I think more often than not, in depictions of Frankenstein, there’s an innate desire of the watcher to make Victor understand or make him pay. And if you’re a person who has ever felt that way, this book does an incredible job of showing the atrocities committed by Victor through Elias’s eyes. He’s forced to reckon with the feelings of his creation, of Elias’s undoing. The confusion of being chosen and the rage of isolation.

The reason why I’m marking it three stars is because, for most of the book, I found it massively confusing. The timeline is not linear, so the reader is moved from Victor’s POV to Elias’s POV, both occurring at seemingly random points in the story. It felt somewhat disruptive to the development of the characters, in my opinion. On the journey through visiting many alchemists, the reader is also shown dialogue in many different languages, which also felt disruptive to the flow of the story because I was constantly checking footnotes to figure out what the characters were saying and sometimes there were no footnotes at all.

If you’re someone who doesn’t mind the jumping around in time, I definitely think this is a book you can enjoy, though, as the main characters are very well written and Elias’s story is tragic and moving.

[Cassie C · Rating 4 out of 5]

How can the ends justify the means if he cannot produce any ends? I loved this idea from the book and to see how this very concept has such a huge influence on Victor Frankenstein. While the story of Frankenstein and his monster has never been the most compelling to me, I’m always up for something that Ankrum writes, so I was willing to give this one a go. I’m glad I did, because I feel like this is the most compelling take I’ve come across. It was interesting to see how Victor does not actually create some horrendously frightening monster with inhuman capabilities, other than the fact that he cannot die. Instead, we see how his actions take an incredibly kind and caring person, and causes them to do monstrous things in order to get their revenge. And since we do see half the story from Elias’ perspective, we also get to explore how she deals with being perceived as a monster, and being deeply hurt by what was done to him, while still trying to maintain the kindness that he was known for. I think the best thing we get from this book is the supernatural emotional connection that Victor and Elias share that bonds them and ultimately changes them. I will continue to read whatever Ankrum writes, as this book continues to show the skill that she has.
On a side note, Ankrum is the queen of short chapters, and I can’t express enough how much I appreciate them.
On another side note, I feel the need to give praise to the audiobook narrator for doing such a great job with a fairly difficult task, given the amount of accents and languages that were included in the book.
Many things to NetGalley, K. Ankrum , and HarperAudio Children’s for the chance to listen to this audiobook and leave an honest review.

[Grace -thewritebooks]

Thank you to Edelweiss and HarperCollins for an eARC in exchange for an honest review

Jumped for joy when my approval for this came through. Have been a huge fan of Ancrum's work since The Wicker King when I was at school, and I just knew they would ACE a Frankenstein retelling.
Like all of Ancrum's works, this grappled with that fine line between teen and adult and all of the daunting responsibilities that come with that shift. I couldn't get enough of how each visit that Victor or Elias made across the continent chipped away a little more of the stone wall between them, they were writing not only a love letter to one another (with all of its vengeance driven, guilt-ridden complications) but also a love letter to the gothic literature which has so clearly played such a key role in the author's works. A huge win for all English students everywhere

[em!! · Rating 5 out of 5]

almost cried at work

[Madelyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

”Would you be afraid if you met yourself?”

I’ve never given or taken confession, but I think reading Adam, Mine. might mirror both experiences. Ancrum shows her readers the worst of these characters and brings us along as they stumble towards resolution. By asking if Frankenstein and his monster can forgive each other or themselves, Ancrum encourages her readers to do the same, whatever form our beasts might take.

Endless thanks to K. Ancrum for the ARC.

[Gretal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Devastating, tragic, beautiful. Much like the rest of K. Ancrum's work, this makes me feel so much it's almost overwhelming. I love the story told here just as much as I hate it. To compare it to the earlier version I read, I like the ways the ending was expanded upon but am also so glad it's fundamentally the same story even as it hurts.

Original review, January 2024:
I finished this last night and I've thought about it a lot since — which really is rare for me. This is already a special book, and I look forward to reading the final version.

[Starr ❇✌❇]

uhh I have no idea what this is (except it's related to Frankenstein) but the "people also liked" section lists both Iron Widow and Beowulf so 👀👀👀

update I have now read Icarus so now I really 👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀

[Laura (crofteereader) · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up for a very good second half.

I’ll admit I found the first half (Victor’s part and the creation of our “monster”) rather boring. I was resigned to the prediction that the whole book would be about redeeming him. But then in came Elias.

Elias is the kind of character Ancrum writes so well: deeply emotional, kind, warring with himself, irreversibly wronged. Elias shifting from anger to grief to acceptance to hope throughout the story was honestly what Frankenstein (the classic story) has always needed. Elias is also used as a really interesting foil to the idea that formal education is the only path to success; here is a compassionate man who is extremely dyslexic and will never be able to read but he is invited by several alchemists throughout the story to study and become one of them. In contrast to our highly educated genius Victor who gets chased out of most of those spaces. Elias is what makes the story.

Unfortunately, Victor was still there and still a major part of the plot. I liked that we got to see him judged and found wanting - that his brilliance was not enough to redeem him. Though I found the way the story was told kind of confusing; it was really hard to match up the moments of connection between Victor and Elias until the very end when they were almost together.

{Thank you HarperCollins for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review; all thoughts are my own}

[mikeyandherbooks]

E-Arc provided by Netgalley

This was beautifully written like all of K. Ancrum's books, but I found myself getting confused in here sometimes and I wasn't as connected to the characters as I hoped I would be. I enjoyed parts of this but there were some parts that definitely fell flat for me.

[Bethany Hall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks Harper audio for the advanced copy to review! I always love K Ancrum books and this was so exception. It was a love letter to the story of Frankenstein, and honestly, at first I was a little lost. However, I caught on as the story progressed and as I crept toward the middle of the book, I was captivated. The story comes together BEAUTIFULLY at the end, and Will Watt is a treasure.

[Lyb]

IT SOUNDS SO GOOD IM SO EXCITED!!!!

[Frank-Intergalactic Bookdragon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received an eARC of this via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

It's always interesting to see what different Frankenstein stories take and leave from Mary Shelley's book, and the most interesting choice in Adam, Mine is keeping Victor's age. In the book, Victor's in university when he makes the monster, so a dark YA story just makes sense. I really enjoyed his characterization and the twist on the monster, having been a person Victor took advantage of in his experiments, keeping his memories after resurrection.

I'm not crazy about how magical this book was. The experiment loses weight when it's explained away as magic rather than simply Victor's own mad genius. The inclusion of alchemy could have been a good choice given its goals where the same as Victor's, but the spells were too much. Like yeah Frankenstein isn't scientifically accurate and even outright refuses to explain how the revival worked, but the idea of man playing God holds more weight when it's sci-fi, not fantasy.

Adam, Mine is, ultimately, pretty conflicted on what to do with the Frankenstein story, caught between being faithful to the story and doing its own thing, the callbacks and new additions end up muffled in their fight, much like Victor and his monster. Basically, I wish this were either 20% more accurate to the book or 40% more original.

TWs: animal cruelty and experimentation, body horror, gore and violence, child death, homophobia.

[Nenia Campbell]

THE PRECIOUS IS MINE

[Lucy Cummings · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley and K Ancrum for this early copy in exchange for an honest review!

Although K Ancrum remains one of my favorite YA authors, this book just didn’t really do it for me.

The premise is intriguing: a retelling of Frankenstein, where Victor is a young but prodigal alchemy student who is determined to discover the secret of human reanimation. Determined to be well regarded by his peers, he kidnaps a young innocent, Elias, and desecrates his body. When Elias awakes, he finds himself scarred, wounded, and isolated—with an unintentional bond to Victor. Determined to seek out revenge, Elias follows Victor across Europe as Victor attempts to undo his mistakes.

There were parts of this book I loved: the journey across the different alchemists, the emotional connection between Elias and Victor, and the depiction of growth and change. However, the book was just too slow and meandering for me. The first part of the book was paced well, but the journey with the alchemists felt too drawn out. To be fair, I haven’t read the original Frankenstein, and I’m sure that some of this was just a result of the adaptation, but I do feel like the pacing could have been improved. Then the ending felt very fast and abrupt. I wanted to see way more interaction between Victor and Elias, because it felt like the book was building to something that resolved too quickly. Again, maybe it’s just that I’m not a fan of the structure of Frankenstein?

I think this book definitely has an audience, I just don’t think I personally was that audience. But anything K Ancrum writes is still a must read for me!

[erica utti-hodge ✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

thank you to netgalley for the eARC of this wonderfully written novel.

4.25/5 stars

this is a beautifully composed, thoughtfully written story that tugs at your heart and is entirely new and inventive. i’d recommend it to anyone who didn’t love having to read frankenstein for school, but enjoys sad, atmospheric, fantastical books.

however, i feel like i would have enjoyed this book more if it WEREN’T a retelling, because it strays so far from the source material. it felt like a lot of victor’s initial characterization relied on assumptions from Frankenstein, but the plot is entirely separate from the classic.

the chapters are extremely short and allow the story to jump around easily (and therefore it reads quickly) but some chapters feel redundant or mis-placed in the narrative.

that being said, the added characters feel well-rounded and whole, and the fantasy elements were entertaining and thought-provoking—i’d definitely love to read more about this world of alchemists. overall this was an effective novel but i think it would be stronger if removed from the source material of the original classic.

[christinac_reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

hauntingly perfect.
a devastating, meticulously crafted ruin.
a quiet violence that tethered me to the dark and called it a sanctuary.
this reads like a slow, beautiful drowning. i, pinned under the waves, suffocated, until the water finally felt like home.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review (and many others) plus essays and booklists are now available on my blog!

Victor Frankenstein is a brilliant young man studying the alchemical arts, but the scorn and mockery of his classmates drives him to ambitiously pursue human reanimation, no matter the cost. Elias Hilfiker, the boy Victor chooses to remake into a monster, awakens in agony, covered in scars from Victor's deranged experiments. Rejected by his family, furious, and fueled by vengeance, Elias chases Victor across the continent as the wayward alchemist searches desperately for a way to repair his greatest misdeed.

Fun fact about me: In 10th grade I won my high school fanfic contest (something put on by the librarians) with a piece of gay Frankenstein fanfiction (between Victor and Henry), so Adam, Mine is pretty uniquely up my alley! I've read three other books by K. Ancrum and Adam, Mine has their signature short chapters and dreamlike chronology. It's maybe more philosophical than their other books, as each of the alchemists that Victor and Elias visit kind of challenge them and their morality in different ways.

The actual narrative is very different from the original Frankenstein since it happens over a much shorter period of time and involves Victor going to each of these alchemists instead of kind of being aimlessly on the run. I have kind of mixed feelings about the structure, just because it ends up being a little fetch-quest-y if you know what I mean, but I did like the different perspectives each alchemist offered. Eventually, it feels less like Elias is actively chasing Victor and more like they're each on their own journeys to get to a place where they can understand and forgive themselves and one another. I liked the emotion-sharing because it reminded me of the body-sharing in The Corruption of Hollis Brown which is probably my favorite of Ancrum's book so far, and it's kind of a way to encourage sympathy in an otherwise very distant relationship.

Unlike Ancrum's other books, there really isn't a romance here. Elias and Victor do have kind of a weird nemesis/brother/platonic soulmate thing going on but there's nothing romantic about it. It's Romantic but not romantic (a little joke for the English nerds). Still, it's a very emotional story and I think both the rawness and the intimate-but-adversarial relationship between Victor and Elias do give it some of the essence of the original story while also effectively standing alone as a unique narrative. I don't know what to make of the ending but that's also maybe true to the original.

Obviously, I already have my eye on Ellie Ellie coming early next year. K. Ancrum's stories are persistently unique and I continue to look forward to seeing what they come up with!

Thank you to K. Ancrum and HarperCollins for this ARC in exchange for my full, honest review!

Happy reading!