This story is a historical gothic romance and Frankenstein fanfiction. It’s quirky, creative, original, bazaar and morbid and I’ve never read anything like it before.

The story starts out in a morgue in 1812 when twenty four year old Angelika Frankenstein and her older brother Victor are choosing body parts to assemble a man and bring him back to life. Angelika is Victor’s assistant and gets the idea to make herself a perfect man with hopes he can be her husband.

This part of the book (in the morgue) when Angelika and Victor banter while examining body parts was a struggle for me to get through. Angelique finds a beautiful man and wants to take him whole but Victor is trying to do better than his German competitor, Jürgen Schneider, and make a man from different body parts from different corpses. They are each collecting body parts and notice the hand taken from Angelique’s man has a ring and they plan to attach the hand to Victor’s man. They return to a laboratory in their barn and prepare the bodies to reanimate them. Angelika sews the parts together, arteries and all, and Victor sets up the bath with special fluids and equipment, waiting for the lightning storm to hit. Victor’s man is hooked up first, lightning crackles and when the man wakes up, he’s scared and in pain and runs out the door with Victor chasing after him. Angelika’s man wakes up, also in pain and with no memory. He is anxious and asking questions. He wants to know what happened and who he is. Angelika convinces him to come to their home to recover and they decide to call him Will for now.

Angelika and Victor grew up wealthy but lonely orphans in Blackthorn Manor which has been neglected and overgrown by ivy and dust. Their parents died when they were teens and Victor has tried his best to take care of his younger sister. Angelika is beautiful but odd and longs for a suitor. She spends much of her time lost in daydreams and long baths. Victor is awaiting the arrival of his fiancé, Lizzie, who he adores. Victor is angry at the church because when his mother had scarlet fever, Father Porter told them to pray and not to call a doctor. Their mother died and their father died soon after from grief. Victor blames religion and forbids prayer in their home. He believes only in science.

Angelika tells Will everything that’s happened as well as her hopes that he might become her husband.  Will is kind to Angelika but resists her advances, even though he finds her attractive. He wants to find out who he is and if he has family, especially after she tells him about the ring that was on his hand. Angelika decides to help him discover his identity by searching for Adam, Victor’s man, who was wearing Will’s ring. They also ask around the area for information regarding any young men that died recently.  Their search takes them to the local Military Academy and the kind Commander Keatings who becomes smitten with Adelaide.

Will begins to work on cleaning up  Blackthorn Manor, and hires more staff to help. He has a way of bringing joy to everyone he meets. Victor’s fiancé, Lady Elizabeth Lavenza (Lizzie), arrives bringing laughter and love to their home. I thought it was odd there was no chaperone and Lizzie and Victor shared a room. Meanwhile, Will and Angelika are becoming closer. Will tells Adelaide,

“You are the most beautiful woman who ever lived,” The most brilliant, the most witty, the most brave.”

He goes on to say,

“I need you to know I am in awe of everything you are. Even the bad parts of you. But this resurrection pastime in not a game. You need to give life, and death, the respect it deserves. It is not up to you to make these decisions. You are not God.”

One of the things I liked about the book are seeing how kindness and love (from Will and Lizzie) helped Angelika and Victor grow. She shared with Victor,

“It’s Will. He’s opening my eyes, and he makes me want to be…better. I want him to be proud of me.”

Victor says he feels the same with Lizzie and he doesn’t care about competing with Jürgen Schneider anymore. Angelika says Will’s always thinking about others. She decides she wants to do more charity work for her village.

Angelique meets with Father Porter to see if he knew of anyone recently deceased and he tells her how his replacement, Father Arlo Northcott), died recently in a carriage accident. Soon after Adam shows her and Will the ring with a special design on it. (She had been leaving food in the woods for and he began to trust her.)

There are many other things going on including a missing servant, disturbances in the village, jealous pig, Angelika and Victor’s renewed faith, and much more. It  was hard for me to keep up with it all.

Will is starting to tire easily and is losing feeling in his hands, making him wonder if he might be dying. I wanted to find out what would happen to Will and who Angelique would end up with, Will or Commander Keatings. 

Will was kind and thoughtful, but he didn’t feel romantic to me. While he had a beautiful face with soft bronze-brown hair, his hands were cold and curling and he was losing feeling in them. This along with  him being made from parts from different bodies was more of an ick factor for me.

I felt that Victor spoke disrespectfully to Angelika throughout the story. He asked Will if he had bonked her yet and soon after told him, if he bedded her, she’s his. When Commander Keatings asks Victor’s permission to court Angelika, one of the questions Victor asks him is if he is good in bed. All of these comments were said in front of Angelika. I’m not sure if these comments were meant to be funny but they made me uncomfortable. I missed the humor that I saw in Thorne’s other books like the wonderful Hating Game.

I appreciate that this story is unique and nothing like anything I’ve ever read before. I look forward to seeing what the author does next.