Yes, I managed to finish this 380 page book in less than 24 hours yesterday. I really love this series, and I heard some hints online that it will be turned into a movie, so I will surely be watching that soon.
Juliet, Montgomery, Balthazar, Lucy, and Edward are now all living with Juliet’s official guardian Elizabeth in her private “von Stein” or Frankenstein mansion. All the men in the town save one are afraid of the mansion, so only girl servants who have been helped by Ms. Elizabeth occupy the mansion. Montgomery proposes to Juliet and all the girls of the mansion are ecstatic to be a part of the first and possibly only wedding they will see for a long time. Edward is still flashing between Beast and human, while Lucy is still in love with him hoping that someday he can be brought back as fully Edward.
Elizabeth has sworn that she is no longer doing the deeds of her past relatives, the Frankenstein family, and bringing the dead back to life. However, she lies as the little five year old boy Hensley is actually the reanimated version of the professor’s son. Also, the girls of the mansion are revealed to not be totally reanimated but having parts of them that were taken from dead bodies such as eyes, hands, legs, or other things.
As Edward’s health deteriorates, everyone is thinking about if there is a way to remove the Beast from him. The beast was created from Montgomery’s malaria-infected blood being combined with the brain of a diseased jackal, and so his whole second persona is truly only because of this infected part of the brain that he contains. A possible solution of this is for Edward to die, and then Elizabeth to bring him back after transplanting his brain, however this would be going against Elizabeth’s previous promise to herself to never bring back another whole creature besides Hensley and so she would not do it.
All the while, Juliet has been made heir to the Von Stein mansion with the girls, but a servant named Valentina who wanted to be the heir is jealous enough to try to turn Juliet in. The team is not only fighting time with trying to save Edward, but they are also trying to fight it when fleeing from their past.
The biggest problem I had with the story was Valentina’s backstory, although it contains spoilers I can plainly say that it was confusing and I could not tell whether I simply disliked her for being jealous or whether she had any saving graces. Also, Hensley being reanimated as he was seemed to have strange tendancies, whether he be 5 years old or not, reanimated or not. It seemed a big unrealistic.
This book even more grew upon the Juliet versus her father inner turmoil, which made me have a lot of respect for Juliet’s character as she fought off her inner demons. Lucy went from a flighty teenage girl to one of the most determined characters I have seen in a book, whether it be as a cause of her love for Edward or simply her growing as a person. Montgomery changed from still a servant whose distrust for Juliet nearly overturned his love for her to a man who is ready to marry her.
This was an amazing end to the series, I definitely plan to try and buy these books, and I hope that the movie is really in production so that I can see it when it comes out (hopefully soon!). I will be giving this book yet another outstanding rating, and I cannot wait to read more of Shepherd’s books.
Overall Rating: 6/5
[…] greatly, I have to admit that they have some of the best cover art. My four favorite cover arts are A Cold Legacy, Deadly Cargo, The Selection, and Winter. Even if these books weren’t the best, I really […]