Mary imagines, with spell-binding vividness, the forbidden desires and creative inspirations that fuelled Mary Shelley's writing. This is a novel about wild, dissident passion, the profound dislocations of grief, and the intoxication of composition. Eekhout's writing is charged with sensual power: the result is a seductive and unnerving account of Mary's most intimate experiences

- Naomi Booth,

A beautiful, hallucinatory dream of a novel, which brings Mary Shelley back to life with a brilliant intensity. This is a marvellous book about desire, and love, and the dark mysteries of the creative act

- J.M. Miro, author of Ordinary Monsters,

A novel that tiptoes and whispers, woos and caresses like the darkest of fairytales. Laudanum and love, wild imaginations and haunted hearts; I was bewitched by this profound and pleasurable imagining of Mary Shelley and the birth of Frankenstein

- Joanne Burn, author of The Hemlock Cure,

Like reading a laudanum dream... Both the language and narrative of Anne Eekhout's book have a hallucinatory quality that encourages us to question everything and doubt everyone. The sense of danger, of violence at the hands of man or monsters, is imbued in every sentence. It brought me to a world where the old certainties of society, convention and religion have been stripped away, and where women like Mary Shelley, though unsure of her steps and uncertain of her fellows, found the courage to live and create

- Annie Garthwaite,

Rich, intricate and beguiling, this is a novel of enormous insight, great heart and incredible skill. Mary has so much to tell us about grief, fear, love and imagination. I will return to it often

- Nell Stevens, author of Briefly, A Delicious Life,

A lyrical dream of a book that strays into the nightmarish, the gothic and the eerie with an assured elegance

- Elizabeth Lee, author of Cunning Women,

Creative confirmation of Shelley's position as the mother of all goth girls. A moody and evocative reveal of the backstory (behind the backstory) of Frankenstein

Kirkus

A perceptive examination of the lesser-known relationships and events that would go on to inspire Mary Shelley's classic horror, Frankenstein. Intensely sensual and brooding, this dark romance conjures to life the lost and lonely teenaged girl whose hopes and dreams for the future are haunted by a brooding sense of grief, fear, and desire

- Essie Fox, author of The Fascination,

A literary creation story as bold, terrifying, and riveting as Frankenstein itself. Anne Eekhout captures the imaginary and biographical nuances of joy and heartbreak that surely must feed every enduring masterpiece

- Laurie Lico Albanese,

A compelling and sensitive deep-dive into Mary Shelley's brilliant mind, in the formative years directly before she wrote Frankenstein. Mary reveals the rich inner life of one of the world's greatest creative imaginations

- Sara Sheridan,

This gothic, fantasy-tinged historical fiction delves into the teenage years of Mary Shelley to find the inspiration for Frankenstein

The Bookseller, Category Spotlight

She knows how to tell stories. Eekhout keeps up the tension, suggests a great deal, does not spell out much. The book is addictive

De Volkskrant

A convincing, profound and playful book... Mary, as a multifaceted addition to Frankenstein and the story of its origins, truly brings Mary Shelley to life

NRC Handelsblad

An exemplary coming-of-age novel

Nederlands Dagblad

Eekhout pulls you into her story with playful ease and doesn't let you go again until the final page. Her imagination is convincing and compelling, her suspense-building brilliant

Financieel Dagblad

There is thunder and lightning in this book. The young Mary's love of telling stories bubbles off the pages... Eekhout writes fantastically well

Algemeen Dagblad

A novel about horrifying stories, horrific experiences and how they flow into each other... Eekhout daringly plays with genre elements that would immediately become clichés in the hands of lesser authors. She, however, brings them powerfully to life

Het Parool

A richly atmospheric novel, full of suspense and eerie surprises

Ruhr News

A nuanced, beautifully atmospheric portrayal of a young woman's intense inner life, foreshadowing Frankenstein's themes of grief, loneliness, and the desire for love

Booklist

Recreates that astonishing young writer [Mary Shelley] and some of the events that may have inspired her... It's passionate. It's brooding. IT'S ALIVE!

The Book Report, CBS

Lush, atmospheric, and deliciously Gothic; Eekhout brings Mary Shelley's childhood and her conception of Frankenstein to life as surely as any mad scientist

Writers revisit classic books at their peril... The pull of Eekhout's story is its avoidance of any trace of revisionism in the interest of producing a fantasia on the original. As it happens, Shelley makes a superb central character... [and] the prose has a strange, hypnotic, enveloping beauty, the guarantor of a good horror story

The Bay Area Reporter

Anne Eekhout's novel paints a touching and convincing portrait of Mary Shelley and the creation of her masterpiece

Financial Times