Scott Reads It!

Seen at Scott Reads It "To examine the cause of life, we must have recourse to death" -Mary Shelley Frankenstein is one of my all-time favorite classics and so I decided to request The Lady And Her Monsters on Edelweiss. Thank you to William Morrow for sending me a copy of this book in exchange for a honest review. The Lady And Her Monsters is the story of how Frankenstein came to be and frankly it wasn't too interesting. In the beginning of The Lady And Her Monsters, I was extremely immersed in this book. I quickly lost interest after a few pages because the author goes on some not so interesting tangents. There is a lot of fluff in this book and it isn't very straight to the point. Do I really need to hear a story about Mary Shelley's placenta and read a description about her birth? I think the author was way too descriptive in describing Mary Shelley's birth and the doctor's procedure to remove her from her mother. Maybe I'm just immature but I don't enjoy reading a birth scene! Sure there were also a bunch of interesting facts and anecdotes but there were so many more boring and bland ones. I really want the author to focus only on Mary Shelley but instead the author also decided to focus on the life of Lord Byron and various other scientists. I know that these scientists inspired Shelley but there was too many pages devoted to them. I was interested in the science behind Frankenstein but it was just too much. Mary Shelley is portrayed as a real jerk in this book. She is not only a jerk but she's also a cheater, a liar, and a prejudice person. I may have learned a few facts but the major thing I'm taking from this book is that Shelley was not a nice person at all. She committed adultery, she lied about her inspiration for Frankenstein, and she disliked Swiss and German people. It kills me to learn that the woman who wrote one of my favorite books was a complete and utter closed minded horrible person. The Lady And Her Monsters is an extremely slow-paced non fiction book that some readers may enjoy. There were times where I nearly fell asleep reading this book and I really wouldn't recommend this one for pleasure because it isn't too interesting. I was hoping to learn more about Frankenstein but I pretty much learned how horrible of a person she was. If you're into history and science, you may enjoy this book more than I did.