Book Review: The Madman's Daughter

TITLE: The Madman's Daughter
Book 1 in The Madman's Daughter Trilogy
AUTHOR: Megan Shepherd
PUBLISHED: January 2013
CATEGORY: YA
GENRE: Retelling/Continuation, Experiments
PREMISE: Juliet Moreau has lived under the shadow of her father's reputation her whole life. After running into his servant, she finally gets to go meet him on his mysterious island...
MY REVIEW: The Island of Dr. Moreau is one of those lesser known classics. It's not nearly as popular as say, Treasure's Island or H. G. Wells more popular books such as the Time Machine. This one took a classic and basically expanded on the ending of it without trodding all over the original book to suit the author's purpose which is a bad habit a lot of classic retellings have.
Now the downside to this book is that a large chunk of it does stall. Far too much time is devoted to the forced love triangle drama that was totally unnecessary and the middle of the book is mostly just that. The great parts of the book really come in the last few chapters. But the author does actually get that the point of Dr. Moreau was not romance, it was to talk about ethical science and she does talk about in this. As someone who has a hard time finding classic book retellings that get the point of the original and do keep that idea going in their own version...this was nice to see.
A few usual amateur flaws aside, this was a rather good debut. I can't wait to see what comes of this trilogy, especially after that cliffhanger. Word is, this has been optioned for movie rights. We'll see what comes of that.
WHO SHOULD READ: Island of Dr. Moreau fans, classic book retelling fans
MY RATING: Four out of Five experiments gone wrong