The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
When I first heard about The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, this was my exact response:
What in the heck is this!?!? OMG, I’m so exicteddddddddd!!!
I hear THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU and I’m sold. We all know Moreno-Garcia can bring that toe-curling body horror to the page and we love to see it!!
That’s quite a reaction, I’ll admit. I can be dramatic.
Unfortunately, I struggled with this story from the very start. I was kindly gifted an e-ARC and started it at least a week prior to its publication date. Two weeks later I was stil at 25% with zero desire to continue.
I made the decision to put it back on the shelf and wait for an audio copy through my local library. I finally received the audiobook on August 16th and read it in three days.
It made all the difference for me. The narration by Gisela Chipe was fantastic. They brought this story to life for me and actually succeeded in keeping me engaged. With this being said, the story still wasn’t anything I was crazy about.
This is a good book, with solid character work and a wonderfully-developed historical setting, however, I was here for the SFF-Horror and I just didn’t get it.
Maybe I set myself up for disaster thinking this was going to be something that it wasn’t, but regardless, that’s the experience I had with it. I was bored and underwhelmed.
This doesn’t detract from the fact that Silvia Moreno-Garcia is an incredibly-gifted storyteller whose work I will continue to pick up from now til forevermore. This just wasn’t my favorite of her work.
I am happy that I gave this one a second chance though and that I was able to get through to the end. It is a sweet story, sad and dramatic. I think a lot of people will really love this one. Particularly people who enjoy Historical Fiction with complicated familial relationships.
Thank you to the publisher, Ballantine, for providing me with a copy to read and review. It’s always a pleasure to see what Moreno-Garcia has developed and this was no exception.
I’m looking forward to her next release!