Nocturnal Book Reviews

I'll be honest with you, peeps. Despite struggling with writing style, ultimately I found this book fascinating.


Lynn Shepherd slowly and painstakingly reassembled a fatal love triangle which consisted of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Godwin (lately Shelley) and Claire Clairmont. She also reintroduced various mysterious events in Shelley's life and her own very Gothic version of what was happening around him and his women.


I freely admit that I was gobsmacked by A Fatal Likeness' series of events. It's very dark, twisted and convoluted, and it's intricately woven in such a mystery that the reader along with the detective Charles Maddox is forced to stumble alone in the dark, coming to the wrong conclusions again and again until we get to see the final version of the truth.

It's disconcerting, at times horrifying, but half way through the book you find that you are too invested in its characters to stop reading.

The writing style wasn't my sort of thing only because it varied between the old-fashioned Victorian language and author's own insights into what this or other event or condition would be called in the future. Such interventions were minute but I don't think they were necessary until Author's Notes and Acknowledgements where Lynn explained what she did and how she did it. I know that they kept ruining my immersion into the story.

Did you notice that I haven't said anything about the characters yet? That' because the characters is what totally made the story shine for me. They are creepy and ambiguous and keep you uncertain if you can trust your own judgement... Perhaps the only solid rock in A Fatal Likeness is Charles Maddox, the detective himself, the rest are fluid. This is why I won't tell you anything about them so as not to spoil your own impressions.

Overall, very good, although you might need to push yourself through the first third of the book to truly enjoy the whole thing.