I loved this gripping Gothic novel, which cleverly takes Mary Shelley's most famous novel, and reimagines the story of Victor Frankenstein's great-niece, Mary.
It's 1850, and Mary is a young woman newly married to an ambitious but flawed geologist, Henry. Both are keen to make their names in the world of science, but their situation makes this difficult. Until Mary discovers some old family papers that allude to the shocking truth behind her great-uncle's past. Together with Henry, and the odious Clarke, a creature is born that defies nature, death, and the boundaries of knowledge. Intriguing, thrilling, and beautifully written, 'Our Hideous Progeny' transported me to another age, and kept me enthralled to very last page.

After a very slow start it gets better. The plot does keep repeating itself so it was hard not to skim read. Unfortunately for me a book that I wanted to finish so I could read something else. Having said this, I'm sure many readers who like more literary books will enjoy it.

I absolutely loved this. Mary is a descendant of Victor Frankenstein. Interested in science but kept out of all of the big institutions as she's a woman. When she finds her great uncles papers she embarks on a project to create her own creature.
Loved Mary and her attitude. Her anger, her intelligence. Fighting against everything holding her back.
The creature itself is a pretty minor part of the book but that doesn't matter. The story is more about the people.

Being a massive fan of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein", I immediately fell in love with "Our Hideous Progeny" by CE McGill. This novel just emulates the writing style of Shelley perfectly. I loved that the story had moved on and was preoccupied with the accuracy of the Crystal Palace dinosaur statues. A brilliant book and probably the best Frankenstein-inspired novel I've read.

An intriguing story set in the 1800’s when women were not recognised outside of the home. A different way of writing about Frankenstein and full of well researched scientific details. Unfortunately I found it hard to get completely into and having read over half way through I’m afraid I actually gave up- very unlike me! Other readers will I am sure enjoy it more than I.

This was such a clever idea and the link to Frankenstein really helped develop a convincing backstory.

Slowly paced and intricately plotted, Mary has the idea to try and recreate her uncle's famous experiment and bring a creature to life. Whilst she is a talented scientist, she needs the credibility of her husband, Henry, in the eyes of Victorian society at least, to facilitate her research. Mary has had a complex, truamatic even, childhood, and her marriage to Henry was rushed. Their relationship always feels slightly out of step, but this seems to be due to the loss of their baby and the Victorian sensibility to bury grief within your soul. There is no doubt that Henry and Mary were a meeting of minds, but maybe not of souls. It is Henry's hubris which leads them to reside in a backwater in Scotland to develop their research and conduct their experiments.

The complications do not end there - penniless Henry relies on his nemesis, Finlay Clarke, for finance and the result of the experiments seem to be fated to be attributed to the success of the two male scientists involved in this project; thereby, excluding Mary from her due recognition. However, neither man allows for the relationship which has developed between Mary and the creature. This is slow burning and meaningful and I wondered if it had become a surrogate for the child she had lost early in the book. Henry's sister, Maisie, is another unexpected force to be reckoned with and the book took a turn that I did not see coming.

Bear with this book, it is slow in places. However, the compassion of females versus the calculating, cruelty of the male characters is something to behold. The snobbish elite attitude of Victorian society towards females in general, females as scientists and other cultural difference (The Jamsetjees) are all crucial elements in this terrible tale of discovery and invention. Beautifully written with carefully developed characters, it is certainly a book you should not miss!

A lively and absorbing retelling of Frankenstein’s Monster that brings women to the forefront in spite of men. I loved the character of Mary, Victor Frankenstein’s great niece, her rattiness, her courage and her sense of humour in adversity. If only she was born 100 years later, she would have been unstoppable. But Victorian society didn’t suffer intelligent women well, especially if they were born to a lowly servant, and Mary was forced to put up with being second rate in the eyes of the establishment But she and her husband were scientists and together they worked on their dream of sparking life into a dead creature. Loved the references to real people and events of the time, loved the ending, loved the humanity in this version.

The cover of this book drew me in the disturbing symmetry the symbols hinting at a monster that lies within hidden and reviled in what is to be revealed, dark and not altogether understood but waiting, ready

Amazingly gothic and atmospheric, it’s a sumptuous read which both passionate multi layered. Just wonderful

An unusual take on the Frankenstein novel but unfortunately it was not for me. I found the book to be too slow to hold my interest. Sorry.
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for the advance copy of this book.

1950’s London and Mary is a scientist but women do not get the recognition they deserve. She is married to another scientist Henry, who has a gambling issue and is generally selfish. When Mary finds the journals of her late Uncle Victor Frankenstein they commence working on recreating his work. This sends them to Scotland but everything starts to go wrong when the man Henry owes money to turns up.

A novel with great characters where science is important but also how women are seen but not for the skills and strengths they have. A novel of adventure and danger as they try to create a living creature from those that have died.

Can they succeed or even survive the danger ahead?

An interesting expansion of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in theory. The narrative felt rather slow and dragged out in places, though. I appreciated the historical, scientific, and gothic elements.

The legend of Frankenstein has fascinated audiences ever since Mary Shelley first wrote her book in 1818. Our Hideous Progeny plays on that fascination but with a modern twist. Mary is struggling to make a name her name as a scientist in 1850s London, but when she discovers the journals of great uncle, Victor Frankestein, an utterly addictive page-turning adventure begins. This book was sent to me electronically by Netgalley for review. Thanks to the publisher for the copy. What a gorgeous interpretation of a book!

I found this book a little slow to begin with and I wondered a couple of times as to if I would be able to continue but at just about half way through the pace picked up and I found myself getting more engrossed in the story.
Mary is the great niece of Victor Frankenstein and from letters in an old briefcase she finds she knows he disappeared in strange circumstances. After being intrigued about what may have happened to him Mary and her husband Henry decide to travel to find out more and their discoveries take them to Scotland with a rival person who is determined to beat them at finding the truth.
The writing in this book was beautiful and I loved the descriptions of the fossils, I think a lot of thought was put into the story and it worked well with gothic element.
So for me a 3.5 read rounded up to 4 and a book I very much enjoyed.
My thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK, Transworld Publishers, Doubleday for giving me the opportunity to read the ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Just like those tame Hammer Horror Frankenstein sequels that attempted to cash in on the success of the original, ‘Our Hideous Progeny’ doesn’t have a lot to recommend it. Very rarely do I leave a book unfinished, but I made an exception for this feminist twist on a Gothic classic that tries unsuccessfully to shoehorn a raft of contemporary preoccupations where they simply don’t fit. Perhaps, if the author had demonstrated some wit and originality in the process, then she may have redeemed this book, but, sad to say, it’s longwinded and dogmatic. I don’t appreciate being preached to when I am attempting to read for pleasure, but, as pleasure was in short supply here, I was happy to put myself and the book out of its misery. In fact, I deleted it from my Kindle to protect the unwary from the risk of its tedium.

Unfortunately, this book just wasn't for me. I found it just didn't 'grab' me and, as a result, was unable to finish it.

Quite a brilliant take on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein that combines historical and scientific elements to a gothic, feminist novel exploring love, betrayal and family in the late nineteenth century

Set during the excitement of the 1850s, an age of new scientific discoveries and experiments, ‘Our Hideous Progeny’ tells the story of Victor Frankenstein’s great niece: Mary. A gifted scientist herself, Mary, like many women of the age, is subordinate to her opinionated and risk taking husband, Henry. The discovery of her great uncle’s journals sparks an unhealthy obsession, which leads the pair to try and copy Victor’s experiments, with devastating consequences for them both. It’s a dark and gothic tale, which I enjoyed, but felt the author had tried to cover too much ground (in terms of the plot), and this left some of the characterisation lacking for me. A very interesting read.

Illegitimate Mary Brown rejects a marriage of (in)convenience to an ageing widower with a family if rambunctious children to strike out from her middle-class grandmother’s home. This lady had always been Mary’s reluctant carer and raised her with a strong sense of shame and guilt about her origins.
Leaving the Isle of Wight, Mary tries to infiltrate into the Victorian scientific community in London. But while considering themselves radical freethinkers, they prove as hide-bound as the rest of society when it comes to race, sex and class. This propels Mary and her geologist husband Henry to attempt to secure they’re future by reviving the life work of her great-uncle, Victor Frankenstein.
In an atmosphere of dinosaur fever, Mary’s research raises interesting questions: is it right to bring any creature, human or animal, back to life if the ability to self-repair is gone? The doomed creature Mary and Henry create and its inevitable decomposition become poignant elements of the story. I could see why early British scientists were called ‘natural philosophers’.
Sharp-witted and sharp-tongued, Mary still struggles to break free from the stereotype of female amanuensis to male scientists. Her attempts to become financially independent are thwarted by the legal system of the time.
Her struggle is believable; her relationships with both the male and the female characters in the novel well portrayed; her loss of a child, reflected in the later loss of the creature, is a touching thread through the novel.
While allusions to Mary Shelley’s gothic original pepper the pages, ‘Our Hideous Progeny’ completely stands on its own merits and the reader needs only a passing acquaintance with ‘Frankenstein’.
I loved this accomplished debut novel and found it hard to believe it really is the author’s first. I look forward to more from C. E. McGill..
I will happily post this review on Amazon as soon as reviews are enabled.

Our Hideous Progeny has a very juicy premise: what if Victor Frankenstein’s great-niece found his notebooks and took his research down a new path? That niece is Mary, a hugely sympathetic and witty character straining at the bit of society’s diktats. Dealt a crappy hand in life, it’s not surprising that she’s flattered by the attentions of the dashing but flaky Henry. Let’s just say he turns out not to be the best of choices for husband.
I like that the book takes its time: a full third of it is spent establishing Mary and Henry in their life before the link to Victor emerges. C. E. McGill’s pacing is spot on. After steady establishing of the characters and the quest to create the Creature, there’s a race against time and a friend-turned-foe. It’s a delicious mix of the real world of the time (including a full complement of creepy men) and that created by Mary Shelley. I’m not usually a fan of epigraphs but here they are taken from Frankenstein and so directly relevant.
Our Hideous Progeny passes the Bechdel test in spades, and not only in conversations between Mary and her sister-in-law Margaret. It deals very well, I think, with loss and grief. Sadly, though, it also provides a reminder that even a brilliant woman could be overlooked, deliberately sidelined and lacking in agency (I think I’m still cross on behalf of the artists depicted in Jennifer Higgie’s The Mirror and the Palette which I received as a Christmas gift). And of course it’s necessary to suspend one’s disbelief concerning the Creature but that’s one of the joys of fiction. This is a pretty impressive debut; I look forward to reading more.