4 ⭐️
A girl, a woman, a mother… and a monster

Very interesting take on Mary Shelly’s life. I enjoyed the re telling of her life.
I think a lot of Mary lovers will enjoy this exciting book and its story.

This was a brilliant audiobook. The narrator did a great job keeping me hooked and helped create this eerie atmosphere. Also the accents she did as well really helped bring the characters to life.

(Longer review written for the ebook)

I liked it, and the narration was excellent and I truly enjoyed listening to the book, but overall it was not for me,
Thanks to NetGalley, the editor and the author for the opportunity to access this copy.

Mary; or, the Birth of Frankenstein by Anne Eekhout

Thank You, NetGalley for the opportunity to review this book.

I loved listening to it like most Bolinda books.

It is a reimagining of Mary Shelley's writing masterpiece Frankenstein. The story is told in two timelines or rather alternates between two timelines and creates an interesting atmosphere pulling in the reader. The story starts out well and you are hooked but towards the end it slightly falters. Still, it is quite an interesting take and one I would definitely recmmend.

DNFed at about 50%. It was just very, very weird, and I wasn't enjoying the story. I also didn't like the changing from first person to third person. It felt strange when Mary Shelley had such a wild life story to focus on a fairly dull trip to Scotland that little is known about.

Wow! What a book! I very much enjoyed this and think it was the perfect audio listen for me. The narrator was easy to listen to and had me captivated! It was sapphic and dark and hit me right in the feels! The two timelines was an interesting approach and I think it really helped push the blanket of loneliness I felt throughout. It felt heavy and suffocating in parts and I was living for it, it really pulled on all of my senses and emotions. Personally I’m not sure I would have digested this as well in written form, but the audio format was great for me in this case.

I’ve always been intrigued by Mary Shelley and now I can’t wait to research some more into her life. I appreciated that this was born from both fact and fiction.

Wow this was everything I wanted and more. It’s dark, it’s mysterious, it’s sapphic. It was great to learn a little bit more about what Mary’s life was like. It’s both historical and fictional but really paints a vivid picture of the kind of landscape Mary grew up in prior to writing Frankenstein.

Sadly, this book just wasn't for me.
I think it was just a bit more on the dense/claggy side of things and I felt like I was wading through heavy wet sand as it didn't read easily for me - quite purple prose which is not my style.

There's some interesting elements to this if you're fascinated by Mary Shelley, as I am. The first third was intriguing but then we cycle around the same ideas for the rest of the book.

Fairly character driven, Mary's relationships are the most interesting thing about the book. We look at her dynamic with her husband Percy, her step sister and friends Lord Byron and John Polidori. But it really comes back to her friendship with Isabella Baxter, a relationship with both romantic and dark tones. Figuring out what was happening with Isabella is what kept me coming back.

The prose is beautiful and haunting, especially when talking about Mary's child loss. The story moves between multiple time periods, often in a way that's murky which was tricky in the audiobook verison.

Overall this is a beautiful book but I'm not sure it's a very engaging one. Not quite what I expected going into it.

This is a really great concept. As a huge fan of Mary Shelley and someone who genuinely appreciates her weirdness, I just to read this book! This is a very sapphic book with elements of feminism. It did provide greater insight into the story of Frankenstein but unfortunately I did not particularly enjoy.

I have spent a lot of time with Frankenstein over the last few years and I have read a few novels that focus on the life or Mary Shelley. I actually feel a great deal of sympathy for the woman. Her life was not an easy one and the novel Frankenstein is a testament to her resilience and fortitude in the face of terrible loss and adversity.

Having said that, many of the plot points in this novel were predictable (as was to be expected, not complaining about that). The parts that weren't predictable were... interesting?

The novel covers two different time periods, which can be confusing if you are not paying careful attention to the narrator of the audiobook. I can see why it has been structured in such a manner but I did have to rewind the book several times.

The narrator was pleasant to listen to, despite the extended run time of the audiobook.

Overall, I think the author has done well to capture and portray a sympathetic and strong character such as Mary Shelley. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

The audio version of this novel is quite hypnotic to listen to and I think the narrator's voice was perfect for the story. However, I did find it a little difficult to follow at times, but I think that is more my problem as a listener getting distracted as the story switched between timelines.

I was fascinated with the idea of this book - what inspired Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein. A visit to Scotland with all its superstitions certainly gave this character plenty of strange experiences to draw on - some of which were disturbingly graphic. Mary's friendship with Isabella is complicated, and weighed down by a sad backstory for both girls along with a number of dark (mainly) male influences in their lives at this time. I am not sure how much of this timeline in the novel is inspired by real events and facts from Mary's life or whether they are just fictional to flesh out some of the inspiration behind the later writing of Shelley's 'tour de force.'

I liked the timeline at Lord Byron's villa in Geneva and would have liked this to have been developed a little more. I know more about this aspect of Shelley's life, and felt that this part of the novel was fairly authentic, though disturbing in ins own way - their 'free' love and intertwined relationships was quite hard to listen to. Percy does not come across as very thoughtful, supportive or loving, given all that has happened to his wife by this stage.

This novel is dark and disturbing in places. It is quite slow, but hypnotic and something I will return to in print form at a later date.

This was an interesting listen set across two different timelines - I particularly enjoyed the earlier of the two timelines where the focus was on the friendship that Mary formed with Isabella. The sapphic implications worked well and showed the timely ambiguity of female friendships.

I enjoyed the premise of exploring the early life of Mary Shelley and gaining a representation of what could have influenced her later writing - it was an engaging, dark and interesting narrative that is a must for fans of historical fiction or for fans of Mary’s work.

While I enjoyed Frankenstein, I’ve always found the life of Mary Shelley incredibly fascinating.

This book weaves together several days Mary spent at Villa Diodati leading up to the creation of Frankenstein and a stay in Scotland during her teenage years. The book does a wonderful job of capturing the eerie, gothic atmosphere associated with Frankenstein and the Romantic movement.

I did find the transitions between the two timelines a bit clunky but enjoyed how they complemented each other. The timeline in Scotland was the more compelling of the two, with a strong air of mystery and focus on Mary’s coming of age. In contrast, the timeline at Villa Diodati demonstrates how the trials of life have impacted Mary and shaped her life view.

As other reviewers have noted, a historical note detailing factual events versus fictional embellishments would have been welcomed. Mary’s real life story is incredibly tragic and certainly eventful enough to fill several books.

The narrator did a brilliant job embodying Mary as both a teenager and an older mother. The jumps between timelines was initially a bit confusing but this became less of a problem as the story progressed.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the audiobook in exchange for an honest reviews .

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley is endlessly fascinating, from her fascinating family history to her groundbreaking work and I'm happy to read anything about her. Sadly, this work, while pleasant enough to read doesn't live up to the subject matter. The dual timeline can be a brilliant narrative device but here it muddies the waters. the earlier Mary is staying with family friends in Scotland in 1812 and swept up in a destabilising world of early love and mythology, the later in 1816, the episode at Lord Byron's Villa Diodati where she was part of the famous challenge to write a ghost story and produced Frankenstein. Perhaps the issue is the mere four years between the two. I most cases these would be far too close though in Mary's case her love affair with Shelley, the tragic death of her daughter and the birth of her son make the two periods very distinct. But the two Mary's are oddly disconnected from each other. Despite the incidents, the references to electricity and a "monster" in the 1812 story that clearly call to her masterpiece, the two narratives don't clearly fit together and there's a lack of resolution in both that makes it read like two entirely separate stories, despite the alternating chapters. It's a shame because the atmosphere in the earlier episode that is gloriously, sapphically gothic but because it doesn't link satisfyingly to 1816 its intense dreamlike qualities dissolve in frustration.

The narration is good.

"Mary, or the Birth of Frankenstein" by Anne Eekhout, narrated by Anna Burnett, is a seductive gothic historic tale presented in dual timelines.

Eekhout delivers that eerie atmosphere that tells us that something is deeply amiss. It unravels Mary's story of young, sapphic love with Isabella Baxter in Scotland (both grieving: Isabella lost her mother, and Mary lost both mother and first child), a tender, painful journey tinged with tales of mythical beings, real-life monsters, and questions around god, religion and the meaning of life.

I loved how the author delivered an enigmatic narrative as she digs deep into Mary's teenage years, her sexual awakening (through her relationship with Isabella), a vivid encounter with Scottish cultural lore, and the nefarious characters hiding beneath human facades. Simultaneously, it threads the tale of Mary's difficult adult years; her pain of losing a child, her coming to terms with the loss of a mother she had never got to meet, not to mention enduring a fraught open-relationship with Percy. I found it all quite hypnotic.

Mary, Or The Birth Of Frankenstein is a genius blend of love lost, stories woven, and imaginations fuelled by folk tales, crafting the bones for Mary's most iconic work, Frankenstein.

Anna Burnett's narration is seamless, elevating the eerie narrating style, the complex character arcs, and the undulating emotions entrenched in love, loss, and spectral happenings. Burnett’s voice feels so right for the character.

Eekhout manages to paint an intriguing portrait of Mary, a woman who transcends her pain and ghosts to script the book that could only be born from the depths of Mary's psyche.

A huge thank-you to NetGalley and Bolinda audio for this captivating audiobook.

This book was not at all what I expected. This book is really well written, but I just did not enjoy the story at all. I think that was maybe a me issue as I was expecting something else. I feel the title is misleading to what the story is. I just didn't care for the story or characters 😔 This would have been a 2 star based on my enjoyment how I usually rate but I take on that it is beautifully written so will go with 3 stars.

I listened to this on audio, and it was well read and easy to follow along.

Thank you to Netgalley, Anne Eekhout, Pushkin Press, and Bolinda Audio for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

I read Frankenstein for the first time this year and fell madly in love with this incredible story. I was also filled with a fascination with the author herself. An enthusiastic review of this book encouraged me to read this.
The narrator is extremely well suited to this audiobook and amplifies the character and subconscious of the protagonist in both timelines explored by the narrative. One timeline explores the sexual awakening of 14 year old Mary through a relationship with Isabella. The other timeline is set on the shores of Lake Geneva where Frankenstein’s story was written.
I find the blend of fact and fiction in historical fiction very variable. I have found I often benefit from an authorial explanation of where fact ends and fiction starts - without it I can chart an uneasy course, not knowing what I can rely on and what I should attribute to imagination. Knowing so little about Mary Shelley, in hindsight I would have been better to have started with a biography.
This is a novel where imagination is allowed full rein; a work of gothic fiction which might appeal to gothic and fantasy fiction lovers. There is no doubt that the author writes well, but sadly this really wasn’t for me.
At times this is very dark and some of the dream sequences were quite graphic, particulary those surrounding the birth of a baby. With thanks to Netgalley and Bolinda audio for a copy of this audiobook.

I'm a huge fan of Mary shelly so when I saw this audiobook on netgalley I had to request it.

A glimpse behind the curtain of her early private life it offers an insight into some of the inspiration behind Frankenstine.

The jumps in the timeline were a little confusing at times but overall quite an enjoyable audiobook beautifully narrated.

Thank you to netgally and the publishers for allowing me to listen to an advanced copy of this audio book in return for a fair and honest review

I was personally quite bored throughout. I don't think this reimagining added anything new to the story of Mary Shelley - nothing that hasn't already been done before, at least. The writing itself was sound, though, and the narrator was good.