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Jekel Loves Hyde by Beth Fantaskey

Jill Jekel is a girl who has always obeyed her parents rules, especially the one about opening her father’s mysterious old box, but when he is murdered and her college savings disappear, she is tempted to look inside. She hopes to find something that will help her win a lucrative chemistry scholarship but finds something that will change her life in a way she never expected.

The box she thinks used to belong to the real Dr Jeckyll who she also believes she is descended from, and believes it may be his experiments. To help her she enlists the help of attractive fellow student Tristen Hyde, who believes he is descended from the other side of Dr Jeckyll’s personality. (As it turns out he is far more directly descended from either persona of the doctor than she is).

Tristen and Jill rather rapidly fall in love but things come between them, for a start Tristen feels the calls of the ‘beast’ within him when he is sexually aroused and also when Jill accidentally drinks the formula and unleashes her dark side she risks not only Tristen’s love, but everything for the thrill of being bad.

This is a book based around the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and is about someone who drinks a formula in a lab and unleashes their dark side. There are clear references to the original, but Beth Fantaskey reworks the original plot in a strange way and tries to add a romance to the mix.

In case you don’t know, the Strange Case of Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde was originally written by Robert Louis Stevenson as a mystery, with readers not knowing until the very end if Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde were the same person or not. This book is written more as a gothic thriller for teens. Beth Fantaskey eludes to two opposites in Jill’s personality right from the start of the book, long before she has touched any formula., in fact Jill wasn’t the only one with conflicts in her personality, her father seemed to suffer the same trait before his murder, Tristen has blackouts in which he is violent, and then there is the mysterious disappearance of his mother.. The disappearance of Tristen’s mother seems to be the only real mystery in the book.

Sometimes Beth also seems to get caught up in the language of the original story of Dr Jeckyll, using words like eyeglasses, which would hardly be used by today’s teens.

From the start though, this book seems an exciting and interesting read for those teens that want a gothic and dark romance that doesn’t involve vampires. It does however show how dangerous making love to a monster can be, with Tristen’s own vivid dreams of violence and committing rape recounted in the book. It is definitely a book for older teenagers, ones who can spot the beast and know when it steps over the bounds of love to lust, selfishness and evil.

When Jill and Tristen make the formula, the problems start and not just between each other. It suddenly becomes easy to get lost in the plot or plots. The last third of the book is a bit rushed and the romance that promises so much ends a bit flat. It is as if the writer dreamed the story but was woken before the finish so ended the story quickly without the care and development of the first half. Some teenagers, especially girls though will still love this book.

RRP 25.00
Published and distributed by Penguin Group
 

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