Genre: Retellings

I received this book for free from Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

High school meets classic horror in this groundbreaking new series.

It was a dark and stormy night when Tor Frankenstein accidentally hit someone with her car. And killed him. But all is not lost--Tor, being the scientific genius she is, brings him back to life...

Thus begins a twisty, turn-y take on a familiar tale, set in the town of Hollow Pines, Texas, where high school is truly horrifying.

 

Hello everyone!! I am happy to be participating in the blog tour for this book. Right when I read the synopsis, I knew that I had to read the book. So I will be doing my review and I have a great guest post with a real life high school horror story from Charlotte Huang, a friend of the author who is also an author.

To start, I really liked the characters. They were great. Especially Tor and her best friend Owen. They really were what pulled me into the story. I did enjoy this book, but had to ignore all of the things that just didn’t make sense to me. As with all things fiction, not everything has to make sense or be logical right? I can’t go into all the little things that bothered me without major spoilers, but one thing is that this kid is able to even start school. And yes, it’s mentioned that he shouldn’t be able to start, but then that’s that. There are a lot of little things like that throughout that just stood out to me. Besides that, I really did enjoy the book.

Tor is the MC. She is super smart. Obviously if she is able to bring someone back from the dead using science, but anyways. I really liked her. She is very focused on her science projects and experiments. Since her dad died and her mom is pretty much a shell most of the time, she has a lot of time to use the storm cellar as her lab. She’s a good friend most of the time too, and I really loved seeing how she changed through the book. How she was with other people and how much she learned that science can’t explain. Besides that, Adam seems to be fitting in well and end up in with the popular crowd. Of course that means Tor has to hang around too, which is all sorts of entertaining. She’s not exactly the social butterfly.

Adam is the boy that she brings back to life. Unfortunately, things don’t go quite as smoothly as she would have liked and he has no memory. At all. The only way that she can keep an eye on him is to enroll him in her school. Surprisingly, it works for the most part. He is a bit odd to others, but they still really like him. He’s also apparently some kind of football superstar so that makes him instantly one of the cool kids. Of course since Tor is the first person he saw when he was brought back, he has a crazy attachment to her. It’s kind of cute actually. Imagining this big guy acting like a toddler and just wanting to please Tor like she is his mother. The thing is, as time passes and more experiments happen, he starts to remember things. And he also seems a bit off and possibly dangerous at times. The real person underneath is a different person than Tor has created.

This was a really fun book to read. I really liked the scientific part of it all, but most of all the character development. The story itself had a lot of convenient things that were looked over. I suppose for the sake of story progression, some of it had to be that way. I loved the idea of this revived dude going to school and trying to fit in, I also wanted to know his real story and who he was before he died and lost all of the memory of who he was. Oh, and I almost forgot. There is a great murder mystery as well. Some of it is gruesome, but awesome. This book isn’t something that is going to give you nightmares, but it is a bit creepy at times. I look forward to seeing what comes next in the High School Horror series.

Guest Post by Charlotte Huang

My High School Horror Story

When I was a junior, I had a serious crush on a senior boy. He was artistic, wore

black Converse high tops, played guitar in a band, and yeah .  . .  All that. We had

some friends in common but definitely were not in the same crowd. He dated a lot

while I was a professional crush-haver, often relegated to the little sister

role—amusing, but not quite datable.

One day, his familiar gray car rolled to a stop next to me while I was walking down

my street. He said he was bored, just out for a drive, and invited me to join. I wasn’t

wearing shoes and hadn’t told my parents I’d be gone for any length of time but did

that stop me from jumping into his car? No it did not. I was delirious with

excitement.

We drove across town to visit his best friend, whom I’d never officially met. I

followed my crush out of the car and had ventured no more than three steps before I

felt my foot sink into some thick and oozy substance. I looked down and almost

passed out on the spot. I had just stepped in a pile of fresh, steaming dog poop.

Barefoot.

The boys turned to see why I wasn’t following them into the house. I was literally

speechless. All I could do was blink. My crush came over to inspect the situation.

“Oh. Whoops,” was all he said. I wanted to die. While I continued to stand there, he

disappeared around the side of the house and then returned with a garden hose,

which he very gallantly used to spray off my foot. The best friend, with whom I’d

exchanged exactly one word, brought me a towel.

Even after I was cleaned up, I was too mortified to attempt being social. I stayed

mute until my crush finally said that he should probably take me home.

I mean, how do you recover from something like that? You don’t. So the drive back

was filled with more silence. I wished with my entire being to never see him again.

Somehow, the story does have a happy ending because we started dating that

summer. Maybe because we both had enough sense to pretend this incident never
happened.

Charlotte Huang is the author of For the Record.

About the Author

Chandler Baker got her start ghostwriting novels for teens and tweens, including installments in a book series that has sold more than 1 million copies. She grew up in Florida, went to college at the University of Pennsylvania and studied law at the University of Texas. She now lives in Austin with her husband. Although she loves spinning tales with a touch of horror, she is a much bigger scaredy-cat than her stories would lead you to believe.

Don’t Forget to check out the other stops on the blog tour!!

The publisher has also been generous enough to offer a copy of this book! Giveaway is US/CAN only.

a Rafflecopter giveaway