BY SOPHIE BUCKLAND
SPOILER WARNING: It’s been a while since I read this book. But I have a loooot of notes to go over :> and also this review will be very full of spoilers so read at your own peril! But also just don’t read the book and read my review okay hehe.
The Mary Shelley Club is about a group of students who love horror and make a game of trying to terrify their peers. But it’s not quite as horrifying and exciting as the blurb would lead you to be. I mean, the writing is quite compulsive – I was hooked and read this book in a pretty short amount of time – but when you sit back and think, there wasn’t really much complex or interesting stuff happening. Also major gripe of mine – the blurb lies to you! It says “the incident attracts the attention of the Mary Shelley Club” but uh no, Rachel forces her way into the club after figuring them out from the “prank gone awry”. She notices that someone set up the prank and goes and keeps nagging members until they let her in – they don’t even want her in the club she forces her way in. Also, the prank didn’t “go awry”. It actually went perfectly, with the target screaming and everything. The only thing was that Rachel laughed after and you know that’s really bad for her because then everyone hates on her but uhh yeah no the blurb’s a bit misleading. Anyway… let’s get into some thoughts on the overall story/plot.
There was quite a focus on the day-to-day mundane high school stuff without really actually giving you a feel for the school or ‘school time’ passing. The main focus of the book was on the club and the relationships between the members, which is what you want it to be, but the pitfall of books like this about high-schoolers where the book isn’t about high school is that it doesn’t feel like they’re in high school. Because the book’s got better stuff to focus on but are you really telling me girlie is on top of her homework and everything’s fine and her assignments are so irrelevant they’re not even mentioned despite the amount of time she spends out of the house on the club? Ehhh.
But I mean, this would be fine. We want the book to focus on the interesting stuff. Except the premise of the club kinda fell short. We’re promised something really cool. The book is literally named after our queen Mary Shelley herself, the way the club is introduced sounds very cool and the dark twist sounds, well, dark, so I was very much expecting a horror kind of story. But it wasn’t actually that scary. Maybe the hype in the blurb put my expectations too high, but I think the book just didn’t live up to the epicness it could’ve been. Sure, it was fun, but it wasn’t horror. And yes, the first genre Goodreads categorises this under is horror, so it was meant to be scary. I reckon there needed to be a larger build-up to each test and more elaborate plans. It seems that certain fear tests are just rushed over and not that deep – the exciting idea of a rusty hook ends up just scaring off someone’s ex, and he just runs away, and in half of them, no one even screams. Also, it’s a bit over the top to traumatise the same girl twice come on- So yeah the fear tests throughout weren’t as epic or cool as I was hoping for and not great enough to be the focus and have school be an unimportant side note. Please give me higher stakes and a better reason. Kinda disappointing.
In terms of the plot at the end, I thought I guessed what the plot twist would be and while I was kinda correct there was also something else larger that I didn’t see coming. A good plot twist will have you surprised and realising all the subtle hints you missed throughout the book instead of feeling completely shocked and confused, which I think the book did a good job on – I can see where the plot twist was building up, and it really changed everything up which was pretty cool.
I’m not someone who can really watch horror movies, so I didn’t get most of the references, but I think the name-dropping added to the story rather than detracting from it, as it showed the characters had a depth of knowledge about this stuff (giving them credibility and making it realistic cause of course teens geek out over named movies) and by extension the author too. At the start it was great and all with the horror stuff I’m there like damn that sounds cool I love your theories that’s so interesting, and then they don’t actually test out the theories like they talk about and none of them are executed very well?? Like understandable because they’re teens but also uhh I was hoping they’d be a bit better than that. The whole idea is that the test is all about making their target scream, but like basically no one actually does and sure them having some other reaction is great but that’s missing the whole point. I guess I was expecting it to be more refined horror proper psycho (actually scary) stuff messing with people, but it’s just a bunch of teens tryna be scary which is yeah not so fun and not actually horror.
The protag our dear Rachel like uh desperately needs therapy I’m sorry girl after what happened, please. I did like the teasing out of the fact that it was her who killed the guy, but the response to this trauma was completely inadequate – she just promised she’d join clubs at the new school and make friends. Making friends and especially good healthy friendships is so hard and then adding to that whatever reaction around the fact she killed a guy. But it’s not just that. She also has this pressure from her mum and the fact she’s the new scholarship kid to keep her grades up at school! When something like that happens I feel like keeping up your grades is not what’s the most important and just sounds so stressful but also I guess it’s the American schooling system so I don’t know. But with the deal they made it’s just not getting help if she’s the perfect girl who’s got all the important things going on and no room to *feel her feelings* and just be a mess. She’s gotta have it all together *outwardly* or then she has to go see a therapist?? No!! Rahhh
Sure, Rachel does make friends, but it doesn’t feel like she has good friends. It seems like she hardly even talks to the one person who always hangs out with her – like does this other person not have anyone better to sit with? Someone who’s actually listening to her and cares? She loves to chat about stuff Rachel doesn’t seem to care about, and that just does not seem like a sustainable friendship. Yeah, maybe it’s great she ‘listens’ to her friend, but you know you want someone who’s invested, who talks to you and shares your excitement, and maybe that’s actually very rare, but the queen isn’t even actually listening she’s just zoning out and thinking about her stuff and letting you talk like what?? One thing that specifically annoyed me about the character, not the book, was when her friend tried to schedule a makeup hang out one night but the protag had stuff with the club, so instead of trying to find a time that works (it’s only specified she’s busy that one exact night) she’s just like oh no I have to cancel. Like what? It’s not that hard to be like hey can we do it the day after! It’s not like you ask someone about one day specifically and they’re busy, and it’s like oh well guess it’s never happening.
Apart from mentions such as this about makeup or movie nights with her friend occasionally, there isn’t really much mention of Rachel’s one other friend. Overall, I felt like there wasn’t much fleshing out of all the other characters – especially *the guy* but they were given simple personalities and explanations and then just,,, that’s it? There was not much of a friendship with any of the club members outside of being in the club together (except for Freddie) – they didn’t seem to bond over anything except not being rich and liking horror movies but like he’s not over at her place watching her weekly horror movie (the thing where her mum joins her on the couch??) like they just kiss a couple times and she goes to his place once and then like nothing until he *tries to kill her??* ahahaha. With that girl who’s just constantly scaring her exes and the men who’ve been mean to her like uhh yeah idk I was hoping for something a bit just *more*? Like yes get revenge on your exes but they just sound like shallow relationships and petty revenge and the build-up with the hook was so exciting but then the execution was just rather lame.
Finally, there just wasn’t a lot of depth to the protagonist outside of her trauma – her whole love for horror movies is a direct result of it which is cool and interesting and all, but what about previous interests? I feel like even just some mention of these things would help expand and develop her character. Aaaall this being said, the whole book was still gripping and a compulsive read. I did finish it rather quickly and was engaged with the story, but left feeling like it was a rather surface-level story. Oh well. Happy reading!