Her Dark Curiosity by Megan Shepherd

Title: Her Dark Curiosity (The Madman's Daughter #2)

Author: Megan Shepherd

Publisher: Balzer + Bray

Release Date: January 28, 2014

Source: ARC from Publisher

Buy the Book: Amazon / Book Depository / Indigo

To defeat the darkness, she must first embrace it.

Months have passed since Juliet Moreau returned to civilization after escaping her father's island--and the secrets she left behind. Now, back in London once more, she is rebidding the life she once knew and trying to forget. Dr. Moreau's horrific legacy--though someone, or something, hasn't forgotten her.

As people close to Juliet fall victim one by one to a murderer who leaves a macabre calling card of three clawlike slashes, Juliet fears one of her father's creations may have also escaped the island She is determined to find the killer before Scotland Yard does, though it means awakening sides of herself she had thought long banished, and facing loves from her past she never expected to see again.

As Juliet strives to stop a killer while searching for a serum to cure her own worsening illness, she finds herself once more in the midst of a world of scandal and danger. Her heart torn in two, past bubbling to the surface, life threatened by an obsessive killer--Juliet will be lucky to escape alive.

With inspiration from Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, this is a tantalizing mystery about the hidden natures of those we love and how far we'll go to save them from themselves. 

Unlike when I was reading the first book, I knew what I was getting myself into when I picked up Megan Shepherd's Her Dark Curiosity. And though I had some trouble getting into the story at first, I still found myself loving it by the time I finished. 

Despite having been back in London for a few months, Juliet can't seem to stop thinking about everything that happened on her father's island…especially the moment Montgomery pushed her away on that dinghy and chose to stay behind and hunt down her father's creatures. Juliet is trying to move on and stop thinking about her father's experimentation, but it's difficult to do when she still has to find a way to cure herself of her illness. And when people who have wronged her in the past start getting murdered, Juliet can't help but think some of her father's creatures could be involved. Determined to find the killer before Scotland Yard, Juliet has to decide just how far she'll go to save herself and those she cares about. 

Her Dark Curiosity was quite different from the first book, The Madman's Daughter. Where the first book was more focused on Juliet's quest to find out the truth about her father and discovering what he had been doing on the island for all that time, this one was more introspective, in a way. Her Dark Curiosity was alpa bout Juliet coming to terms with who she was, and thanks to her father's experiments, what she was. Because of that, there were many moments when the story felt darker, sometimes going further and darker than I thought Megan Shepherd would take it. But in a way, I really enjoyed reading the darker parts of the story because it allowed me to see a different side of the characters. It will be interesting to see where the story will go in the next book, especially since it's supposed to be inspired by the story of Frankenstein.

For better or for worse, Juliet is her father's daughter and that's something she struggled with all through Her Dark Curiosity. It was interesting to see her inner battler, watching her come to terms with the fact that she had darkness in her, and accepting that "darkness." The character that surprised me the most, though, was Lucy. I had only briefly seen Lucy in the beginning of the first book, but I got to now her more this time around. I didn't think she would end up being such an important part of this story, but I'm glad she did. It's hard to talk about the other characters that play an important part in the story without giving some of it away, but I will say there were parts that made me really happy, and others that broke my heart a little. So make of that what you will. Again, it will be interesting to see what will happen to everyone in the final book.

Though I may not have been completely convinced I would enjoy it when I first picked it up, the more I read, the more I loved Megan Shepherd's Her Dark Curiosity. And like with any series, I'm excited to see how it will all come together in the third and final book.