Jill Jekel has always obeyed her parents' rules - especially the one about never opening the mysterious, old box in her father's office. But when her dad is murdered, and her college savings disappear, she's tempted to peek inside, as the contents might be the key to a lucrative chemistry scholarship. To improve her odds, Jill enlists the help of gorgeous, brooding Tristen Hyde, who has his own dark secrets locked away. As the team of Jekel and Hyde, they recreate experiments based on the classic novel, hoping not only to win a prize, but to save Tristen's sanity. Maybe his life. But Jill's accidental taste of a formula unleashes her darkest nature and compels her to risk everything - even Tristen's love - just for the thrill of being . . . bad.
Jekel Loves Hyde
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Review
The romance sizzles, the plot develops ingeniously and suspensefully, and the satire sings. Publishers Weekly, starred review. --Publishers Weekly
About the Author
BETH FANTASKEY lives in rural Pennslyvania with her husband and two daughters. She is the author of "Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is the first book that I've read by Beth Fantaskey and what attracted me to it originally was the interesting plot. It's based on The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyl and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. The action is transposed to an American high school where Jill Jekel and Tristan Hyde are drawn together after the murder of Jill's father. I enjoyed the way in which the story mirrored the original literary classic. I thought that it was a really clever writing technique and luckily I could remember enough of Stevenson's classic (I read it a few years ago) to pick up on some of the subtle similarities and themes that were touched upon throughout the book.
I loved the fast-paced and exciting storyline and the way in which the narratives were woven together. Most of the book was told from Jill's perspective but some chapters gave more of an insight into Tristan himself and the potential danger that Jill was getting herself into by becoming involved with him. When they team up to try and win a prestigious science scholarship they find themselves recreating Dr. Jekyl's experiments with potentially devastating consequences. This leads to a good few twists and turns and an exciting ending that I didn't predict at all. I love it when a book completely takes you by surprise and this had a number of revelations that were totally unexpected.
I liked the character of Jill, who is shy and self-conscious, but falls prey to the lure of the formula that can make her forget all of her inhibitions. I can see how tempted she would have been to escape who she was and become someone self-confident, brave and daring. Her relationship with Tristan was one of the highlights of the book for me, from the first moment that he comforted her at her father's funeral to some of the later scenes in the book. It felt real and like they had a genuine connection from the start. Without giving anything away to those that haven't read it yet, I'm pleased with the way that the story was concluded and I think Beth Fantaskey took it in exactly the right direction.
Overall, I thought that this was a superb addition to the paranormal genre, with great characters, an exciting storyline and fast-paced writing.
I loved the fast-paced and exciting storyline and the way in which the narratives were woven together. Most of the book was told from Jill's perspective but some chapters gave more of an insight into Tristan himself and the potential danger that Jill was getting herself into by becoming involved with him. When they team up to try and win a prestigious science scholarship they find themselves recreating Dr. Jekyl's experiments with potentially devastating consequences. This leads to a good few twists and turns and an exciting ending that I didn't predict at all. I love it when a book completely takes you by surprise and this had a number of revelations that were totally unexpected.
I liked the character of Jill, who is shy and self-conscious, but falls prey to the lure of the formula that can make her forget all of her inhibitions. I can see how tempted she would have been to escape who she was and become someone self-confident, brave and daring. Her relationship with Tristan was one of the highlights of the book for me, from the first moment that he comforted her at her father's funeral to some of the later scenes in the book. It felt real and like they had a genuine connection from the start. Without giving anything away to those that haven't read it yet, I'm pleased with the way that the story was concluded and I think Beth Fantaskey took it in exactly the right direction.
Overall, I thought that this was a superb addition to the paranormal genre, with great characters, an exciting storyline and fast-paced writing.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By Sarah
Format:Hardcover
(I was given this book for free on a read-to-review basis.)
17-year-old Jill Jekel is a quiet girl who wants nothing more than to get on with her school work, and go off to college. However, her father was recently murdered and now it turns out that he also spent her college fund.
Tristen Hyde is a boy with a secret. A beast dwells inside him that makes him dream of murdering an innocent girl, and he worries that soon the beast will become too strong for him to control, and he really will kill.
When Jill and Tristen's chemistry teacher enters them into a competition in which they can will $30,000 they at first decline, but then later change their minds. In Jill's dead father's study there is a locked box which Jill's father claimed to contain the original documentation of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde's experiments from the fictional book.
Deciding that she really needs the money if she wants to go to college, Jill tells Tristen about the box, and he insists that they should repeat the experiments in an effort to save him from the beast that lives inside him. Of course things don't go smoothly though, and Jill and Tristen find themselves in real trouble when other people what it is that they have done.
This book was alright. I enjoyed it up to a point, but found the last 20% actually pretty boring (sorry!). Jill was a quiet girl who generally didn't like to make waves, whilst Tristen was just a boy with a bit of an attitude. To be honest I found Tristen really one-dimensional. As much as I wanted to like him I just didn't feel like I really knew him at all. The book was split in two - part from Jill's perspective, and part from Tristen's perspective, and Tristen's part was just not good. I really got nothing from him, and couldn't relate at all, which was strange because Jill was really easy to like.
There were a couple of twists that I didn't see coming, but if I had read the original story I think these twists would have probably been fairly obvious. There were also a couple of annoying moments - crushing a sedating antihistamine into someone's glass of water would not cause them to immediately lose consciousness. It would probably take at least 10-20 minutes. If I was being picky I would also say that the cover of this book really doesn't suit it at all.
As I said before I got bored at the end of this book which is a bit weird because usual the end is the most exciting part. I was also a little confused about the end outcome, as it wasn't obvious who had a beast inside of them at the end.
Overall; an okay read, but the end disappointed me.
7 out of 10.
(Book length: 3680 kindle locations)
17-year-old Jill Jekel is a quiet girl who wants nothing more than to get on with her school work, and go off to college. However, her father was recently murdered and now it turns out that he also spent her college fund.
Tristen Hyde is a boy with a secret. A beast dwells inside him that makes him dream of murdering an innocent girl, and he worries that soon the beast will become too strong for him to control, and he really will kill.
When Jill and Tristen's chemistry teacher enters them into a competition in which they can will $30,000 they at first decline, but then later change their minds. In Jill's dead father's study there is a locked box which Jill's father claimed to contain the original documentation of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde's experiments from the fictional book.
Deciding that she really needs the money if she wants to go to college, Jill tells Tristen about the box, and he insists that they should repeat the experiments in an effort to save him from the beast that lives inside him. Of course things don't go smoothly though, and Jill and Tristen find themselves in real trouble when other people what it is that they have done.
This book was alright. I enjoyed it up to a point, but found the last 20% actually pretty boring (sorry!). Jill was a quiet girl who generally didn't like to make waves, whilst Tristen was just a boy with a bit of an attitude. To be honest I found Tristen really one-dimensional. As much as I wanted to like him I just didn't feel like I really knew him at all. The book was split in two - part from Jill's perspective, and part from Tristen's perspective, and Tristen's part was just not good. I really got nothing from him, and couldn't relate at all, which was strange because Jill was really easy to like.
There were a couple of twists that I didn't see coming, but if I had read the original story I think these twists would have probably been fairly obvious. There were also a couple of annoying moments - crushing a sedating antihistamine into someone's glass of water would not cause them to immediately lose consciousness. It would probably take at least 10-20 minutes. If I was being picky I would also say that the cover of this book really doesn't suit it at all.
As I said before I got bored at the end of this book which is a bit weird because usual the end is the most exciting part. I was also a little confused about the end outcome, as it wasn't obvious who had a beast inside of them at the end.
Overall; an okay read, but the end disappointed me.
7 out of 10.
(Book length: 3680 kindle locations)
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.7 out of 5 stars
84 reviews
22 of 25 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
I Tried, But Couldn't
21 April 2010
By K. Montgomery
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
Warning to all ye who love to vote on Amazon reviews, this is going to be the lamest one I've ever written here because I could not finish the book. I received my copy via Amazon Vine, therefore I'm obligated to do a review, which I have no problem with. I haven't been having very good luck with Vine books, though, and this time despite loving Fantaskey's debut novel, Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side, I was again left feeling listless and bored.
Jekel Loves Hyde has a great premise, being based off the classic the title emulates. I was sold. I love the concept of the original and have enjoyed movies based on it, and I sincerely dug the twist the author uses here. That's really the only expectation I had coming in, that the book might try to emulate that eerie, unrelenting sense of morbid danger the original has. And it does. Jekel Loves Hyde has a great atmosphere, but it soon became apparent to me that a great atmosphere was all it would offer this particular reader. Enough to keep me interested anyway.
I'm a character-driven reader for the most part. I love good worldbuilding, where it feels so effortless, like a cradle for the rest of the book. Once that's firmly established in the back of my mind I want to know the characters. I couldn't get into the ones here. The chapters (most of which are ridiculously short, sometimes not even two full pages hardly) alternate between Jill and Tristan's first point of view tellings. And that's the problem, I think, for me. Each tells the story. There isn't very much showing. Telling gets monotonous and after several chapters (I'm sorry, I forget what page number I stopped at), I just couldn't take it anymore. Also, when we're only ever told how a character feels, it doesn't make for very imaginative or thrilling character development.
Another thing that irked me was the intense foreshadowing - an element that I've seen in other things based on the original. Maybe this just didn't work well in fiction format for me, but in Jekel Loves Hyde, the constant foreshadowing, at the end of almost every chapter, became redundant. When the next chapter turned up yet another point of foreshadowing, I realized I was gritting my teeth a little.
The writing also wasn't up to par with the author's debut work. I'm not sure if this YA novel is targeted at a younger YA set, maybe? But I felt the writing didn't lend itself particularly well to intelligent young readers. I think that goes back to the telling aspect, which you don't need that much of. Give the readers credit, that they will "get" it when the writing shows instead of tells. I felt like I was reading a completely different author.
This was one of my most anticipated books for 2010, and I'm more sorry than I can say to be disappointed to the point of not finishing. As there's plenty more I need to read, the question came down to being miserable reading or taking a chance on the next book in my TBR. You know the answer. Two stars for the fact that I couldn't finish (which I blame myself for in spite of not enjoying), and the concept and atmosphere, which I felt was the only good thing about what I did read.
Jekel Loves Hyde has a great premise, being based off the classic the title emulates. I was sold. I love the concept of the original and have enjoyed movies based on it, and I sincerely dug the twist the author uses here. That's really the only expectation I had coming in, that the book might try to emulate that eerie, unrelenting sense of morbid danger the original has. And it does. Jekel Loves Hyde has a great atmosphere, but it soon became apparent to me that a great atmosphere was all it would offer this particular reader. Enough to keep me interested anyway.
I'm a character-driven reader for the most part. I love good worldbuilding, where it feels so effortless, like a cradle for the rest of the book. Once that's firmly established in the back of my mind I want to know the characters. I couldn't get into the ones here. The chapters (most of which are ridiculously short, sometimes not even two full pages hardly) alternate between Jill and Tristan's first point of view tellings. And that's the problem, I think, for me. Each tells the story. There isn't very much showing. Telling gets monotonous and after several chapters (I'm sorry, I forget what page number I stopped at), I just couldn't take it anymore. Also, when we're only ever told how a character feels, it doesn't make for very imaginative or thrilling character development.
Another thing that irked me was the intense foreshadowing - an element that I've seen in other things based on the original. Maybe this just didn't work well in fiction format for me, but in Jekel Loves Hyde, the constant foreshadowing, at the end of almost every chapter, became redundant. When the next chapter turned up yet another point of foreshadowing, I realized I was gritting my teeth a little.
The writing also wasn't up to par with the author's debut work. I'm not sure if this YA novel is targeted at a younger YA set, maybe? But I felt the writing didn't lend itself particularly well to intelligent young readers. I think that goes back to the telling aspect, which you don't need that much of. Give the readers credit, that they will "get" it when the writing shows instead of tells. I felt like I was reading a completely different author.
This was one of my most anticipated books for 2010, and I'm more sorry than I can say to be disappointed to the point of not finishing. As there's plenty more I need to read, the question came down to being miserable reading or taking a chance on the next book in my TBR. You know the answer. Two stars for the fact that I couldn't finish (which I blame myself for in spite of not enjoying), and the concept and atmosphere, which I felt was the only good thing about what I did read.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Really wanted to like it
30 July 2010
By J. Prather
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover
I loved this author's first YA novel. I remember thinking at the time that it was so creative and well written that it stood out among all the other paranormal books currently out there. Unfortunately, I didn't feel that way about this one. The plot just didn't make sense to me in places. Even if you have a story that has sci-fi/fantasy elements, they still have to make some sort of sense and this story just didn't. I had to struggle to complete it, and felt that the author was unable to maintain any sense of tension and drama throughout a book that should have been really creepy. The most dramatic moments in the story ended up feeling overwrought and cliched. The overall tone felt inconsistent and choppy.
I didn't buy these characters at all. They didn't sound like teenagers, didn't act like teenagers and sometimes their actions and motivations were just totally out of left field. Since I wasn't buying the characters, that meant the romance didn't work for me - I was really frustrated with Jill and very annoyed with Tristan throughout most of the novel. The dialogue is not effective, often coming across as stilted, and the extremely short chapters only served to highlight the choppy writing style.
While this one didn't work for me, I have no doubt it will find it's fan base. I am not in this novel's target group, which I think would be young adults age 15 and up. There is some language and sexual situations. Fans of paranormal romance will find things to like here, but if they also are looking for a well plotted, well written story, they will ulitmately be disappointed. Not a recommend.
I didn't buy these characters at all. They didn't sound like teenagers, didn't act like teenagers and sometimes their actions and motivations were just totally out of left field. Since I wasn't buying the characters, that meant the romance didn't work for me - I was really frustrated with Jill and very annoyed with Tristan throughout most of the novel. The dialogue is not effective, often coming across as stilted, and the extremely short chapters only served to highlight the choppy writing style.
While this one didn't work for me, I have no doubt it will find it's fan base. I am not in this novel's target group, which I think would be young adults age 15 and up. There is some language and sexual situations. Fans of paranormal romance will find things to like here, but if they also are looking for a well plotted, well written story, they will ulitmately be disappointed. Not a recommend.
10 of 13 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Just an old fashioned love story
23 Mar 2010
By Travis Ann Sherman
- Published on Amazon.com
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review
(What's this?)
Plot: A beautiful descendant of Dr. Jekyll falls in love with the evil Mr. Hyde's descendant, who is torn between his love for her and his urge to save her from the monster he fears he is becoming.
Why I picked it up: I enjoyed Fantaskey's JESSICA'S GUIDE TO DATING ON THE DARK SIDE as a fun twist on the vampire thing.
Why I read it: The premise of a female Jekyll and a male Hyde seemed very fresh to me, a clever recasting of the always effective romantic archetypes created so many years ago by Ms. Bronte. Here our sensible Jill Jekel/Jane Eyre, a self described nerdy governess-type, falls in love with the lucious Tristen Hyde and all his dark secrets. Tristen is the only male in this school with the intelligence to see Jill's deep inner beauty and wonder what she looks like without her glasses... He finds out too.
Unfortunately, Fantaskey follows a little too closely on the frock coattails of Robert Louis Stevenson's original Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde for success. When romance rears its ugly head in the science fiction genre, it's seldom a pretty sight, and JEKEL LOVES HYDE is no exception. I wish that Fantaskey had stuck a little closer to dangerous young love and teenage angst and left the secret potions, the evil doctors,the missing ingredients and the traitorous assistants to another time and place. This plot wasn't just twisted; it was tortured too.
Who I Would Give This Book To: Someone who loves a page turner with plenty of romance.
Why I picked it up: I enjoyed Fantaskey's JESSICA'S GUIDE TO DATING ON THE DARK SIDE as a fun twist on the vampire thing.
Why I read it: The premise of a female Jekyll and a male Hyde seemed very fresh to me, a clever recasting of the always effective romantic archetypes created so many years ago by Ms. Bronte. Here our sensible Jill Jekel/Jane Eyre, a self described nerdy governess-type, falls in love with the lucious Tristen Hyde and all his dark secrets. Tristen is the only male in this school with the intelligence to see Jill's deep inner beauty and wonder what she looks like without her glasses... He finds out too.
Unfortunately, Fantaskey follows a little too closely on the frock coattails of Robert Louis Stevenson's original Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde for success. When romance rears its ugly head in the science fiction genre, it's seldom a pretty sight, and JEKEL LOVES HYDE is no exception. I wish that Fantaskey had stuck a little closer to dangerous young love and teenage angst and left the secret potions, the evil doctors,the missing ingredients and the traitorous assistants to another time and place. This plot wasn't just twisted; it was tortured too.
Who I Would Give This Book To: Someone who loves a page turner with plenty of romance.
›
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3.7 out of 5 stars
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