Member Review
Review by
Eva Kelly H, Reviewer
I am late with this review. So, so, so late. Perhaps it was the book’s dreamy quality or the heat and drought in Austin as I was reading it, but it took me forever to finish The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, the newest book from bestselling author Silvia Moreno-Garcia. I think the real reason, though, is that I was dreading writing this review.
The book retells The Island of Dr. Moreau, reset in lush, volatile nineteenth-century Mexico. Carlota Moreau is the doctor’s daughter, who lives a cloistered life with her reclusive father on a lavish estate. One day, she receives a visit from the son of her father’s patron, and his visit reveals family secrets and ignites passions in more than one character. The story is filled with romance, adventure, and human-animal hybrids, but it unfolds slowly. Too slowly, it seemed to me.
Gothic, atmospheric, and well researched, this book should have checked all the boxes for me. But I couldn’t get past the problems with pacing and character development. Silvia Moreno-Garcia has much to say about father-daughter dynamics, colonialism, captivity, exploitation, agency, and more. But in a book where the antagonists treat the hybrids as property—as little more than background, one might say—it’s ironic to find the author doing the same. I knew virtually nothing about these characters, even to the end.
This is not a terrible book. It’s a fantastic story! But as I said at the beginning, I wanted more. Failing that, I wanted a shorter book that wouldn’t have taken up so much of my hot, stinky summer!
I haven’t read Mexican Gothic. Maybe I’ll try that next.
The book retells The Island of Dr. Moreau, reset in lush, volatile nineteenth-century Mexico. Carlota Moreau is the doctor’s daughter, who lives a cloistered life with her reclusive father on a lavish estate. One day, she receives a visit from the son of her father’s patron, and his visit reveals family secrets and ignites passions in more than one character. The story is filled with romance, adventure, and human-animal hybrids, but it unfolds slowly. Too slowly, it seemed to me.
Gothic, atmospheric, and well researched, this book should have checked all the boxes for me. But I couldn’t get past the problems with pacing and character development. Silvia Moreno-Garcia has much to say about father-daughter dynamics, colonialism, captivity, exploitation, agency, and more. But in a book where the antagonists treat the hybrids as property—as little more than background, one might say—it’s ironic to find the author doing the same. I knew virtually nothing about these characters, even to the end.
This is not a terrible book. It’s a fantastic story! But as I said at the beginning, I wanted more. Failing that, I wanted a shorter book that wouldn’t have taken up so much of my hot, stinky summer!
I haven’t read Mexican Gothic. Maybe I’ll try that next.
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