Jekel Loves Hyde by Beth Fantaskey – Review

It’s a Supernatural Romance, it’s a Mystery, it’s two, two books in one! But, is the combination effective? Does author Beth Fantaskey’s Jekel Loves Hyde handle this modern take on Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde well and bring it to a new vibrancy and life for today’s readers? Opinions I’ve read in various reviews of this novel have been mixed about how well Beth Fantaskey succeeds, but I think, for the most part, that it’s a very enjoyable novel that teens and adult readers who like the Supernatural Romance and Mystery genres will want to add to their reading lists.

The dual nature of human beings that Stevenson explored in his novel is also the major theme of Jekel Loves Hyde, but Beth Fantaskey might even take the exploration further than Stevenson. Seventeen-year-old Jill Jekel’s father was brutally murdered, and she and her mom are trying to make a go of it in the aftermath of the murder and the revelations that her father was not the person she thought he was:  he had been involved in stealing chemicals from Carson Pharmaceuticals, where he worked. The novel opens with the funeral, and Jill first meets Tristen Hyde there. He’s the son of a famous English psychoanalyst Dr. Frederick Hyde, who is brilliant, but whom Tristen suspects of having a dual personality himself that he tries to hide from his son and the rest of the world.

Tristen is worried that he has inherited the Hyde curse that his grandfather has warned him about–that his dark side is slowly taking over his personality and that the “beast” within him might eventually lead him to seriously harm or kill someone. He wants to find a cure for this curse, and he believes his grandfather’s statement to him that it lies within the pages of the first edition copy of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that his grandfather gave him. His grandfather had told him that the males in the family got the curse from the Mr. Hyde of Stevenson’s novel, which he claimed was based on fact. Though Dr. Jekyll never had children, Tristen’s grandfather told him that Mr. Hyde did, and that he was their ancestor.  Jill Jekel, on the other hand, is only distantly related to the Dr. Jekyll of Stevenson’s novel. The novel is told in the first person, but its perspective shifts between Jill and Tristen.

They both are outstanding students, and both excel in Chemistry in particular. When Jill learns from their Chemistry teacher of a chance to win a $30,000 scholarship, she thinks that this is may be her only chance of getting the money she needs to go to college.  Her father spent her college fund on research, and her mother has suffered a nervous breakdown, further threatening Jill’s future.  Tristen and Jill work in secret from the hand-written experiments that Jill discovers in her Dad’s old trunk, hoping to come up with a cure to the disease or curse that Tristen believes he’s inherited.  If they don’t, she’s afraid he will kill himself, as he has told her he would, to prevent the “beast” within him from harming anyone.  But what might these experiments cost Jill?  She knows that Tristen will be drinking the concoctions; will she end up drinking them, also? If so, will the dark side of her own personality be released? And was the moving of Tristen and his father to Pennsylvania merely a coincidence, or did his father have the meeting of the two families planned far in advance, to satisfy some plans of his own?

How successful is this update of Stevenson’s classic novel? I’d say it works pretty well, though it’s somewhat difficult to believe that Mr. Hyde could, or would, want to start up a family. I could believe he raped a woman, and that Tristen is a descendant of this rape. Still, I’d say that even if this were the case, I don’t believe the DNA of Mr. Hyde would be different from that of Dr. Jekyl, despite Tristen’s interpretation of Stevenson’s tale. So, if you feel the same way, you might find it difficult to get past these points–they kind of bugged me, but I accepted them–and, if so, I doubt you’ll get into the book.

Also, sure, the duality of human nature is a major theme of both Jekel Loves Hyde and Stevenson’s The Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but I felt that it wasn’t really necessary to get into Jill’s mother and father having dual natures. Tristen’s Dad having a split personality makes sense, if the “curse” is carried genetically by his family. I accepted Jill’s parents having dual personalities because it explained her father’s strange, obsessive behavior, and his murder, while her mother having a breakdown made it even more crucial for Jill to try to win the scholarship. But it is one more aspect of the plot to accept, and the book would likely have been okay without stressing the duality of human nature to quite this level, involving the parents of both teens.

Jekel Loves Hyde is a suspenseful, page-turning read about the duality of human nature and the teaming up of two star-crossed teens to try to break an age-old curse. If they can’t, their budding romance will be doomed, not to mention any chance Jill will have of going to college–and failure might even result in Tristen’s eventually committing suicide. If you enjoy reading Supernatural Romances with more than a touch of the Mystery genre thrown in, you’ll love reading this novel, despite the difficulty you might have accepting certain plot elements. Will chemistry develop between Jill and Tristen, sparking the flames of their romance? Read Jekel Loves Hyde by Beth Fantaskey to find out!