My rating: 2.5 of 5 starsA copy of The Madman's Daughter was provided to me by Balzer + Bray/Edelweiss for review purposes.'Dead flesh and sharpened scalpels didn't bother me. I was my father's daughter, after all. My nightmares were made of darker things.'I feel the need to start off by saying I didn't dislike this book but obviously considering my rating I have some explaining to do. There was creepiness, there was a decent story line, but the pacing was so incredibly slow that it had an adverse effect on my overall opinion on this gothic retelling.Let me tell you guys, the beginning of this story had so much creepy going on it was amazing. I remember starting this book, finishing the first couple of chapters, stopping for a second and saying to myself, "This is going to be so awesome." Juliet seemed to be a very promising main character and I couldn't wait to hear her story. But the gothic thriller aspect seemed to be put on the back burner and definitely became less of a focus. What did it end up focusing on? Romance, of course.There was so much emphasis put on the romance and her being torn between two men, her swooning and constant need to fan herself that I would go so far as to consider this 'historical-romance-lite'. If not for the creepy and exceptionally gruesome bits in this story I don't believe I would have finished this. As it was though, the romance didn't feel fitting in this type of story, like an irregular puzzle piece.I had been forewarned that the middle dawdled but that the ending was a big shocker so that gave me hope. The pacing was definitely off for the vast majority of the middle portion and didn't actually start picking up until almost the very end of the book. The big reveal happened and it was definitely the most interesting aspect of the entire story but it happened a little too late for me. There wasn't a slow build-up to the grand finale which would have made this immensely better. Instead we received a storyline that plodded along, lacking in intensity, never quite gaining enough steam, and then we're hit with the big ending. The middle section certainly required something more for me to still be invested enough in the story to be excited for when the big conclusion finally did happen. Oh, and there's a cliffhanger. Naturally. I think my response to that final page was something along the lines of, "Dude. For real?" Considering I was more than a bit bored through the majority of this story I was at least hoping we'd get some answers. I had still considered giving #2 a shot since sometimes it takes the first book to build the story (in a series) and book 2 is where we can finally get to the meat of the story. But my understanding was that this was a retelling of the Island of Dr. Moreau, however, the summary for book 2 states it was written: with inspiration from Robert Louis Stevenson's 'THE STRANGE CASE OF DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE' and I'm not sure I feel about the mixing of multiple retellings.
