Review by Booklist Review
When Mehrunissa Begum arrives in England in the summer of 1816, she expects to quickly reunite with her brother and then return to India. Instead, she is sent to a boarding house for Indian women. With months passing and no word from her brother, Mehr accepts work as a housemaid to earn passage home. Her position places her in the household of the famous writers Mary and Percy Shelley, where she soon notices strange occurrences surrounding Mary. It is only when she joins the Shelleys on a trip to Lake Geneva with Lord Byron that Mehr begins to understand just how deeply the supernatural shapes the lives of those around her. Siddiqui's adult debut (after the YA House of Glass Hearts, 2021) is a feminist, revisionist exploration of Mary Shelley's troubled past and the cult of fame that surrounds her. Told from the perspective of an Indian immigrant, the novel offers a fresh and compelling lens on the Shelleys' complex history. For fans of Caitlin Starling's The Death of Jane Lawrence (2021) and Johanna van Veen's Blood on Her Tongue (2025).
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In this brilliant reimagining of the tumultuous summer during which Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, Siddiqui (House of Glass Hearts) shifts the focus onto the Shelleys' housemaid, Mehrunissa "Mehr" Begum, who arrived to England from India in 1815. Mehr, whose father is British and mother Indian, was raised in relative luxury in India. However, in England, she's neglected by her father and brother, who preceded her there, and forced to work for a living for the first time in her life. She is placed with the Shelleys and taken along on their summer expedition to Geneva where, together with Mary's stepsister, Claire, they will stay with Lord Byron and his physician, Polidori, and work on their writing. Siddiqui masterfully evokes the time period and creates an atmosphere dripping with unease as Mary and Mehr begin to have converging nightmares in their eerie vacation villa. Though the life of Mary Shelley has often been mined for material, Siddiqui brings a fresh perspective through the eyes of the witty and sullen Mehr, whose backstory and fraught relationships with the increasingly entangled Geneva party add to the intrigue. This is a real treat for fans of gothic fiction. Agent: Lane Clarke, Ultra Literary. (Feb.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Most horror readers know about the atmospheric and unsettling summer of 1816, when a teenaged Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein as part of a storytelling competition with her lover Percy, stepsister Claire, the poet Lord Byron, and his doctor Polidori during a dreary season at in Switzerland. However, few remember the Frankenstein character Safie, a maid of Turkish and Arab descent. Siddiqui's (House of Glass Hearts) novel promises to tell the story of Safie's real-life counterpart, Mehrunissa, who has traveled from her homeland of India to England to notify her brother of their mother's death. She can't find him and is forced to get work; she is employed as a maid by Shelley. Mehr serves Shelley and her bohemian friends as they travel to Geneva that summer in 1816. Mehr notices what they're too self-absorbed to see, supernatural horrors and real dangers, and is terrified to act but must rise to the challenge if anyone is going to leave the villa alive. VERDICT Injecting new menace into the history of a beloved horror classic, this is a great suggestion for fans of Silvia Moreno-Garcia's Mexican Gothic and Donyae Coles's Midnight Rooms or Frankenstein-inspired tales in the vein of Tim McGregor's Eynhallow.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
In Siddiqui's first novel for adults, an Indian woman finds herself in England working for the future author ofFrankenstein. It's 1815, and Mehrunissa Begum, the 24-year-old daughter of an Indian noblewoman and a British officer, is traveling by steamship from India to London; to honor her dead mother's wishes, Mehr must deliver an inheritance letter to her brother, who fails to meet her ship. Mehr is accustomed to being served, not serving others, yet with her abandonment by her brother, she has no choice but to seek employment to earn money for her passage back to India. Mehr grudgingly accepts a job as a housemaid for a baronet and poet named Percy Shelley and his wife, Mary, who informs Mehr at their first meeting, "I am working on a novel." Some months later, Mehr is brought along when the family summers at a villa in Geneva, where supernatural events follow the arrival of Lord Byron. Or is the havoc-wreaker the ghost of the former lady of the villa, "yearning to free herself from this terrible place," as is Mehr? By making Mehr, from whose perspective the story is told, a haughty brat, Siddiqui takes an admirable risk that doesn't necessarily pay off: The novel is initially slow-footed, with nothing at stake beyond its sulky protagonist's ability to earn enough cash to sail home. As the book approaches its midpoint, however, things get creepy, and soon enough vampire-y--manna for retro-horror fans who can overlook some formulaic writing (there's an awful lot of trembling and shuddering). While Siddiqui presumes the reader's familiarity with literary figures of the Shelleys' time, her book is ultimately concerned not with the personal demons that begatFrankenstein but with the demons that overrun one Genevan villa. Historical vampire antics for those who don't demand fresh prose. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
