I received this book for free from Publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Victor Frankenstein is a young, wealthy, and brilliant prodigy who wants nothing more than to prove himself and change the world. His plan to right what he feels is wrong with the world? Reanimation of the sick and dying, bringing them back to life. But no one will give him the chance to prove his genius. However, one drunken night a bet is made, one that will cause Victor to do the unspeakable: take a teen boy from a small, neighboring village, and experiment on him under the dark of night. Elias Hilfiker. The boy who would become his monster. His curse. When Elias awakens, his voice is gone, his skin is stitched, scarred, and branded with strange symbols, and he’s abandoned by his loved ones. Meanwhile, Victor embarks on a journey to discover how to reverse the horror he’s unleashed, visiting dark alchemists in lands far and wide, gripped by fear and guilt.

But Victor’s act of resurrection creates a tether to Elias, leaving them feeling each other’s pain, joy, and regret, as the two each seek a way to end the other. As the two bound boys continue to search for answers and forgiveness, vengeance and mercy, the boundaries between what makes a man and what makes a monster will only get more blurred.

Short and Sweet Review

Elias Hilfiker was just a teenage boy from a small village before Victor Frankenstein decided to use him for an experiment. Victor is a brilliant, wealthy young man who is desperate to prove that he can change the world by bringing the dead back to life. After a drunken bet leads him to take Elias and experiment on him, Elias wakes up to discover that his life has been completely destroyed. His body is covered in scars, stitches, and strange symbols, his voice is gone, and the people he loved have abandoned him. Meanwhile, Victor is consumed by guilt and fear and travels across Europe looking for a way to undo what he has done. The experiment leaves Victor and Elias connected in a way neither of them expected. They can feel each other’s emotions, pain, joy, and regret, creating a bond that makes it impossible for either of them to truly escape the other. As Elias hunts Victor down and Victor searches for a way to reverse his creation, both of them are forced to confront what happened and what they’ve become. And the more we see from both perspectives, the harder it becomes to separate the monster from the man who created him.

I really enjoyed this retelling of Frankenstein, this one did a really interesting job of making the relationship between Victor and his creation feel much more personal. Instead of simply giving us a monster who is frightening because he was brought back from the dead, we get Elias, who was a kind and caring person before Victor completely changed his life. Watching what happens to him because of Victor’s choices was honestly heartbreaking. Elias was definitely my favorite character. I felt SO bad for him throughout this book. He has to wake up completely confused, unable to understand what has happened to him, and then deal with being treated like something that shouldn’t exist. I really loved that the story doesn’t make his revenge as simple as “good person becomes evil.” Elias is still fighting to hold onto the person he was before everything happened, even while his anger and desire for revenge are pushing him toward doing things he never would have done before. Victor, meanwhile, was such an interesting character to hate. His ambition and obsession with proving himself are what ultimately lead him to commit this horrible act, and I liked that the story really explores what is behind that obsession. He wants recognition so badly that he convinces himself that the things he’s doing are justified because he believes the end result will make it all worth it. But when you keep hurting people in the pursuit of your goal, at what point can you stop pretending the goal makes any of it okay?

I liked the dual POV structure. Seeing what was happening from both Elias and Victor’s perspectives made their journeys feel almost like two sides of the same story. They’re both traveling, searching for answers, and trying to figure out what to do about the other, but they’re experiencing everything very differently. And because they’re emotionally connected, neither of them can completely separate themselves from what the other person is feeling. That connection was probably one of my favorite elements of the book. Victor created Elias, but he can’t simply walk away from the consequences because he is literally forced to experience some of Elias’s emotions and pain. At the same time, Elias is forced to feel Victor’s emotions too, which complicates his desire for revenge. I thought that was such a clever way of exploring the question of what makes someone human and what actually makes someone a monster. The book can get pretty dark, though. There are some graphic descriptions of gore and animal cruelty that were difficult to read at times, so definitely keep that in mind if you’re sensitive to those things. They do serve a purpose within the story, but there were still moments where I had to take a second before continuing.

Overall, Adam, Mine was a really emotional and thought-provoking take on Frankenstein. I loved the way it explored ambition, guilt, revenge, humanity, and the consequences of treating another person like an experiment instead of a human being. Elias completely stole my heart, and his story was easily the part that affected me the most. The emotional connection between him and Victor also added something really unique to the story and made their conflict feel much more complicated than a simple creator versus monster story.