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Book: A Cold Legacy by Megan Shepherd (The Madman’s Daughter #3)

Genre: YA, Fantasy, Historical

A Cold Legacy is the 3rd and final book in the trilogy by Megan Shepherd. You can find my reviews of the first two books (The Madman’s Daughter and Her Dark Curiosity) here and here

Just to briefly recap the series, in case you’ve forgotten or haven’t read the first two books, Juliet Moreau is the daughter of an infamous scientist and doctor. The series is inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. This series is ultimately about Juliet’s journey to discovering what exactly the impact of her father’s questionable scientific practices have on her personally.

A Cold Legacy picks up exactly where Her Dark Curiosity left off. Juliet is fleeing the city with her companions after killing an entire group of men that was attempting to steal her father’s secrets and carry on his grotesque experiments. Luckily, they have somewhere to go, thanks to the mysterious Elizabeth von Stein, Juliet’s guardian by proxy. Elizabeth’s mansion, however, is a mansion of secrets, many of them as dark as Juliet’s own history. Furthermore, she has the opportunity to learn for the first time the exact capacity of her own inclination to research. More than ever, Juliet needs to decide where she draws the line between the control of the past on her present.

This is definitely one series that remained intriguing to me throughout. Juliet’s puzzling over how her past and her future will fit together continues more than ever in this book. It does get pretty strange though. Not only does Shepherd draw from Dr. Jekyll and Hyde, but she throws a little Frankenstein in there too. Granted, it works with the story, but it is definitely one of the stranger things I’ve ever read. I am definitely feeling the distinct need to read Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde now…

A few things did peeve me about this book though. It does have some great resolving of relationships (Juliet and Montgomery), but there seemed to be a few loose ends. Like Juliet never telling Montgomery about her ahem history… with Edward? Did I miss that? I kept asking myself that throughout the book, but there just never seemed to be any resolving of it. Juliet buried the fact that it ever happened–a fact only made stranger by her continual struggle to bury the rest of her past.

The ending seemed a little strained too, ALMOST like it was a race to the finish line or something.

Still, all things considered, The Madman’s Daughter series was definitely a unique venture in YA fiction, and I did enjoy it greatly.

I really liked it: 4 out of 5 stars