Monsters of L.A - Lisa Morton Review

Goodreads Synopsis

In these pages you'll find the dark stars you grew up watching: Frankenstein, Dracula, Mr. Hyde, the Phantom, the Hunchback...all the silent ones and the first to find their voices are here, and they're even presented in roughly the order in which they first appeared on a silver screen. The Haunted House of the '30s gives way to the Werewolf of the '40s, the Monsters of L.A. Creature of the '50s, and so on, all the way up to our favorite modern boogeyman, the Zombie.

In some of these stories, you'll find an earthly incarnation of a famous namesake: Frankenstein is a patched-together, homeless vet, the Invisible Woman is so ordinary you'd never see her; but some of these familiar friends - Dracula, the Devil, or those seriously creepy Clowns - will be instantly recognizable.


Review
This collection of short stories is one of the best I've read, some intertwine within each other and some are stand alone but the adaptations of popular myths and monsters is brilliant. My particular favourite was Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde which is one of my favourite books anyway. Morton makes Dr Jekyll a woman and the potion he takes is trying to make her a man and is likely to stun everyone with her new way of gender changing. The drug is brilliant, she becomes Mr Hyde, but her sexual impulses get the better of her and she becomes very violent. This is one of the longer narratives in the book but I was very pleased about this. 


The very essence of this book is to adapt popular fiction and find new and interesting ways of retelling them and it works amazingly well. Ironically the only story I disliked was the longest one near the end of the book, which is why the book only got four stars instead of five. I did like the little commentary at the end of why Morton chose to write the stories in the ways she did and I found it increased the enjoyment of the stories. But of course, if you don't want to read that section you don't have to.


Some of the stories are intended to be scary, I was a little scared in the haunted house, yet when you discover the true reason of why the house is behaving the way it does its a fantastic story. It takes on the role of the house as a speaker at some points which is a really inventive way of understanding what took place in the house. The Slasher is also one to make you cringe a little as well as the fear of The Killer Clown which sparks of the fear of clowns within everyone.


Dracula was a story which I thought I wouldn't like but the combination of the classic take on Dracula moulded with the modern versions of vampires was incredible. I found myself laughing out loud at the end of the book when I realised who the other character was actually meant to be based upon. Of course as always I won't give it away! 

Stories such as Frankenstein and The Mad Scientist are linked in very interesting ways, The Mad Scientist is actually a doctor who tried to save a man's life. Overall I enjoyed this collection lots and found myself feeling a lot of various emotions while reading it! Morton is very talented at adapting the stories to create her own interesting take on them!!