Book Review: ‘The Mary Shelley Club’ by Goldy Moldavsky (‘Scream’ meets ‘Gossip Girl’ meets dark academia)
‘The Mary Shelly Club’ is published as ‘The Last Girl’ by Electric Monkey in the UK.
What a book for our penultimate episode of the season!
‘The Mary Shelley Club’ by Goldy Moldavsky was our fifth title for season two of our podcast, ‘The Dark Academicals’, and wow. We hated it.
Sadly, I’m not joking, we really did…
When Rachel Chavez experiences a home invasion that turns her into a horror movie final girl, she and her mother move to New York City to make a fresh start. After witnessing a prank go awry at a house party, she’s pulled into the secretive and dangerous Mary Shelley Club. Freddie, Bram, Felicity and Thayer find comfort and joy in horror movies and kill it at horror trivia, but it’s the thrill of the chase that gives these bored, rich kids the spark to carry on. But all isn’t as it seems within the club, and the Fear Tests that the school sees as pranks, might not be as harmless as they first seem…
It sounded perfect for us to discuss for the podcast, but we both really, really struggled with it.
Dark academia is the genre where misfit, loner, weirdo, antihero and unlikable characters get a space to sing their song, but there also has to be nuance and interest to them too. The characters in this novel were mostly just unlikable, particularly Rachel. While Bram (don’t even get me started on the names…) and Lux had the most promise and hinted at depth, but that potential was never actually. While Rachel, our protagonist, doesn’t develop or grow or provide anything to latch onto; she’s just a traumatised girl climbing her way out of the dark by inflicting misery on others.
Along with the ‘Scream’ and ‘Gossip Girl’ connections, The Mary Shelley Club in the novel being a secret club of mysterious, conflicting personalities has inevitably drawn connections to dark academia. In our episodes of ‘The Dark Academicals’ we break down novels to see if they fit the criteria we have developed that screams dark academia to us, and while this book ticked off a fair few of the boxes, it felt exactly like that - ticking boxes. The atmosphere and tension and depth was missing, which then also had a knock on effect on the horror and thriller elements as well which felt just as underdeveloped.
Their was so much potential and opportunity for this book to be great. From the NYC setting, the fragile friendship of the club, the exclusive Manhattan Prep setting, Rachel’s trauma - the opportunities were endless.
Listen to the full podcast episode right here.
‘The Mary Shelley Club’ is ‘Scream’ meets ‘Gossip Girl’ trying to be dark academia, and it missed the mark for us, but we’d love to know what you think if you’d read it!
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Written by Sophie
