Jekel Loves Hyde

April 12, 2010
Jill Jekel and Tristen Hyde are playing a dangerous game: when these teenage descendants of the legendary Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde find a box left behind by Jill’s murdered father—a box holding “the original documents detailing the actual experiments that inspired the novel”—they decide to recreate the experiments. Brainy Jill hopes to win scholarship money while “troubled but beautiful” Tristen wants to excise the evil inside of him, which has already driven him to violence. Through their alternating narration, readers learn of their deep bond—and that Jill and Tristen are not only on their way to finding the formula but also to figuring out what happened to her father and his disappeared mother. Readers may be troubled by the violence intertwined with their growing romance; Tristen pins Jill against a desk and reveals that he has “a force within me that wanted nothing less than to destroy Jill herself.” But Fantaskey’s (Jessica’s Guide to Dating on the Dark Side
) premise is creative, and there are plenty of twists to keep readers engaged—right through the fiery final face-off. Ages 14–up.

January 1, 2011

Gr 9 Up-Jill Jekel is a lonely, shy, studious high school student who first meets and is attracted to handsome, talented, and mysterious Tristen Hyde at her father's funeral in Beth Fantaskey's novel (Harcourt, 2010). The brutal murder of Jill's father has sent her mother into a deep depression. Tristen and Jill join forces to create a Jekel and Hyde team for a competition to recreate the original formula used in Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekel and Mr. Hyde, hoping that Jill can win a scholarship and it will help Tristen fight his evil urges. Stevenson's classic figures prominently in this contemporary melodramatic teen romance. The story is revealed through two voices: Jill narrated by Natalia Payne, and Andy Parvis as a very British-sounding Tristen. The reading is well-paced, highlighting their different personalities, the changes Jill and Tristen experience, and the pulsating romantic tension between them. Though sensual, the story is not overtly sexual; profanity is used for emphasis and not gratuitously. The use of the Jekel and Hyde characters is clever but not entirely resolved. Why, for example, does the formula reverse the evil that Tristen feels growing in him as it has in all the Hyde men? For listeners who enjoy a breathy romance.-Maria Salvadore, formerly Washington DC Public Library

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