[Book Review] Angelika Frankenstein Makes Her Match By Sally Thorne & Bones Coffee Red Velvet Cake

Title: Angelike Frankenstein Makes Her Match
Series: Standalone
Author: Sally Thorne
Publication date: September 6th 2022
Page Count: 384 pages
Age Range: Adult (death, gore, explicit sexy times)
How I got my hot little hands on it: Received a review copy
Publisher’s page: Angelika Frankenstein Makes Her Match

From USA Today bestselling author of The Hating Game Sally Thorne comes something a little unexpected… a historical rom-com that imagines Victor Frankenstein’s sheltered younger sister, and her attempts to create the perfect man.

For generations, every Frankenstein has found their true love and equal, unlocking lifetimes of blissful wedded adventure. Clever, pretty (and odd) Angelika Frankenstein has run out of suitors and fears she may become the exception to this family rule. When assisting in her brother Victor’s ground-breaking experiment to bring a reassembled man back to life, she realizes that having an agreeable gentleman convalescing in the guest suite might be a chance to let a man get to know the real her. For the first time, Angelika embarks upon a project that is all her own.

When her handsome scientific miracle sits up on the lab table, her hopes for an instant romantic connection are thrown into disarray. Her resurrected beau (named Will for the moment) has total amnesia and is solely focused on uncovering his true identity. Trying to ignore their heart-pounding chemistry, Angelika reluctantly joins the investigation into his past, hoping it will bring them closer. But when a second suitor emerges to aid their quest, Angelika wonders if she was too hasty inventing a solution. Perhaps fate is not something that can be influenced in a laboratory? Or is Will (or whatever his name is!) her dream man, tailored for her in every way? And can he survive what was done to him in the name of science, and love?

Filled with carriages, candlesticks, and corpses, Angelika Frankenstein Makes Her Match is the spooky-season reimagining of the well-known classic that reminds us to never judge a man by his cadaver!

My Review

What if Frankenstein was a romance novel? Angelika Frankenstein Makes Her Match is a Frankenstein-retelling with the romance of Bridgerton and the eccentric excess of the Addams Family… and it’s just as amazing as it sounds.

The Frankenstein siblings are both stunningly beautiful (with honey-red hair and pretty green eyes à la Simon Woods in Pride & Prejudice), horribly wealthy, and terribly intelligent. Orphaned as teens and isolated in a grand gothic manor house in the English countryside with a single servant and unseemly deep coffers, there’s nothing to temper the eccentric siblings. Angelika spends in wild excess without thought and Victor is obsessed with taking the scientific world by storm with his reanimation experiments.

Angelika has been raised by her brother to be his perfect assistant, with her clever mind and talent for sewing tiny neat stitches on the cadavers used for his experiments, but she finds herself wanting something of her own. Someone. All her beauty and generous use of family wealth have not been enough to get suitors to overlook her… oddness. At the advanced age of 24, her loneliness drives her to undertake her own experiment – assembling and reanimating her perfect man. From there it’s as simple as getting him to fall in love with her, which she’s sure he will while she takes excellent care of him.

Angelika and Victor are not bad people in this. They are spoiled though, and thoughtless. Angelika just wants to be loved; she doesn’t even give a thought to her reanimated man having a past and a mind of his own. She’s completely thrown when her would-be lover, Will, is more focused on regaining his memory and returning to his old life than falling in line with her plans for him. Not that Will’s blind to her charms, he would have to be dead (again) to resist her beauty, charm, and wit – and perhaps not even then.

Angelika Frankenstein Makes Her Match is one of the most unique historical romance novels I’ve ever read and one I can see myself returning to again and again. The characters are morally grey, but they have good hearts and they do learn and grow and become better people. The banter is witty and charming and at times laugh out loud funny. You don’t have to be a lover of dark academia aesthetic and gothic romance to enjoy this, but if you are this one is definitely for you. The love story between a lonely spoiled heiress and her patched-together beau might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it was 100% mine.

Angelika is romantic through and through. She wears her heart on her sleeve and isn’t shy about showing her love to those around her, it’s typical Angelika and one of her traits that makes it so hard for Will to resist her. For something decadently and overtly romantic, there’s nothing quite like a deep red velvet cake, especially Bones Coffee Red Velvet Coffee with its decadent chocolate and creamy frosting flavor.