I bought this classic horror to read for Fraterfest Halloween Readathon and was content to do so until Penguin Random House recently offered a FREE audio download of Frankenstein in connection with Kiersten Whites new release of The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein. So ya. I could not wait another minute. Now I have the pleasure of owning both formats and I am loving Jim Weiss narration. His voice booms in crescendos and is soft in decrescendos. I'm on page 139. The written text reads like a beautiful song with descriptive lyrics. I don't know where Mary Shelley got her inspiration from but I saw a similarity from the Bible story, Sodom and Gomorrha. When God speaks to Abraham about sparing the city if he found as few as one righteous person? Same with Frankenstein. When the monster pleads with Victor to make him a companion. If for the sake of one person who shows compassion towards him he would save humanity. Or something like that.

"If any being felt emotions of benevolence towards me, I should return them an hundred and an hundredfold; for that one creature's sake I would make peace with the whole kind!"

How the creature was terribly misunderstood when he tries to help a small child all because he was hideous looking!

"This was then the reward of my benevolence! I had saved a human being from destruction, and as a recompense, I now writhed under the miserable pain of a wound which shattered the flesh and bone."

Poor creature. How sad and lonely and wretched he was! I love Clerval and Justine Moritz and the snow-clad mountains in Geneva. I love the cottagers. Everything about the story is well written and descriptive. It's not hard to picture.

I adored the movie, Young Frankenstein. It's amazing how much of the real story is portrayed! so I was sort of familiar with the main ideas but I think it's cool to be able to actually read the book. I don't find it scary at all. 

Get ready for Halloween and bring on the FRATERFEST READATHON hosted@caffeinatedbookreviewer October 11th through the 16th. It's going to be a thriller of an exercise. If you would like to read your favourite spooky, haunting, scary horror, mystery novel than why not join the Fraterfest? It's entirely up to you, but there will be fun and prizes and even challenges. Be there or Be scared.

I came across this 2013 book release in a comment recommending it for allhallowsread. I am glad I did because it truly is the ultimate halloween read! If you read it on kindle, I suggest you choose the publisher font to enhance your reading experience. It's gothic and beautiful.

Father Doc, a rad Catholic priest, takes legal guardianship of the boy and vows to keep him safe and protected, but he knows things about him that Sam doesn't, until on the night of his 18th birthday...... a neighbour had spotted a car parked in front of Sam's house. It wasn't just a normal car but a Roll's Royce hearse. The car was a bad omen. The plates read: SAMZDED and it was going to kill Father Doc too. 

Lucia is Sam's best friend who lived across the street. Sam has always seen things like 'a lady in glass', a 'crackling' in his head that smelled like fire and smoke, a 'stalking cat' and 'bird' and other inexplicable phenomena but he doesn't know why. Sam and Lucia believe the visions will only get worse if they don't listen to the clues, and are led to an empty tomb on Halloween night.

Facing the inevitable they find themselves in a place beyond the living called Nowhere. There they face unspeakable horrors and meet a dead phantom called Lore, a foul pumpkin called Jack'O'Lantern, a tiny witch called Hex, a Templar Knight, Jacques de Molay, who I found very interesting, and vampire leeches that want to eat them. Vampires are called Leeches who don't drink blood for obvious reasons because there is no living blood to drink there, but they subsist on the promise of immortality and a herb called nightshade that is only grown in the soil of Hell. Eventually Sam comes to know the lady in the glass also known as Clara or Tlachtga who appears in the Epilogue. She is the druid goddess who needs Sam's help. Her father is Mog Ruith. Everyone in the Nowhere knew who Sam was but Sam. He was the last to learn the truth about himself and about Halloween .