My Imaginary Mary

Definitely more of a 4.5 but I'm rounding up.

I have loved all of the Lady Janies books and the first of the Mary's too, so it was never in doubt that I will read this one, and hopefully listen to the audiobook. And I'm glad I waited till I got the audio because this was a delight and probably my favorite of all these books. Let me decide while writing this review.

I've not read Frankenstein but I do know who Mary Shelley is, if not too much about her background, and similarly I only knew the name of Ada Lovelace and how she could be considered one of the earliest computer programmers. So it was actually quite fascinating to see the amazing author trio bring these two historical women to life as young women who are still discovering their passion in life. The writing is as fun as I expected, the audiobook narration is hilarious and top notch, and all the fourth wall breaking literally had me in splits. But through all the magic, possible necromancy, automatons, poetry and more, we also get to think about women of that age who must have been passionate about their pursuits but couldn't do much about it because they were confined by their societal roles. And through one very surprising POV, we also get to ponder upon what makes one human, and what's the difference between a human and a monster - and this theme is really prescient considering that Mary Shelley hasn't written Frankenstein in this world yet. There's also some amazing friendships here which warmed my heart, along with cool adventures which had me all excited.

Mary is a young woman growing up in the shadow of her more famous mother, and wants to be an author too - but she is still struggling to find that one story she wants to tell. She is resourceful and quick thinking and pretty good at getting herself out of tricky situations. Ada on the other hand is a math and science wiz who has so many ideas, and is already creating automatons and more. When an unlikely friendship brews between them due to the possibility of both being fae, we see them support and bolster each other every step of the way, encouraging one another in their ambitions. The trust that develops between them is wonderful and it's always nice to see the possibility of two accomplished historical women being friends.

We are also supported in this super entertaining novel by a whole interesting cast of side characters. Mary's sister Fanny is quiet and always worried about her needlework but it feels like there's a lot she is hiding underneath that demeanor; their other sister Jane (or Claire) is much more boisterous and would love to be swept away by a charming man or be an actress or even just meet the illustrious Lord Byron. Byron only shows up on page for a little while but his presence throughout is noticeable, and his depiction isn't too different from that of the pretentious historical figure. Percy Shelley is also a significant character but you just know right from the beginning that there's something off about him. Ofcourse how can I forget Pan, our third POV character whom I don't wanna talk about much except that I adored him completely and you have to read this book to meet him - don't miss out.

In the end, this was everything I expected it to be and more. I was thoroughly entertained, got to meet many historical figures, experienced some delightful friendships and got to wonder about the nature of humanity. I think this is probably the best one out of all these books till date, but I'm also ready to be surprised by the next one, which apparently is titled My Salty Mary (it said so at the back of my copy of this book) and now I'll be wondering who this salty Mary is about. Any guesses friends???