📖 BOOK REVIEW⠀📚
BOOK: Magruder’s Curiosity Cabinet
AUTHOR: H.P. Wood
Stars: ⭐⭐⭐
Published: June 7, 2016
https://amzn.to/2yLT8ld
I actually read this book a few years ago, but for some reason the review never posted. So I am redoing it now.
This book was super creative. There are elements of the absurd, fantasy, and mystery all in one! As it says, this NOT a children’s or young adult book as there are some themes that are too scary or adult for kids. But it is a fascinating look into the turn of the century Coney Island culture. I definitely recommend this if you like fantasy reads!
Small Summary:
May 1904. Coney Island’s newest amusement park, Dreamland, has just opened. Its many spectacles are expected to attract crowds by the thousands, paying back investors many times over.
Kitty Hayward and her mother arrive by steamer from South Africa. When Kitty’s mother takes ill, the hotel doctor sends Kitty to Manhattan to fetch some special medicine. But when she returns, Kitty’s mother has vanished. The desk clerk tells Kitty she is at the wrong hotel. The doctor says he’s never seen her although, she notices, he is unable to look her in the eye.
Alone in a strange country, Kitty meets the denizens of Magruder’s Curiosity Cabinet. A relic of a darker, dirtier era, Magruder’s is home to a forlorn flea circus, a handful of disgruntled Unusuals, and a mad Uzbek scientist. Magruder’s Unusuals take Kitty under their wing and resolve to find out what happened to her mother.
But as a plague spreads, Coney Island is placed under quarantine. The gang at Magruder’s finds that a missing mother is the least of their problems, as the once-glamorous resort town is abandoned to the freaks, anarchists, and madmen.
*****
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Received from Netgalley.