The Madness
By Dawn Kurtagich
ISBN 9781525809811
Author’s website: dawnkurtagich.com
Brought to you by OBS reviewer Omar
Summary
Beware what waits in the shadows…
With one unexpected email from her estranged best friend, Lucy, Mina Murray’s carefully curated life is turned upside down. Leaving behind her psychiatric practice in London, along with her routine and the calm it brings, she returns to the windswept shores of Wales. Faced with everything she’s left behind, she soon discovers that Lucy’s symptoms mirror those of her mysterious patient with amnesia hundreds of miles away.
With nothing but an untreatable sickness connecting the two women, and with Lucy’s life on the line, Mina finds herself asking questions and being drawn ever-deeper into a web of secrets, missing girls, and the powerful, nameless force at its center—one that has been haunting her for years.
As terrible, ancient truths begin to reveal themselves, Mina prepares to confront her own darkest secrets, and with them, an evil beyond comprehension. Together with a group of smart, savvy women, Mina seizes one last, desperate chance to stop the cycle that began so long ago. But there are dangers to inviting the attentions of what might not be a man, but a monster…
Review
The Madness is the retelling of the famous story of Dracula. Set in today’s era, we follow Mina Murray as she tries to understand the disappearance of women around the country while also trying to save her friend Lucy Holmswood from a strange illness.
Mina Murry ran from Tylluan, Wales when she was seventeen to London and never turned back. She cut most of her ties to her hometown except for her mother who she only talks to. Twelve years ago, something happened to Mina, it was so traumatic that the event left her scared physically and mentally, and now, even a decade after, she still needs to control her environment to keep herself sane. Now, Mina is a psychiatrist specialist in women traumas, she has private clients and also works with governmental cases. Mina is called to evaluate a woman, Renee, who was found naked, unconscious and delusional. Renee presents strange symptoms, she cannot stand the light, she talks to someone that is not there, she’s anemic, weak, and refuses to eat food and only wants to eat bugs. After her meeting with Renee, Mina receives an email from an old friend from Tylluan, Lucy Holmswood who is asking for help, she is losing chunks of time and has other anomalies that doctors don’t seem to know what may be.
Mina drops everything and decides to go back home to help her friend. But darkness is looming in the horizon, and many eyes are upon Mina as she tries to help these women.
The Madness has all the characters from the original Dracula story, but some of their stories are a bit different or their actions are more malicious. Mina’s mother is Vanessa Murray, she is called a witch by the townsfolk, but her character is one-half of the Van Helsing character from the Dracula story, while Helen Singers a researcher is the other part of the character. Both bring different aspects to the character of Van Helsing and help Mina solve the mystery. Other characters that show up are Arthur Holmwood, Lucy’s husband, Dr. John Seward who is a colleague of Mina, Quincey Morris a childhood friend of Mina and Lucy, and Jonathan Harker, Mina’s boyfriend that she left when she ran away from her hometown.
It was an interesting retelling of the Dracula story, given that it is set in modern times. The people that disappear due to the vampires, the majority being women, should have caused more interest in the news or be noticed by the general population. But as we go through the story, we learn how the vampires hunt these women and the lengths they take to keep their crimes hidden. Another thing that I noticed is that the main vampire is never given a name, they just call him “Master”.
While the story at first seems to be long, once you start getting into details the reading pace goes by very fast, and it can be finished in a couple of days if you get hooked and want to know how it ends.If you like and have seen the TV show Penny Dreadful or read the book The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, the Madness brings back a thrilling combo sensation of an “imagine if these two were in the same universe”. The disappearance of women combined with the mysticism of battling vampires and other supernatural creatures is what makes the Madness a great retelling of the classic story.
