A deeply chilling and clever twist on the Jekyll & Hyde legend.

In 1883, teenage Gabriel heads from the country into London to pursue a medical career at the prompting of his father. He’s one of the very few Black students at his school, and the head will do anything in his power to make him fail. But he finds kinship … and then something more … in fellow student Henry.

Years later - after the scandal of their relationship and the expulsion of both boys from the medical school - Gabriel returns to the city with a new job and a painful desire to reconnect with his first love. But Henry ices him out, and Gabriel discovers a newcomer in the Jekyll household: the peculiar Hyde.

As Gabriel becomes more desperate to uncover the truth behind Henry’s apathy, he stumbles into a deeper mystery. And things get … dangerous.

It’s not easy to be a gay Black boy in London amidst violent racism and homophobia. The cruelty was descriptive (though not too graphic for young readers) and difficult to read at times. 

It’s a swift read that plays with monstrousness and brutality - and finding love in the most hopeless of circumstances. I occasionally found the writing style a bit cheesy, and the plot moved SO quickly past their years of initial romance. I wish we had a bit more spaciousness there in order to have a more fully-formed idea of “normal” Henry. 

But overall, I found My Dear Henry to be a very fresh retelling with a brutal spin. It takes the atmosphere of the initial tale - and some of the subtext - and reimagines it with sharpness and depth.

CW: racism, homophobia, murder, death, medical content, violence, bullying, physical & emotional abuse, sexual harassment, body horror, classism, terminal illness, grief, vomit, gaslighting 

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