Publisher: Farshore

A bold new adventure in the same vein as his previous series The Beast and the Bethany, in which characters are scrutinised for their conscience even in the midst of doing wicked things. Here, Meggitt-Phillips adopts the conceit from the original RL Stevenson novella, creating an adventure with a supposed descendent of the original Dr Jekyll.

When spoiled and entitled protagonist Henrik Jekyll receives news from a lawyer (a direct descendent of the original Mr Utterson of the original), Gabby Utterson, that he has inherited Jekyll’s Manor, he and his parents sprint off to live in their new mansion. However, the manor is an exaggeration of a haunted house out of control, and before long young Henrik Jekyll is experimenting in the laboratory and creating his own potion leading directly to his inner self – Eddie Hyde. What follows is a dramatic, wild tale of both horror and extreme humour, as Hyde and Jekyll battle for control of the body, and the manor house, and inevitably good vs evil. Somehow managing to be incredibly silly and yet gripping at the same time, this is a tale that pulses with duality.

On the one hand, it delivers a whimsical plot and fairly inane secondary characters, and yet on the other, it seems to want to say something about how complex human beings can be, sometimes needing wickedness to bring out self-awareness and self-correction – feelings of guilt, and even empathy. Either way, readers will relish its delicious embrace of wickedness, rudeness and bad behaviour, all the while recognising the dry humour throughout, and its long-lasting message of the joys of friendship and acting selflessly.