Jekel Loves Hyde

Gr 9 Up—Jill Jekel is a lonely, shy, studious high school student who first meets and is attracted to handsome, talented, and mysterious Tristen Hyde at her father's funeral in Beth Fantaskey's novel (Harcourt, 2010). The brutal murder of Jill's father has sent her mother into a deep depression. Tristen and Jill join forces to create a Jekel and Hyde team for a competition to recreate the original formula used in Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekel and Mr. Hyde, hoping that Jill can win a scholarship and it will help Tristen fight his evil urges. Stevenson's classic figures prominently in this contemporary melodramatic teen romance. The story is revealed through two voices: Jill narrated by Natalia Payne, and Andy Parvis as a very British-sounding Tristen. The reading is well-paced, highlighting their different personalities, the changes Jill and Tristen experience, and the pulsating romantic tension between them. Though sensual, the story is not overtly sexual; profanity is used for emphasis and not gratuitously. The use of the Jekel and Hyde characters is clever but not entirely resolved. Why, for example, does the formula reverse the evil that Tristen feels growing in him as it has in all the Hyde men? For listeners who enjoy a breathy romance.—Maria Salvadore, formerly Washington DC Public Library