Reviews

The Clockwork Girl by Anna Mazzola

olivesreadingarden's review

3.0

Overall rating: ⭐⭐⭐.5
(3.5 stars)

The book started off very confusing, littered with French words and phrases which made it difficult to understand what in the heck I was reading (turns out there's a glossary at the back of the book, which I found out much too late), but as the 'world-building' (of Paris) was achieved and the plot started to take shape, I found it much much easier to get a grip on the story.
The idea and story is quite unique (at least something I've never personally read/seen/heard of), and full of mystery surrounding how Doctor Reinheart made such fully functoning clockwork trinkets. Whilst the big reveals weren't extremely shocking, I did find myself gasping aloud when you finally know what/who is the one taking the children from the streets (cue me thinking: 'OH IT ALL MAKES SENSE NOW').
If you like slow-burn, mysterious, gothic books with unique concepts, I would definitely recommend it. I'm not sure this genre is my *vibe*, BUT I am still interested to try other similar books as I did enjoy it.

This book is:
- Slow burn, gothic, set in France in the 1750s
This book includes:
- No romance
- Prostitution / SA
- Death & murder
- Illness
- Pregnancy related death

sabrinaslivingliterature's review against another edition

4.0

A gothic mystery set in 1750s Paris, full of rumours and secrets. I loved this book, it is atmospheric and disturbing, you are pulled into the very different lives of the 3 women who narrate the story but all have a similar goal of trying to survive and stay ahead of people who would tear them down. The characters are fantastic and complex none are truly good but some are truly evil. The automata are perfectly described in the uncanny valley and I loved the overall unsettling tone of the book which gives it the gothic quality similar to Rebecca. The plot and mystery are brilliant and have so many twists and turns that made this book difficult to put down. Overall it was a great read and I look forward to reading more by the author

sabrinaslivingliterature's review

4.0

A gothic mystery set in 1750s Paris, full of rumours and secrets. I loved this book, it is atmospheric and disturbing, you are pulled into the very different lives of the 3 women who narrate the story but all have a similar goal of trying to survive and stay ahead of people who would tear them down. The characters are fantastic and complex none are truly good but some are truly evil. The automata are perfectly described in the uncanny valley and I loved the overall unsettling tone of the book which gives it the gothic quality similar to Rebecca. The plot and mystery are brilliant and have so many twists and turns that made this book difficult to put down. Overall it was a great read and I look forward to reading more by the author

kellyvandamme's review

5.0

The year is 1750 and we’re taken to Paris, not quite the City of Light we might expect, but rather a dank, dark, smelly city where the lowest classes fight to survive. And things are getting worse every day, with the poorest children being taken from the streets, vanishing. Anna Mazzola took this historical fact and ran with it, giving it her own shocking twist.

The Clockwork Girl is told from three perspectives, giving a voice to three sections of the French population in the 18th century: the poor (Madeleine), the bourgeoisie (Véronique) and the filthy rich (Jeanne). Three women who seemingly have nothing in common, but who are more alike than they know.

Véronique is the clockmaker’s daughter, seventeen, just home from the convent where she grew up, lonely and eager to reconnect with her father, hoping against hope (it’s the 18th century after all) that he’ll make her a full-blown apprentice. Madeleine, who grew up in a brothel, is a mouche for the police, a fly on the wall, a spy sent into the clockmaker’s home to find out if what he’s doing is above board and not dangerous. Jeanne came from rather humble beginnings but is now the King’s mistress, better known as the Marquise de Pompadour.

Telling a story from the POV of one of the more famous women in French history is a rather bold move if you ask me, but it pays off, bigtime. I love how actual historical figures are part of the cast, their lives written seamlessly into their fictional counterparts’ lives, from the Lieutenant General of Police to King Louis XV himself. All this makes The Clockwork Girl a very lush historical tale.

For the most part I would say The Clockwork Girl is a character-driven slowburner. It’s these three women that keep the story and I was captivated by their intertwining lives, their secrets and intrigue. And there is also quite a bit of mystery involved. What is the clockmaker up to, are his secret activities quite as unsavoury as the police seem to think?

The last thirty or so percent is very much plot-driven, with things coming to a head and leading to a very satisfying conclusion, which I can tell you nothing about for obvious reasons. All I can say is that I was turning the pages frantically and didn’t quite know which way was up.

With its vivid writing, its enticing mysteries and its three fascinating narrators, The Clockwork Girl transported me to another time and place and I enjoyed my stay tremendously (despite the fact that I could almost smell all the disgusting smells and feel the grime on my fingers). I would happily recommend it to any and all fans of historical fiction.

Massive thanks to Orion and NetGalley for the eARC. All opinions are my own.

breadbin's review against another edition

dark mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

This story was unpredictable. I knew it was leading me to think certain ways about characters that could prove to be wrong but had no idea in what way it would go. The ending brings a marvellous twist within a twist both in terms of the genre the book is leaning towards as well as the narrative and I really enjoyed that. It also wraps up very neatly with every quirk and curiosity explained and every character coming to some ending

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Sexual violence, Murder, Child death, and Racism

Minor: Animal death

A story about overcoming trauma doesn't typically have to be so neat in it's plot lines. Madeleine is an orphan, taken into a brothel where her sister is impregnated and dies in child birth. Madeleine is also brutally assaulted and left with a life-long scar across half her face by an influential police officer. The story begins with M being recruited by the police - her abuser to be precise - to be inserted into the workshop of a great, but unusual and rather twisted, clockmaker where she will spy on his work and report back on whether she sees him as a danger, particularly to the king, who is fascinated by biology and has been requesting clockmakers build more and more elaborate clockwork automata to display the function of the body of animals - including humans. The book explorers M's attempts to live with her deceit after befriending the clockmakers daughter, Veronique, who has also lived a traumatic life after the death of her close friend at the hands of the nuns who ran the convent she had been sent to live in by her father since her mother had died in childbirth. The book takes the time to explore M & V's shared trauma whilst also giving them both opportunities to become fish-out-of-water: around the grand house in M's case and out on the streets of Paris in V's case as the pair begin to delve into the ongoing, and seemingly unrelated, mystery of children going missing. It is heavily implied that the clockmaker is using some kind of black-magic fuckery to extract the lifeforce from living creatures and use it to bring his clockwork creatures to life and after V's death it appears for a time that he was responsible, using her lifeforce to bring his latest creation - a beautiful clockwork girl who can write messages, breath, and even cry, specifically commissioned by the king to be presented in court - to life. However, no. Turns out: man's just great with the old cogs and what. The clockwork girl only writes prewritten messages as programmed and when she sends to develop a mins of her own it's actually because V, secretly still alive and hidden inside the base of the clockwork machine, is, with the aid of her father, attempting to reveal the truth about the missing children. But, because the children are going missing *pretty much* on the order of the king, a little subterfuge becomes the only option. The kings mistress, madame du pompadore, had huge influence with the police and is revealed to be behind M being put into the clockmakers workshop in the first place and so, once the conspiracy is revealed by V, she does all the heavy lifting to wrap the novel up tidily. She sweeps the kings involvement under the rug to maintain the royal status quo (about 30 years before the French Revolution.....oh well) and ensures that the death of the true guilty party is seen as the retribution for the deaths of the children but M and V's involvement will never be known and they'll never be reprimanded for his death. She also sees that M gets paid the money she was promised for doing the job to begin with - a large sum that assured M's life would turn around that the police (ie. The man who scarred her whilst rapping her in a brothelv when she was 15 or something) had been withholding to force her into continuing to spy on the clockmaker. V & M also get a job opportunity to go and do something elsewhere in Europe, getting them out of Paris.

ellas8_'s review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious medium-paced

3.0

lilibookworm's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

arlena_priscilla's review against another edition

4.0

This was a historical mystery done super well! It was gothic, and super creepy all while being set in 1750's Paris with intriguing real-life historical figures like Madame Pompadour being prominent side characters. I had no idea where this was going, in a good way, since I tend to guess what's going on early on in mysteries. There was a hint of "is this supernatural?" and while I did guess the actual culprit halfway through the means and the why were still very surprising.

wheezybird's review against another edition

dark mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot

4.0

laurawhitley's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.25

a fictitious period piece that reminded me of Frankenstein plot wise. 

A peculiar story to say how exactly i feel about it. The ending almost felt too happy for how dark the rest of the book allured too.