The Book of Living Secrets: Bridgerton with a dark twist
The Book of Living Secrets is certainly an unsettling horror novel at heart, but the complex plot also provides its readers with romance, queer YA, dystopia, fantasy, and most surprisingly, social commentary on the growing class divide in America.
Two best friends, Adelle and Connie, get the chance to be transported into their favorite Bridgerton-era romance novel, told by the beautiful high-society Moira, pining after her forbidden love, Severin. When they agree to journey inside the world of the novel, Adelle is thrown into the upper class and experiences the blissfully ignorant perspective of the top one percent. She experiences the excitement, as well as the gradual disappointment caused by learning the truly villainous sides of her idealized characters.
Connie, on the other hand, is dropped into the bottom ninety-nine percent with the Pennyfarthings, where it becomes clear that the true world is a blatant nightmare, filled with people in patchwork masks, flying creatures called screamers, a dystopian landscape with no food, and an evil ocean monster that calls you to drown yourself in your dreams. All the while, the rich are hosting galas and feasts in their homes, a juxtaposition that echoes the dark themes in “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe. Connie and Adelle never knew this nightmare reality existed, as the Pennyfarthings were only briefly mentioned as dirty scoundrels in Moira’s original narrative, which Moira herself was at the center of.
The novel unfolds through the parallel perspectives of Adelle and Connie, jumping between chapters to highlight the stark contrast between their experiences in these different worlds. Roux creates an intertwined representation of the past, present, and future through this plot as well, in order to make a statement on the ever-existing, ever-growing problem of class discrepancy. The past manifests through the world being set in 1815, the present is personified by Adelle and Connie, and the dystopian, fantastical creatures create a sci-fi future.
Throughout the story, Mississippi, from the Pennyfarthings, acts as a foil to Moira. Both have striking red hair and green eyes, and both are in control of their sides of the city, yet the roles of hero and villain are completely flipped from the original story to Connie and Adelle’s reality. Also, minor characters in Moira’s world, like Caid and Orla, become major in Adelle and Connie’s, revealing that perception depends on who is telling the story and who is being left out.
As the characters begin to intertwine and Adelle and Connie are reunited, the final stretch of the novel brings the two worlds together. Connie and Adelle unite both groups to fight a common cause, not only against the obvious threats, but also against the psychotic behavior of Moira and Severin, the original novel’s hero and heroine. When Orla and Caid begin working with the Pennyfarthings, the tear in the sky that has been causing the nightmare begins to repair itself. When both sides are honest with themselves and each other, they are finally able to identify the true enemy.
