Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is a classic whose fame is based less on literary merit than, to borrow a phrase from our Olympic organisers, its cultural legacy. It may have spawned two entire genres – science fiction and horror – but the novel itself, while not bad for an 18-year-old, is awkward, with one of the dullest protagonists in English literature.

So you can't blame writer and video-game designer Dave Morris for wanting to improve it. With the support of Profile Books and digital designers inkle, he has turned Frankenstein into an interactive app for iPhones and iPads. I hoped Frankenstein would combine the educational aspect of Faber's The Waste Land with the gothic razzmatazz of Dracula by PadWorx (a wonderful invention that adds sound effects and animation to Bram Stoker's text).

First impressions were good. Frankenstein is lovely to look at: tastefully designed and illustrated with old anatomical drawings. It's when you start reading that things go downhill. What Morris has done is dismember Mary Shelley's novel and sew it into a digital version of a Choose Your Own Adventure story. In doing so, he has created a monster.

Morris has reworked the text into a second-person narrative but decided to keep its multiple narrators. The reader navigates the app first as an acquaintance of Victor Frankenstein, then the creature, then Frankenstein again. This "interactive reading experience" is bewildering, especially if you can't remember the plot.

A bigger problem is how you can't change the outcome of the story. You can control the trivial ("open the letter, or have a rest first?") but not things that really matter. Mostly, this is frustrating, but when you're the monster it's nightmarish. "But I don't want to strangle the child!" you shout, to no avail.

According to its makers, Frankenstein "will be the first in a new generation of ebooks, bringing a classic novel to a new audience". You shudder to think what else is in the works.