Through letters and journal entries, the story of Lucy, Malfalda, Alice, and Eliza unfolds. In the face of illness and turmoil they make their way to Castle Dracula, but what promises to aid them soon becomes a living nightmare and their secrets and fears might just come back to bite them.
There’s something to be said about a retelling being faithful to the original, but I think this may be a case of being a little too faithful to the original. By that I mean that this reads like a classic gothic novel in the sense that it’s very slow-paced and it’s about 90% people falling ill or having nightmares and 10% actual plot events. That being said, the epistolary format is pretty solid and it’s more engaging than I would have expected considering that it is so slow, but unfortunately there are some other issues I have with this.
I got sold a queer Dracula retelling and unfortunately the queer aspect of this book is like…completely forgettable. It’s not about queerness, and usually I think that’s a good thing because I don’t want every book that has queer characters to be *about* queerness, but in this case…that’s kind of why I picked up the book. I wanted lesbian wives of Dracula and I got an extremely minor romantic relationship between two women that is either profoundly repressed or profoundly lacking in chemistry to the point of reading as platonic. Additionally, as another review mentions without spoiling the ending too much this is a “bury your gays” situation so even the slightest thing that make this book feel fresh and compelling gets unceremoniously killed off.
I don’t think this book is terrible, in fact the writing is pretty great and the author is clearly passionate, but I don’t really know who to recommend it to. I don’t think you’ll be happy with it if you’re a huge fan of Dracula and I don’t think you’ll be happy with it if you’re in it for lesbians and vampires because there’s very little of each.
Thank you to Charlotte Cross and Hanover Square Press for this ARC in exchange for my full, honest review!
Happy reading!
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