I was really looking forward to this sapphic vampire retelling of Carmilla and pre-ordered back in 2023. Full disclosure - I have not read Carmilla which may explain some of my mixed emotions below.

“The voice in the back of her head was crying for answers.“

Girl, same here.

There really was not enough backstory for me to get into the book, have a grasp of the characters or the plot. I had to fight the urge to DNF and I am glad I did. It’s clear to me that the author has talent and I am open to reading future works.

Their prose is beautiful, but can be stifling and incredibly dense. Throughout the book, I kept rereading lines to try to understand what was being said, or flipping through previous pages to check if I missed something. I literally didn’t even know the house was on fire until 2 pages into a chapter because the descriptions were so abstractly poetic.

For the first few chapters, nothing much happens besides a zombie- village mob and has a repetitive format which each chapter starting with an incredibly detailed description of the gothic macabre scene followed by a short exchange to move the plot forward.

I didn’t find any of the characters particularly able or appealing, with very little character development. There was an awful lot of crying. There were probably 15 times I counted that the main protagonist is crying for some reason or another. There were sprinkles and hints of backstory that had be intruiged but were never elaborated on - this included Valerie’s previous romantic encounters or exploration of her sexuality, how she ended up getting married to Ethan Vertigo, why this allegedbly powerful man is so hated and powerless, what is this curse everyone keeps referencing, why is Valerie so special and why does she look exactly her husband’s dead sister, who Mircalla is and how she became a vampire.

Despite Valerie being painted as this delicate woman strongly affected by the animosity of the villagers, she barely flinches or responds accordingly to the gory violence she witnesses. I assumed she was under a vampire’s thrall but that’s me trying to make sense of it all.

There were glaring plot holes and inconsistencies throughout the novel that at some point I wondered if certain chapters were meant to be edited out.

Admittedly, I enjoyed the tasteful depiction of intimacy between two women as well as the violence and gore depicted. Towards the end of the novel, the violence was no longer presented as these random strange dream sequences. The characters were responding in a way that made sense to the plot. Suddenly, I found myself liking the viscious Mircalla and Valerie as well as the introduction of the vampire lore in the Vertigo Peaks world that left me wanting more because this development simply was not backed up by the rest of the book.

I wish more effort was put towards building a stronger foundation for the characters, world-building (the tense dynamic between the Vertigo estate and the villagers, what was the curse?, who are the vampires? why is Valerie the chosen one?) which would have contextualized the conflicts that drove the story forward.

[SPOILERS]

“Valerie nibbled on her husband’s severed finger. She did not question when or where it appeared. It must have been in her hand all her life, in a blaze, sealed behind the coldness of January. She was meant to be here, cradled by her bloodthirsty lover, and sucking on her husband’s flesh until the hard bone grated against her teeth.”

ABOVE HAS ZERO BUILD UP. In the chapter prior, Valerie was hosting a tea party and making amends with her nasty neighbor in Bridgerton fashion. Then she’s eating her husband’s finger while being eaten out by her new vampire girlfriend. NONE OF THIS is mentioned afterwards.

I’m so confused the rest of the story continues as if this didn’t happen. I tried to search my eBook with key words “husband” and “finger” and nothing came up. The writing was so convoluted it could be interpreted as a sex fantasy or a dream sequence but that’s quite a stretch.

All you really know is Valerie is poor, recently married to a powerful man, visits his town and is ostracized to the point of a violent mob. Then she ends up in her husbands estate where nothing much happens besides her being sad that the townspeople don’t love her. Her whole character centers around this until she develops a crush on a mysterious woman she meets at a party. Then begins this twisted courting with very little context as to why they’re so deep in love with one another.

“You made me in your image. You carved me and breathed me into life. Where you ache, I tremble in agony. I never had to see where I stood because I was with you, hand in hand, heart against heart, and I am replenished by the same thing that brought you to me.”

Beautiful prose, but how did we get here?9 s1 comment Maih322 2 Want to read

2024
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