Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.
Alright: a short story collection novel about VAMPIRES and poc/lgbt diversity. I’m generally not a short story reader but why not! I figured I could do little sentence summaries of each story so people know what to expect.
1. Seven Nights for Dying by Tessa Gratton. A bisexual girl meets a vampire and has a week (how long the transition takes) to decide whether or not to become an immortal vampire.
2. Mirrors, Windows, & Selfies by Mark Oshiro. A gay Hispanic born-vampire is completely isolated by his parents for their “safety” and he struggles to find out why that may be as well as his own identity, appearance and place in the world. They have no mirrors and he doesn’t even know what he looks like.
3. The House of Black Sapphires by Dhonielle Clayton. A family of black vampires who move around when their family firebird tells them to. They move to New Orleans, a city where their parents have a past, into a ward full of other immortal creatures such as shifters, Fae, witches, and Shadow Barons (crossroad keepers, soul takers). The main character is Bea, one of the many daughters, and she’s bisexual.
4. The Boys from Blood River by Becca Roanhorse. A gay Native American boy hears a ghost story about a group of serial killer/vampire boys and decides to summon them with their song. They come to save him, but with heavy price.
5. Senior Year Sucks by Julie Murphy. A wlw girl in high school is a trained vampire slayer who encounters a teenage vampire after a football game.
6. The Boy and the Bell by Heidi Heilig. This is a story about how people used to put bells attached to strings in graveyards in case any of the corpses weren’t actually dead as well as how people would dig up corpses for medical schools back in the day. It’s about a trans boy who digs up someone who was ringing one of the bells.
7. In Kind by Kayla Whaley. A single father caring for his severely disabled teenage daughter decides to “put her out of her misery” with a lethal morphine injection, but she’s saved and turned by a vampire, and later returns to address the father. This story deals with controversial topics like caregiving responsibilities, ableism, euthanasia. Important to note that the vampire transition does NOT “cure” her disability, as it is a part of her identity.
8. A Guidebook for the Newly Sired Desi Vampire by Samira Ahmed. It is exactly what the title describes. It is written as a guidebook addressing the reader as if we were the newly sired Desi vamps reading the guide ourselves. Lots of Desi culture comments/quips throughout the story.
9. Bestiary by Laura Ruby. A young girl who had been turned into a more monster/beast-aligned type of vampire against her will. She works at a zoo and can communicate with the animals.
10. Vampires Never Say Die by Zoraida Cordova & Natalie C Parker. Two girls, a white vampire leader named Brittany (first book I’ve ever read with a Brittany character!!!!!) and an Ecuadorian teenager named Theolinda, befriend each other on Instagram and decide to meet after a couple years of communicating online. Thought it was going to be gay but they consistently called each other friends or BFFs so....... yeah
11. First Kill by VE Schwab. A story about two wlw girls in high school, fated to be enemies. Juliette is a vampire and Calliope is a trained monster hunter. Juliette has a crush on Calliope, but Calliope is trying to net her first kill.
So, all of them were pretty diverse in characters but also how they used the vampire mythos. Some I liked more than others, but all were interesting. While I definitely picked it up for the VE Schwab story, my favorite was actually House of the Black Sapphires because the mythos was so intriguing. All of the types of immortal creatures and the party and the Turner sisters and the Shadow Barons.... it really felt like it easily could be turned into a full novel and I would’ve ate it up. Ms Clayton please!!!!

I miss vampires too - and these vamps are like no others you've ever seen! The description of this book includes the word "delicious" and truly that is the perfect word for it. The collection deserves more than 5 stars!

I raced through this book but also didn't want it to end. Each of the stories in this collection is unique and will re-imagine everything you've read about vampires before. We have a transgender grave digger, a disabled girl who turns into a revenge-seeking vampire, vampires on social media, vampires waiting for their first kill, vampire families, cheerleader vampires, slayers and much more.

So many amazing authors contributed to this! Vampires Never Get Old includes stories by authors including Samira Ahmed, Dhonielle Clayton, Zoraida Córdova and Natalie C. Parker, Tessa Gratton, Heidi Heilig, Julie Murphy, Mark Oshiro, Rebecca Roanhorse, Laura Ruby, Victoria “V. E.” Schwab, and Kayla Whaley.

This is everything I wanted in a vampire anthology and more. The hard part will be waiting for it to come out in the fall of 2020!