I wasn't sure if this concept was going to be fantastic or gimmicky - don't worry, it's great! I loved everything about this - there's a vaugeness to the tone that works very well for these characters, the villains are both terrifying and familiar, the time period was a great fit, everything.

reluctant immortals is a compelling, character-driven historical fantasy about powerful men and forgotten women reclaiming their stories set against the all-too-appropriate backdrop of 1960s hollywood and haight-ashbury.

lucy westenra and bertha “bee” mason have lived on the fringes of society for decades. still haunted by the ghosts of dracula and rochester, they lead a quiet, dull eternity until another immortal arrives on their doorstep begging for help. confronted with the sudden return of their abusers—men pop culture has rewritten as romantic heroes—lucy and bee set off on a road trip to take revenge.

this was a fun, bizarre read that gripped me from the first page. it requires some suspension of disbelief and i think it might have benefited from dual povs, but i loved it.

A kind of ridiculously fun feminist mashup of Dracula and Jane Eyre. More of a dark fantasy than horror, but a fun read overall.

I've never read Jane Eyre and hated 90% of my experience reading Dracula, but something about the idea of taking the forgotten women from those stories and placing them in 1967 California seemed really appealing to me, and wow did I devour this book.

It's not horror in the blood and gore sense (though there is some of that considering several of our characters are vampires), it's more of a gothic social horror. The theme of women forgotten by men in power is not new, but I think it's well done here and I liked the way Kiste allowed her heroines to ultimately fight back.

What really shines though is the writing. Kiste was able to throw in little details of that era's Los Angeles and San Fransisco in a way that made the world feel vivid without slowing down the pace of the story. I loved the descriptions of the rot and decay that Lucy and Dracula bring with them!

Overall, I thought this was an entertaining, vibe-filled read and would recommend!

I LOVED THIS BOOK!

The world building! The way unlikeable Bertha is made likeable and fresh in a contemporary way! Sounds weird, but it all worked and flowed so well and I couldn't stop reading it!

I don’t think that this book was for me. For me, it lacked the depth that I was expecting. Possibly because, while I’ve read Dracula, I’ve never read Jane Eyre. I’m sure there’s nuance I’m missing, and as always your mileage may very. I didn’t enjoy this.

Most of the book was a repetition of how horrible these literary villains were to the women in their lives, without the women’s perspective that I was expecting. I’m not one to revel in the retelling of trauma, but this book holds the women’s emotions like an oil slick on the surface of the San Francisco Bay. I could tell that there were worlds beneath, but frustratingly, this book gave no more insight into what happened to these women than the original books do.

I wanted to hear the story from their perspectives. This book isn’t that. It also isn’t about Lucy and Bee being empowered to confront and defeat their abusers. They do that, eventually, but the confrontation is played off as their absolute last resort. They simply don’t have the resources to run anymore, and therefore defeating their villains is the only alternative. They are more exhausted than angry, ground down by their long history with no real desire to fight back. This doesn’t play as a satisfying story.

The ending is hopeful, at least, after pages and pages of despair. Yes, this is a gothic tale. I guess I should have expected it to be flat and empty and gray. I find that sort of story unsatisfying.

I’m also disturbed by the underlying narrative of the book: that men are evil or useless or simple plot devices. It wasn’t a good look when men were doing this to women in their novels, and it’s not great here, either. Rochester and Dracula are villains through and through. Abusers with no redeeming qualities at all. That part is to be expected. But the other men in the story aren’t great either. Michael, the sweet ex-soldier just returned from Vietnam who becomes Lucy’s thrall barely has a backstory. His uncle, who owns a decrepit and failing drive-in movie theater, is one-dimensional. All we know about him is just what I’ve said.

The only other man in the book is Renfield, the original, and his narrative in the book seems to say that men will betray you 99% of the time, and can only be persuaded against that through the careful application of feminine compassion. I honestly found it kind of gross, and the sort of feminism that champions women not by elevating them, but by stomping down the men in their way.

I don’t know that this is what the author meant. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but taking the story by itself in isolation of what the author actually meant, it says things that I don’t agree with at all. That women are pure and innocent until corrupted by men, who betray and abuse as a matter of course. Maybe the author just meant these women, and those men, or maybe she didn’t mean that at all. But I found it disturbing, and the book flat and bland. It definitely wasn’t meant for me.

“... it’s something I finally learned, though it took me years to figure it out: how a girl should never be the one to blame for the lies of men.”

I’ll admit it: I’m a sucker for genre fiction filled with lyrical prose. It’s my sweet spot where books are concerned: the loveliest of writing in a genre package. Don’t get me wrong: I love literary fiction with all its purity, but I’m just a sucker for the beautiful wrapped in the flashy. I fall right into this trap all the time. It certainly helps that the flashy part of this book is sharp, interesting, and absolutely impossible to put down.

While not an absolutely original premise (genre fiction is built on the shoulders of the books that have come before it), I absolutely loved the premise of Lucy and Bertha trying to live out their reluctantly immortals lives in hiding (and in another case, imprisoning and protecting the world from) the two monsters who ruined their entire existences. They aren’t truly happy, but they aren’t exactly miserable either, having found one another decades prior to the book and being one another’s family in every manner but blood. But they are bored, stuck in a loop of doing the same thing day in and day out as they have for years and years. It’s no way to live, but dying a final death isn’t exactly a choice for them. Not with all that’s at stake (pun not intended).

An aspect of this book that took me some time to catch onto (but I was so tickled when I did catch on because it made me swoon in my literature analysis heart) was how so many things that Lucy and Bee come across in this book are dying: the H in the Hollywood sign is wobbling, their house is suffering from decay (as is their car), the drive-in they’ve been going to for years is going to go out of business, the owner of that business is old and close to the end of his life, the gas station they come across on their road trip is old and falling apart, San Francisco may be a new city to them, but hippies are crammed into old houses that are falling apart and they are all falling apart and not living in a state of reality. An amusement park Lucy hides in is falling apart at the seams, more horror than family fun. And innocent girls looking for answers are looking for them in the arms and minds of monstrous men instead of within themselves.

There are scenes and sentences in this book that I read twice or three times simply for the pure beauty of them. It’s times like this that I really hate the stigma against genre literature by the hoity-toity lit snobs in the world. Turning your nose up at books like this doesn’t make you a “better” or “more intelligent” reader, just like it doesn’t make me in any way lesser for having read it and loved it. It’s a beautiful book filled with fabulous sentence structure and a perfectly shaped plot.

Thanks to NetGalley and Gallery/Saga Press for granting me access to this book.

Being a woman in America does feel a little bit like being in a horror novel these days. Gwendolyn Kiste would like to remind us all, however, that it’s always been a horror novel. Nor has it been restricted to America. Reluctant Immortals features British heiress Lucy Westenra, whom you may recognize as one of Dracula’s victims, and the Jamaican Creole character Bertha Mason, whom you might not remember as the madwoman Rochester confined in the attic in Jane Eyre. Both of these characters were sidelined in their original novels, fridged before refrigerators existed, and Kiste is on a mission to restore their voices.

In Reluctant Immortals, set in California in the 1960s, Lucy and Bee (as Bertha now calls herself) have found each other and fled to America for something resembling a fresh start. But the past comes with you even when you escape not just the places you’re from, but the time period entirely.

I admit I expected more trappings of the ’60s, more specific mentions of music and fashion, but I was pleased to find references I didn’t expect, details about cars and drive-ins and the layout of neighborhoods that might as well be Transylvania or the moors to me. Lucy and Bee inhabit the American equivalent of crumbling castles, hiding away in a run-down mansion and hanging out by the then-dilapidated Hollywood sign. The skirts may be a lot shorter, but the sense of lonely heroines staring out at a landscape of bad choices remains.

Bee and Lucy might have come from money, but as unmarried women they wouldn’t have been able to have bank accounts or be able to apply for credit at any point, including the 1960s. Their conditions prevent them from having what few jobs women could hold, and so they mostly drift through their days, keeping their past at bay by hiding it in the basement and under their skins. Yes, that’s a metaphor, but it’s also the literal reality: Bee is kept alive by a malevolent fungus-like substance in her veins, the rot of Thornfield Hall and the Rochester line so profound that it continues to animate her, Rochester, and Jane. Lucy has an equally tangible connection to her own tormentor—she keeps the ashes of Dracula in jars sculpted from his native soil, but even that does not keep him quiet.

In the world of Reluctant Immortals, vampires can’t die. Not even with a stake through the heart, not even burnt to ash. Dracula’s ashes resist Lucy’s guardianship at every turn, and it isn’t long before parts of him break free. He harries the pair out of LA entirely, only for them to end up in San Francisco just as Rochester is reestablishing his wealth and power.

There’s a Charles Manson feel to everything once Lucy and Bee arrive in SF (Manson operated in LA., but the point stands) and get caught up in the bewildering cult of personality Rochester has set up for himself. The parallel is apt in more ways than one: Manson, who has remained a staple of the True Crime genre the way Rochester and Dracula remain paragons of the gothic, largely overshadows his adherents and his victims. There is a growing awareness in True Crime that we know the names of perpetrators too well, and the names of victims and survivors too poorly, if at all. But in Lucy especially, we have the trifecta of victim, survivor, and devotee all in one.

Lucy is not a “good” victim in that sense, for all that she’s a beautiful White woman. She has committed monstrous crimes, many of them for Dracula’s sake, when all he ever did was harm her. It’s this cycle of abusive relationships that provides the real terror in the book, the sense that an endless parade of women will choose their own oppression because it makes a man happy, a man who will then turn around and kill them as easy as breathing.

Lucy is horrified not by Dracula and Rochester but by her own capacity for complicity. Oh, she may be afraid of Dracula and Rochester, but she doesn’t expect anything but evil from them. She expects their misogyny and contempt, expects their perpetual self-interest. But she thought she was free of the temptation to return to their me-first lifestyle, free of the responsibility of protecting other women. But it’s not until isolation also harms others that she stops acting like this is her fight alone, when really, it’s the fight of every woman she’s met since the book began (and yes, some decent men, too).

Kiste really gets strong female friendship and the rawness of bonds forged in mutual adversity. In a genre glutted with Strong Female Characters and morally grey badasses, Kiste sets her heroines apart with her insistence on fragility. Please don’t mistake me: I’m not saying that other authors fail to portray vulnerability or complexity. Nor am I saying that Kiste writes mewling wimps. Rather, Reluctant Immortals insists on the badassery of vulnerability. To become indifferent would mean becoming like Dracula and Rochester; to remain open to fear and doubt also means that Lucy and Bee remain open to the possibility of life after trauma. Lucy and Bee do not learn to harden their hearts or operate machine guns. They instead depend on nostalgia, longing, and tenderness to save them.

In this sense, there is a strong line of continuity from the novel’s Victorian roots: Reluctant Immortals valorizes sentimentality in much the way the Victorians did. Lucy prizes a gift from Mina and carries it with her through all dangers; Bee holds a torch for Jane despite all the years and challenges. When the book begins they are in stasis, a gently cocooning their weaknesses in a gauze of genteel rot. Cobwebs blanket their L.A. home, and they sustain themselves on fantasies, Lucy driving to the movies and resolutely pretending she’s not hungry.

In the intervening years since Dracula was published, Anne Rice and her many imitators have made vampires hungry so that their feasts will be all the more sumptuous. There’s nothing sumptuous about Lucy’s hunger or her eventual satiation; she’s not the antihero kind of vampire. Reluctant Immortals is a return to the traditional vampire in the sense that stakes and garlic are deterrents, but mostly in the sense that vampire is not something you want to be. Vampires are no longer a threat to your proper Victorian chastity, but they aren’t sexy, misunderstood brooders, either. Instead, they’re a threat to your selfhood: vampiric infection makes you hunger for that which hurts you and hurts others, relationships based on power and consumption rather than mutual support.

Though more ambiguous, the rot infecting Bee has a similarly destructive quality when it comes to relationships, decaying what exists between the people caught in its spell. It creates effectively pernicious bond between Bee and Rochester, and between both of them and Jane. I’m not sure I fully buy the interpretation of Jane Eyre as Rochester’s flinching devotee, ambivalent as she might eventually become. I’d like to be able to say that Jane provides a portrait of a woman abused into submission over long years, and that this is a poignant commentary on intimate partner abuse. I agree with Kiste that anyone can fall victim to an abuser. But Jane serves the narrative first and acts as a character only second; she’s there to underline Rochester’s badness more than she is to be entirely continuous with her original character in the novel.

But I confess that comes partially from my own nostalgia, a desire for Jane Eyre to be as it was and not as it’s become in the intervening centuries. That’s okay, says Kiste. The past isn’t the problem. Looking backward actually helps Lucy look forward, but only when she sees it clearly. She doesn’t long to return to the past wholesale, because why would she? The past judged her for a flirt or worse, and left her to be murdered twice, once for her desire and then again to “redeem” her of it.

I loved the metatextual climax, in which Lucy and Bee distract their enemies by playing a simultaneous double feature of Jane Eyre and Nosferatu. It’s a sharp bit of character work that both mocks the villains’ egotism and uses it against them, and it also speaks to the overall cultural obsession with these works. Iteration after iteration emerges, and Kiste is aware that her own work is part of the way that Dracula and Rochester haunt the collective consciousness. Her point is not that remakes are

It’s a pitch-perfect rebuke to the endless waves of uncritical nostalgia, the remakes that hew too perfectly to the originals. We have those stories. And those stories were extremely relevant to their own time and place, but our time and place matters, too. They’re connected, after all. Innovation isn’t just allowed, it’s necessary for these stories to continue to live and breathe for us.

All along Kiste has been infusing the narrative with just such innovations—Bee’s animating force, vampires’ perpetual resurrection—and the climax gives us the best one. When Lucy traps Dracula in the afterlife, she doesn’t bother trying to kill him. Death is just a waiting room, and the walls are made of hands—grasping, clawing, pleading hands, all of them reaching out through a wall that distends with the force of their need. It’s a deeply unsettling image, and all the worse when Lucy slits open the wall like a membrane, letting all of Dracula’s victims loose. But put another way, Lucy literally tears down the walls between herself and other women, and together they have a shot at what she could never accomplish alone: holding Dracula in death. It’s a fitting comeuppance for him and a potent climax for Lucy, who no longer sees herself as a monster set apart but as a part of a fellowship, even if it’s a macabre one.

So what do we do if the world has never stopped being a nightmare? If all we’ve got is new clothes and new digs and the same old shit? Do not forget the past, Kiste tells us. There were good things; they can be saved. There were bad things; they can be repaired. If the past was always a nightmare, then make the nightmare work for you.

Timely and unstinting in its emotional outpouring, Reluctant Immortals isn’t just a reaction to current events. It’s a plan for moving forward, a story about allyship and the nuances of mutual support. It isn’t easy, Kiste says, to keep going. Her immortals are reluctant for a reason: choosing to keep fighting is by far the harder choice. It means digging through the past to find the voices that were forgotten and the tools that are still usable. It means going hungry. There must be hardship and change, but better that than perpetual self-indulgence. Life must be for something. Otherwise it’s not really living.

Gwendolyn Kiste is one of the most consistent writers in the horror genre today. Every book goes to great lengths to ensure the character’s motivations and personal challenges are clearly defined. The stakes are clear and the protagonist’s characteristics often play a role in complicating matters. This helps build and maintain the tension throughout.

Reluctant Immortals starts a little more on the cerebral side than plot-centered. This is to say that the emphasis involves grounding the reader in Lucy’s mindset. We get to know her and her issues and her goals, and that sets the stage for the complications to follow.

And the book may start with a focus on character, but the core plot quickly kicks into high gear. A steady stream of obstacles and unwelcome developments push the story in different directions, making it hard to see how Lucy and Bee might finally gain the upper hand and deal with their abusive exes once and for all.

Kiste excels at sleight of hand with plot and character, making you think things will go one direction and serving up an entirely different response. It’s this skill that keeps you on your toes and keeps Kiste’s stories from being anything but predictable.

It should be noted that this story involves some famous literary characters, including Dracula (Lucy’s ex), Edward Rochester (Bee’s ex), and Jane Eyre. Readers must divorce themselves from previous presentations of Rochester, Bee (Bertha), and Jane Eyre to fully live in the world presented in Reluctant Immortals. On a purely personal note, I found this difficult. I’m not a big fan of vampire stories. I am a huge fan of Jane Eyre and have read it dozens of times (although not for some time now). Perhaps a re-read would open my eyes to a different interpretation than the one I’ve carried for so long, but I did find it challenging to embrace Kiste’s re-telling because of my pre-established views of these characters.

Ultimately, it’s a testament to Kiste’s skill that I did find myself immersed in the narrative and invested in the outcome and, overall, enjoyed this book. I think whether the book works for others may also hinge on their ability to embrace the retellings Reluctant Immortal contains. Like all of Kiste’s stories, this is a feminist story that centers on the way men abuse and manipulate women, and how women can assert control over their own stories.

I had a few lingering questions in the end. Overall, however, this is a story I think most Kiste fans will thoroughly enjoy. ⅘ stars.

It's 1967, the Summer of Love, and the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in San Francisco is about to become the site of a showdown between immortals: Lucy Westenra from Dracula and Bertha (Bee) Mason from Jane Eyre against the toxic men who have dogged them for decades, Dracula and Edward Rochester.

Reluctant Immortals has such an inventive, intriguing concept, with unapologetically feminist themes throughout. Gwendolyn Kiste focuses on the women literature forgot -- the ones who were victimized by powerful men and cast aside without a second thought -- and I loved that she brought those characters to the forefront of her narrative. Books about women taking back their power are, on their own, important -- but using characters from Gothic literature to deliver that message gave such a compelling spin to a common theme.

Unfortunately, after setting up such an incredible concept, I didn't feel that Kiste did very much with it. The central characters, Lucy and Bee, are bland and uninteresting, and they behave in nonsensical ways. Kiste's portrayals of Dracula and Rochester add nothing to the Gothic literature canon whatsoever. They come across as pathetic and sad and pompous rather than the formidable, dangerous, brooding foes they're supposed to be, so Lucy and Bee's fear of them doesn't really ring true -- and, in turn, their vanquishing the men doesn't feel as satisfying. The plot is muddled and messy and barely there, and I was left with so many unanswered questions about the mechanics of this novel's world. Kiste failed to capture, for me, the mood of the Gothic novels from which she drew inspiration; there is no all-consuming rage, horror, havoc, or impassioned despair to be found in Reluctant Immortals.

Reluctant Immortals could have been a dark, genre-defying feminist manifesto, but instead it just fell flat for me.

Absolutely exceptional and absolutely on my list of best books of 2022.

These days you can’t swing a bat without knocking over a stack of vampire novels, but it’s rare to get a good one, especially one that is more Stoker vibes than Twilight vibes.

Though this book is set in 1967, it feels more like a traditional vampire novel than a modern one, which is a good, good thing. The sense of menace and foreboding is tremendous, and the story doesn’t rely on vampire romance or gratuitous violence to keep the reader’s attention.

This era and location is definitely not typically my area of interest (Taylor Jenkins Reid fan I am decidedly not), but it’s perfect here, and provides for a tremendously original spin on both Stoker’s Dracula and-surprise!-Jane Eyre. They go together far better than one would expect under the unique set of circumstances Kiste has created.

And if, like me, you have some beef with Charlotte Bronte because Rochester is just…iiiiiick….well, you’ll be in for a very satisfying spin on the story here. This is also the first time I can remember reading a sympathetic perspective on Renfield, and it’s fantastic.

I would recommend having read both Stoker’s Dracula and Jane Eyre to properly appreciate this, though I’m not sure you need to actually like Jane Eyre to enjoy this one. This is much more of a modern spin on classic horror/high gothic a la Dracula than it is comparable to the gothic romance feel of Jane Eyre.

Original, creepy in the best way, and full of both buddy comedy vibes and things that go bump in the night, this has been by far one of my favorite reads of the year.

Reluctant Immortals had a great premise of Bee from Jane Eyre and Lucy from Dracula going on a crusade in 1967s Hollywood to destroy Dracula. The first 80% of this book moved at an incredibly slow pace and I contemplated DNFing it. I kept questioning what the overall plot was or what the goal was of the women. Instead we simply read about Bee and Lucy going to the movies, driving to house parties and Lucy constantly complaining that she was hungry. (yet denying herself blood) I kept wishing that Lucy would finally attack someone or at least give into her hunger so we could move along and talk about something (anything) else.

The last 20% of the book finally took off and I began to read quickly. The interactions between Dracula, Edward (from Jane Eyere) vs Lucy and Bee had conflict and drama. The process of getting to that point though took forever.

Many thanks to NetGalley for the E-ARC in exchange for an unbiased review. The book had potential but overall I was quite disappointed.

Reluctant Immortals by Gwendolyn Kiste is a Californian gothic that centers around two forgotten characters of literature: Lucy Westenra from Dracula and Bertha Mason from Jane Eyre, but the results were a bit of a mixed bag for me.

First, I’ll start off with what I loved about this book. I really enjoyed Bertha and Lucy’s relationship. Both women bond over their collective trauma; Bertha is haunted by the flames that burned her and Lucy is left with Dracula’s whispering ashes. This felt like a nice way to explore their characters from beyond the bounds of their original stories.

Now, there may be some bias here since Jane Eyre is such a beloved book to me, but there is one aspect of the story that didn’t sit well with me and that is how poorly it handled Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester’s characters.

Jane is reduced to a simpering victim. I feel like diminishing Jane’s agency is such a cheap way to prop up Bertha’s character and reducing a heroine to a shadow of her former self seems to undermine the story’s own themes of bringing female characters into the light. It just felt like such a backwards narrative choice to me.

As for Mr. Rochester … he’s portrayed as a diabolical villain who’s somehow accumulated an entire harem of women even though he has zero semblance of his original wit or brooding charm. How did these women fall for him in the first place? At least the Dracula gets to keep his seductive personality in this book, so he makes for a far more convincing antagonist and abuser.

All and all, this is a book that left me with conflicted feelings because parts of it are filled with humor and heart while poor Jane gets the short end of the stick.

I'm going to just say it: I have always hated Rochester. This book makes me feel seen! The friendship between Bee (Bertha) and Lucy is amazing as they maneuver immortality. I honestly laughed at the idea of Lucy chasing around a bunch of Dracula urns at the beginning of the story. It was a good story. Great pacing (I finished it in one sitting). And just a lot of fun for any English literature nerd. I'm already trying to figure out how to incorporate this into my curriculum!

I received a complimentary copy of this book through NetGalley. The opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

I think this novel could've been something special. I really wanted to like it, but the plot was very thin and repetitive. I like historical fiction aspect of it, but I just couldn't connect with the two main characters. I needed a little more character development and substance. This novel was very surface level. I needed more grit and fire. Not bad, but not memorable either.

Reluctant Immortals by Gwendolyn Kiste

Lucy and Bee have been on the run for so long, and hope perhaps in vain that 1967 Los Angeles will finally provide the respite they’ve been looking for. Hidden away in the crumbling stone home they purchased with almost the last of their money, they spend their days in hiding and their nights at Munroe’s Drive-In, watching movies with the volume cranked up high in order to drown out the voices of the men who are still searching for them, decades after our heroines were reduced to mere afterthoughts in their own stories.

Munroe’s itself is a dying business, run by the cheerful Walter, who wants to introduce Lucy to the grandson who’s just getting home from the Vietnam War. Lucy has no interest in meeting young Michael, but doesn’t know how to politely tell kind old Walter that without revealing the entire truth of herself:

QUOTE
His grandson’s been at war, an ugly war, even uglier than most. He’s seen more death in two years than I’ve seen in two lifetimes. He doesn’t need to meet me, too.

Walter doesn’t understand that. When he looks at me, he sees what everyone else does: a perfectly fine young lady, red curls in her hair, red rouge on her cheeks. Never mind the dirt beneath her fingernails and the teeth that sharpen if you catch her on a bad night. He never seems to notice those things. Nobody does. That’s why I can hide in plain sight. Everything about me is a disguise.
END QUOTE

For Lucy, pretty Lucy, was once known as Lucy Westenra, the beautiful young socialite who made the mistake of believing that a certain Transylvanian count was little different from the other men who courted her and promised her everything. Now she’s a vampire herself, and the vigilant guardian of Dracula’s remains. Forced to flee England after the Blitz, she’s spent decades keeping his ashes from reconstituting themselves – thereby preventing him from terrorizing other innocent people – and has cynically watched as his story has grown increasingly romanticized with time and popular media.

Her closest friend and kindred spirit is Bee, another woman forced into immortality by the depravity of a man she thought she loved, and whom she thought loved her in return. Edward Rochester is not a vampire. His monstrosity is of an entirely different kind, one that collects young women and puts them on display, then locks them up when they fail to meet his standards. Bee, once known as Bertha, is finally free after burning down Thornfield Hall, even though Edward’s voice on the wind constantly taunts her, seeking her out and promising her they’ll meet again.

When disaster strikes, Lucy and Bee must flee Los Angeles and go in search of the last person they want to see, in order to stop even worse from happening. Their trek takes them to San Francisco at the height of the storied Summer Of Love, where they encounter other pilgrims just as vulnerable as they once were:

QUOTE
I glance in the rearview mirror. Daisy’s still back there, and that man’s standing closer to her now. I don’t want to think about what he might do to her, or what the next trucker who offers her a ride could try, the bargain he might force her to make in the dark. I don’t like to think about what I could do to her either.

It would be better for us to leave her here. Probably safer, too. She’s a stranger to us, dead weight, a nobody. But I was a nobody too, and I remember what it’s like for everyone to forget you, just because it’s easier that way.
END QUOTE

As Lucy and Bee take on the demons from their past, they’ll have to wrangle too with their own complicated relationships with the women, past and present, who were both victimized by and continue to enable these men. Dracula and Rochester might have turned them into monsters, but our heroines cling firmly to the belief that biology is not destiny, and that they are not fated in turn to destroy others the way their makers do.

Reluctant Immortals is an engrossing thought experiment that reexamines classic literature through a 21st century lens. Gwedolyn Kiste has taken two of the most famously discarded victims in English literary history and has them fighting back against the men who abused them, while also allowing them space to uplift others. The novel is a timely metaphor for women refusing to stay quiet about the abuse they’ve undergone, and rising up to stop the men who did so much violence against them in the first place. It’s cathartic and thrilling to see Lucy Westenra and Bertha Rochester get an ending far more worthy of them than the fates they were once consigned to by their original authors.

As someone who prefers going into a new book completely blind, the premise of this one caught me very off guard. The main characters in this one are characters from works of classic literature, specifically 2 books I've never actually read. I managed to read some short summaries online of those 2 works, and still managed to enjoy this one a whole lot.

Heavy knowledge of classic lit I would say is not necessary to enjoy this story, but I'm sure fans of those works would find plenty of references and fun bits throughout. For me, I thought Kiste did a wonderful job of telling a compelling story without relying too heavily on the other stories.

The characters were relatable, despite the many speculative elements, and I loved rooting for them. The feminist take on the classics was just so much fun. The plot moved at a breakneck speed and settings were so well-drawn, I felt like I was there, in LA and San Fran, the whole time.

My biggest drawback for this one would have to be the ending. The "battles" and such towards the end began to feel a bit repetitive. If I couldn't see the % I still had remaining on my e-reader, I would have kept thinking "this is the final scene!" and then gotten frustrated.

Overall though, so much fun and I highly recommend to fans of classic lit, that are looking for a feminist twist.

Two women from famous literary works, Bee and Lucy, are not quite who their stories made them out to be.

They’re burdened with immortality not of their choosing and constantly on the run from the men in their stories who so misused them and countless others.

This is an engaging twist of well known stories into something more fantastical and empowering.

Lucy and Bee, (who were victims in two classic novels—that’d be DRACULA and JANE EYRE) spend their time at a Hollywood drive-in theater in 1967. Lucy, who owns Dracula’s ashes in separate urns, spends her vampiric life making sure the Count is not able to re-assemble himself, while Bee fights the otherworldly call of the man who turned her into … something. They party with hippie hipsters and watch movies all night long, trying to survive in their undead states, and then things get even stranger when Jane Eyre herself arrives on the scene.

Kiste has a blast using these vintage characters and breathing new life into them: I’m not sure why she chose 1967 to tell this tale, but it works well and on several occasions it has the feel of a Christopher Lee Dracula film, especially his later ones.

There’s plenty of surprises for fans of Stoker and Brontë’s novels, but those not familiar with them shouldn’t be too lost. MORTALS is a quick, at times funny read, featuring one of the most powerful and seductive renditions of Dracula to come down the pike in ages.

Those tired of vampire tales (like myself) should give this a try. It’s fresh, fast paced, and gives off the feel of a vintage cult film. Extra bonus points for the author’s use of Renfield: his last scene here is killer.

-Nick Cato, The Horror Fiction Review

Thank you to Netgalley for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

I genuinely loved and enjoyed Gwendolyn Kiste’s, “Reluctant Immortals”. This novel is a historical fiction reflecting on the immortal female victims of Dracula and Mr. Rochester. I loved the feminist undertones, character driven storyline, and quick twists that moved the plot along. I appreciated the vividly depicted San Francisco setting in the Haight-Ashbury district in 1967. The story was gripping and engaging making me want to keep reading with every turning page. Kiste is great at crafting realistic fully fleshed out characters and unique storylines that always keep you wanting more. I really felt fully immersed in the world that Kiste built for the readers with her intriguing descriptions of old California. I adored this book’s unique premise and it was executed perfectly! If you’re looking for something with lovable characters, strong friendships, and supernatural elements, that pack a punch of girl power, then this book is a must-read for you! I highly recommend this book as it was very entertaining.