I was hooked as soon as I heard this was queer and about vampires! That has been such my vibe lately. Let me just say the writing in this book is spectacular! It’s so rich in detail I genuinely felt like I was in the book! I really liked following both of the timelines and I think they intertwined really well. This is one of those stories that is not for everyone but boy is it for me. I just could not put this book down, and it’s a book where I can’t really explain why. I was simply enthralled and I can’t wait to read more from this author!

Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk is a Latin American vampire novel split into two parts. The first part is set in the 1800s and starts with a female vampire escaping her hunters in Europe by hiding on a ship. The ship lands in Buenos Aires, and she makes a good life for herself. The second part is modern day, where a woman is given a key to a crypt by her dying mother and meets the vampire. Both sections are good, but the first section is brutal, fast paced, and engaging. The second part is more about mortality, loneliness and longing, and the agony of watching the slow process of a mother dying. (It is never stated but the deterioration of her mother makes is feel like she has Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), a neurodegenerative disease where the patient slowly loses function of both skeletal and smooth muscles, until the respiratory muscles finally fail). Both parts are good, but so different, with different tones and feelings.

The writing is sharp and beautiful. This is no doubt a novel from an Argentinian writer. The style of most Latin American writers are long paragraphs that tell the story more than show the story. There might be a year or ten years on one page, everything summarized. This is also why many Latin American novels are fairly short. The style of these novels means that you have to be a very good writer, someone who does not spare a single word, and you have to find a good translator. This translation by Heather Cleary is very readable and engaging. Yuszczuk’s talent is writing a story that is compelling in a style that should not work as well as it does.

When I was reading the first part of the book, I realized that I do not really read many vampire novels. I do not find them to be top of my list of horror subjects. I do have a list of top five vampire books and movies, but I do not consider myself an expert in the subgenre. I do know that I always have this feeling that vampires should be sexy, that biting someone on the neck is the way that they feed but also foreplay toward something more sensual. Many vampire stories that I have read hint at this or ignore it completely, but this sensuality is front and center in Thirst. The vampire story is a subgenre that has been written so many times that there are not many new things that can be done with this story, but Thirst does utilize the parts of the vampire mythos that really makes the story entertaining.

I received this as an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I was transported into a world of grief and death. I could not put the book down. This is a sapphic vampire literary masterpiece. This was written beautifully with so much yearning and had an overall gothic atmosphere that made you feel that you were living it. I need more, promptly. My mental sanity depends on it!

Thank you NetGalley for this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk is gothic fiction at its best. Lots of sex and death. Read this if you loved Carmilla.

Thank you to Dutton & NetGalley for the copy! This was painstakingly beautiful — the picturesque gothic imagery, the two-fold narratives between each woman and century, the vacillation between life and death, which is undeniably where both agony and pleasure reside. In the first part of this story, we are told the history of a young woman turned vampire who soon flees to Buenos Aires following the witch hunt and persecution of her kind. As she ventures through new cities, she lavishes in murder and flirtation until the gluttony inevitably catches up to her. As a last ditch effort for survival, she preserves herself in a tomb with the sole key given to her most trusted companion.

Years later, we learn through journal entries about a single mother, Alma, who is attempting to support her own mother's wavering health. While reconciling with her mother's declining mental state, Alma learns of a key that has long been concealed by her parent, passed through generations.

I love a good vampire story, but Thirst serves to be far more compelling than its typical counterparts. Yuszczuk subverts the standard trope of the avaricious, impassive vampire — rather, she illustrates the depth of emotion within her character, allowing for both the hedonistic nature of the vampire to coexist alongside the loneliness, yearning, and grief born from her character's constant exile.

The vampire's origin story was enthralling, but the story began to lag at times throughout the second part. Overall gorgeous prose and unsettling ending!!

Honestly, I'm really kind of happy that we're getting a bit of a wave of literary fiction that focuses on vampires. We get what feels like two very different novellas that end up being linked; one is a female vampire who emigrates to South America, and a woman with a dying mother and a son and friends who don't understand, and a mysterious mausoleum. The way the two halves end up connecting is pretty obvious if you think about it for a few seconds, but the unraveling of how they're connected is still incredibly well done. Definitely worth your time.

Such a lush, lyrical prose that I just wanted to take a bite out of. Told a beautiful story, and I can't wait to physically see this book on the shelf at my store!

This book took me a while to get into. The writing is phenomenal and the plot is good but it’s not my absolute favorite. I still enjoyed it though.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. I really wanted to love this but I ended up being so bored through a lot of it. I had to push myself to finish, even switching over to the audiobook at about 45% which helped a little but not enough to rate this higher. The writing is beautiful and the vampires POV had great vibs but I guess this just wasn’t for me.

I am not sure what to think about this book, honestly. It starts off as a typical vampire tale, meets somewhere in the middle of the past and then catches up to the present. There wasn't anything particularly novel about it that sets the thirsty vampire apart from other sympathetic vampires. In fact, she's probably less sympathetic than the Cullens (definitely), Lestat (probably), and even Dracula. As a history of the city of Buenos Aires, I'm sure it's interesting. But even from that perspective, I didn't quite get enough of the city to understand how the changes impacted the people (human and non-people) who populate it. The second narrative, from the perspective of a woman named Alma, ended with absolutely no narrative resolution or clarity. If I am going to recommend a sapphic (which this only marginally is) vampire tale, this probably wouldn't be it.

For the concept of lesbian vampires, I will think about this book often. The writing was very beautiful and mesmerizing at times. Other times it was a bit difficult to follow but still added to the atmosphere of the book. I enjoyed it but also probably won’t be obsessed with it.

I adore media that meditates the reality of living as a vampire, the nihilism and gothic depravity was realized with wonderfully translated prose. If the novel solely followed the first storyline and setting, I would give it an easy 4 stars or above. However for me the inclusion of a modern half with a second main character took a lot of the wind out of my sails. Both halves eventually intersect but by that point I was getting a bit fatigues by Alma's story and wishing to return to the macabre 1800s horrors. I am not against vampires in modern day, I just felt like this was too much tonal whiplash and not a familiar character to help ease that through. My issues with the structure do not take away the obvious writing talent on display here and I am not too much displeased not to recommend this book nor hope to read more translations from this author.

This was a bit of a departure from my normal reading. Thirst is a creepy atmospheric horror novel that follows a vampire from her “making” in the dark ages of Eastern Europe to present day Buenos Aires.

This reminded me a lot of The God of Endings in that we get to see vampires in a not-sexy way. Unfortunately, the truth is, if you take the sexy out of vampires they are actually the worst. It’s an awful existence with a lot of existential crises and self-loathing. This book was different than The God of Endings in that the vampire doesn’t seem to feel too bad about killing people. She mostly accepts her existence and is almost angry that she can’t just go around murdering at will.

The first half of the book is from the un-named vampire’s POV. The second half follows Alma, a single woman with a young son whose mother is dying. Within each half we get to know the main characters pretty well. There is a final section where their stories intersect and I found this to be very rushed.

If the author’s goal was to leave me feeling an overall sense of unease than she was successful. I felt icky and creeped out while reading but I didn’t especially enjoy it. Readers who love the horror genre will likely find this more to their taste. The writing is excellent, it was the subject matter I struggled with.

This wasn't for me.

The book is really, really long for a short book. The first section of it is entirely too florid. That may be a problem with the translation or it may be simply that the author loves to over write.

I appreciated the overwhelming feeling of loss and loneliness that is pervasive through the book, but did not appreciate the sad eroticism. Do I think it was sad (rather than hot) on purpose? Yes. Did I also wish it wasn't there? Absolutely yes.

This came very close to a DNF more than once. After the unsatisfying ending, I wish I had just ended it long before the finish.

* ARC via Publisher

✨ Review ✨ Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk; translated by Heather Cleary

Thanks to Dutton and #netgalley for the gifted advanced copy/ies of this book!

This is Latin American feminist gothic at its best! Blending together historical fiction in Part 1 with contemporary fiction in Part 2, Yuszczuk stiches together different eras and narrators in a way that feels both fragmented and continuous.

Part 1 traces a vampire across centuries from Europe to Buenos Aires as she seeks to stake out (ha pun not intended) a space where she is safe to exist. Finding an extensive cemetery, she eventually makes a home there after a yellow fever epidemic in the 19th century.

Part 2 brings us to contemporary times where a woman has to grapple with the ways her life has not been expected -- an unfulfilling job, divorce from her partner and single motherhood, her mother dying of a cruel disease which is causing her body to freeze up part by part. When her mother gives her a key, it begins to draw the two parts of the story together.

A book about mortality and immortality, the endlessness and limits of desire, and our unceasing thirst throughout our lives (or the "lives" of the undead"), this book would have been so much fun to read through a more critical literary analysis.

Note: this is definitely a slow burn - be prepared!

The focus on cemeteries and death and statues and more made this a true gothic delight, and I can't wait to read more by this author!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 (4.5 stars)
Genre: Latin American feminist gothic, LGBTQ+
Setting: Buenos Aires, mostly 19th and 21st centuries
Pub Date: March 5, 2024

Read this if you like:
⭕️ slow burn feminist gothic
⭕️ cemeteries and their trappings
⭕️ vampires and mortals
⭕️ Latin American settings

Thirst is about a female vampire told in first person. How she was sold by her mother to a vampire nobleman, who fed off her and eventually he turned her when she became a young woman, her and other women who she began thinking of as her sisters. When the Master vamp is killed many years later, she and her sisters escape, living wild in the forests, feeding off humans. As the years progress and they learn to cloth themselves and seduce victims for their food, her sisters are destroyed and eventually the vampire gets aboard a ship that heads to the new world, arriving in Buenos Aires.

The novel has touches reminding me of classic horror like Dracula and Frankenstein, with whispers of writing not unlike Shirley Jackson, Daphne du Maurier, and other gothic writers.

A blood-soaked novel of unending blood thirst, death, immortality, and desire that pulls you in with its haunting prose, bringing vampires that are not like those in Twilight, but back to the dark, scary ones.

Mixed feelings on this one. I liked it, but sometimes it was kind of boring. Thirst is a sapphic vampire novel with two distinct timelines and perspectives. Most of the first half to two-thirds of the book is an ancient lady vampire recounting her life- how she was turned, how she made her way to colonial Buenos Aires and survived, the people she killed, the women she slept with and then killed. Some of this is interesting, some of it is rather dull. I think it's trying to fit in a lot about different moments in the history of Argentina as she lives through it, which is sometimes to the detriment of a compelling narrative. Or at least it makes it read more like historical fiction which isn't really my thing.

The rest of the book follows a divorced woman and mom whose life intersects with that of the vampire in contemporary Buenos Aires. What this does well is show the classic mix of seduction and brutality of vampires with a protagonist who is at once sympathetic and horrific. I feel like this will be a hit for people who are more into literary fiction or historical fiction who want some vampires sprinkled into their reading. To be fair, the marketing does call this genre-blurring and I think that's very accurate, it's just a matter of what those genres are. I liked this, but didn't love it though I think it will be a big hit with some readers. I received an advance copy of this book for review, all opinions are my own.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4/5)
“We never invited death into our home, and yet, there it was.”

I knew I had to read this book the moment I saw the cover. Vampires are a personal passion of mine—I love tracing their lineage throughout history, how their mythos has changed in the past few lifetimes.

THIRST is a book split between past and present. The first half details the complicated lifetime of a young girl who was turned over to a vampire by her mother, who grew to be a monster herself. She bumbles through her story of slavery, freedom, and then persecution once more before her escape to Buenos Aires. I found her ramblings about her life extremely interesting, and I flew through to see what she would do next.

In the second half, we follow a woman living in modern-day Buenos Aires. She shares a child with an ex, works in publishing, and is haunted by the decline of her mother, who suffers from a debilitating disease that is slowly killing her. She faces discontent as she tries to be the perfect mother, daughter, and employee. But when her mother hands her a mysterious envelope, her story is intrinsically linked with another’s ….

I loved this modern take on gothic literature. I love gothic lit but often feel that after reading Jane Eyre and Dracula, I’ve read them all. Yuszczuk managed to breathe—ironically—new life into the genre. I did have some complaints about the end. Not necessarily because I found it bad but more that it was lacking. The character development seemed to peter out right at the end, and I felt like everyone’s actions started to feel a bit staged, not quite thought out. Like she’d known how she wanted it to end but wasn’t quite sure how to get the characters there.

I’m immensely glad I found this book when I did. Its themes of death and grief came at a particularly difficult time, and I felt like the author had somehow opened my chest cavity and peered into my soul. I can’t believe this is the first of Yuszczuk’s first novel published in English—I hope to see many more translated soon.

I’d recommend this book to anyone who loves gothic vampires and women.

**I received a free e-arc of this book in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts are my own.

The prose is beautiful. It held up really well in translation and is absolutely breathtaking. The two main female characters are really interesting and complex. They contrast in really neat ways and that is used to drive the plot, especially in the second half. There is a lot of attention paid to character motivations and relationship, which I really like. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It’s a wonderful meditation on loss and change and grief. It portrays depression in a cool and unique way, through the vampire motif. I wasn’t entirely sold on the ending. I think that the actions of the characters make a lot of sense, but the fact that one of the characters has a son is really throwing me. Overall, however, I loved this book and highly recommend it.

I desperately wanted to like this and I’m disappointed that I didn’t enjoy it as much I was hoping. There is no doubt that Marina Yuszczuk is a talented writer - it isn’t often that you come across writing this ethereal and beautiful. I will be thinking about her writing style for weeks, if not longer.

However, her prose wasn’t enough to save the story. Thirst is split into two parts and I liked each half equally but because they felt so different from each other, there was a slight disconnect. I can’t put my finger on exactly what I found lacking in the story except for substance itself. I am the greatest admirer of unlikable female characters and both of our “protagonists” fit the bill for that title so I was wholly fascinated by their characterization. Normally a character study is something I seek out but in this case, it wasn’t enough.

Although I was enthralled by Yuszczuk’s dark, mesmerizing atmosphere, I wanted more from this. The layers of grief and how they can affect your innermost self were explored very well but it wasn’t quite enough to keep me enthralled.

Thank you to Marina Yuszczuk, NetGalley, and Penguin Group/Dutton for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.