Thanks to the publisher for providing this eARC in exchange for this honest review!

Lucy Undying purports to tell the story of "Lucy Westenra" during and after the events of Dracula, as she becomes a vampire and wanders for centuries, having various gothic adventures, meeting other vampire women, and pining for her lost love, Mina. In the present day, it tells the story of Iris, a young woman attempting to flee her ultrarich family and their MLM cult, which might be hiding something more sinister than its Clean Beauty-esque lifestyle branding suggests. While trying to sell things in the old Westenra mansion for quick cash, Iris finds Lucy's old journal and also bumps into the present-day Lucy, now living under an alias. As they fall in love, they realize they may be more connected than they thought.

So there's this tumblr post, by user @marisatomay. It goes "People will claim to be a fan of some thing and then hate all of the themes and motifs and story lines and plot lines and protagonists and antagonists [...] like man I don’t think that you actually like it here." That, to me, sums up this book and everything wrong with it—whether she admits it or not, its author clearly hates the original Dracula, and goes out of her way to assassinate every single character and, essentially, reverse or undo a good deal of the major plot points. It's a reading so paranoid it's been institutionalized right next to Renfield.

A perfect example of this contempt for the source material? Main character Iris is descended from Dracula character Arthur Holmwood/Lord Godalming, but throughout the entire novel, her name is misspelled "Goldaming." Yes, the protagonist's own name is misspelled!! I haven't encountered a flub this embarrassing since the old E.L. James fanfiction where she spelled Bella Swan's name "Swann." I really hope this error gets fixed in the published version, but judging by Everything Else about this book, I doubt it will. Oh, and the recurring Dracula phrase "the blood is the life" is also misquoted repeatedly as "the blood is life," just to really drive home the sheer indifference and inattention to detail.

So if this book isn't for readers who liked Dracula, who is it for? This was the question that plagued me throughout, and which I have yet to satisfactorily answer for myself. Lesbian separatists who hated the original Dracula but enjoy shallow girlbossification and don't mind glacial pacing, maybe?

It's probably faster if I list the things I did like about this book. The prose was fine. For the most part, I liked Lucy's modern love interest, Iris, and found her voice well-developed and sometimes even funny, especially in the first half of the novel. I liked some of the vampire side characters, like the Doctor and the Lover. And I enjoyed chuckling at the obvious Twilight reference right at the beginning ("adrenaline.") And that's....pretty much it. On the whole, it was a massively bloated diatribe about how much its author loathed Dracula, followed by what felt like an entirely different story about cults, featuring a third act that took longer to wrap up than Return of the King.

My main conclusion? If your reading of Dracula involves assassinating everyone from Van Helsing (here an "old Dutch pervert") to poor Mr. Swales (whose name is dragged through the mud POSTHUMOUSLY no less) to Berserker the wolf (who was a hoax, because I guess we're not allowed to have joy and fun), perhaps you shouldn't waste your energy retelling it. Food for thought.

In the last few years I've gone in pretty deep on Dracula which really enhanced my appreciation of this book! I don't think it would be nearly as enjoyable if you weren't familiar with Dracula (THE ORIGINAL BOOK SPECIFICALLY [or Dracula Daily] not the cultural osmosis Idea of Dracula).

Luckily for me, like I said, I am very familiar with Drac and the gang!! And I enjoyed this very much! I would say there are some parts of the Goldaming Living plotline that maybe don't hold up to too much scientific thought but fortunately I was too invested in the plot to worry about science. And I thought there were some really neat ~twists~ on vampire mythlogy.

Recommended to Dracula enthusiasts and/or cult enthusiasts!!

I just absolutely adored this book.

I love Dracula retellings and I couldn’t wait to read this. This story was written beautifully- there’s multiple timelines/POVs which makes this story so rich and layered. I loved the characters and I loved watching the story unfold.

This is the perfect story to add to your fall TBR.

Thank you Penguin Random House | Del Rey | Random House Worlds for the eARC of Lucy Undying.

Of the three Kiersten White books I have read to date, this one is my favorite and, in my opinion, the most clever, and best written. Although this story features characters representative of those in Dracula, I would not call this a retelling so much as a reimagining. This is the story of Lucy, a young woman turned by Dracula, and her century long quest to figure out who she is and what her role is in the world. If there is such a thing as a vampire coming of age story, Kiersten White has written one. This is also a story about women’s rights, sexual identity, and personal agency – wrapped up in mystery, adventure, revenge, and a love story.

I love a multiple timeline book and this one has three. We hear from pre-vampire Lucy as a 19-year-old girl living in late 1800s London, we hear from Lucy in modern times recounting her life to her therapist, and we hear from Iris, the unwilling heiress to a massive MLM corporation who has inherited Lucy’s childhood home. This book has so many elements of a great fall book – vampires, Dracula, family secrets, a decrepit old house in London, conspiracies, the supernatural, and an old journal.

I really liked this book. Lucy’s journey from young girl to vampire and how that impacted her on a personal level was insightful and fascinating. The side characters were delightful and endearing.

First off, don't let the 112 chapters discourage you...most of them are short, but provide the information you need to continue on. Though slower paced, it picks up halfway through. The author is a genius by taking a side character from "Dracula" and making her the main crush we didn't know we needed. Pushed aside and used by everyone around her before it could be stopped. We see through three different accounts how the actions of these key players shaped the past and still play a part in the present day. At the heart of it all is an evil corporation left to an angel who hopes to burn it all down.

Thank you so much for this arc, it did not disappoint.

I admit that I wasn't the right reader for this- I never read Dracula and I'm not a fan of vampire tales. That said, it's an interesting take on a woman trying to take back herself. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. While it wasn't for me, I'm sure this will be welcomed by White's fans as well as fans of the genre.

gripping, seductive, and lyrically stunning!

lucy undying is a story of a long-fought journey to redemption through reclamation. lucy herself is so beautifully layered whose character is progressively revealed through a clever interwoven web of timelines.
the atmosphere of this book is so cozy & moody and such a good first start to the autumn season! the prose during lucy’s narrative was so powerful and will no doubt leave a lasting impact on its readers.

Thank you so much to the publisher and Netgalley for an e-arc of this novel!

As someone who teaches and loves gothic horror and horror classics, this new take on a classic character in Dracula was appealing to me. Unfortunately, the writing skewed a bit younger in terms of characterization and dialogue than I was expecting. It didn't work for me as a reader, but I can see it working for younger audiences bridging the gap between YA and adult novels. For example, the repetitive use of "my angel" was pretty distracting for me. I also found the different timelines to take me out of the story and distract from the overall plot. I wanted the description and atmosphere to be a bit more gothic in nature and it was not -- which is fine, it just didn't work for me.

I did not like this book. I hate that I did not like this book, but MAN I did not like this book. For one thing, it's a bit convoluted and bloated due to the way we are trying to follow so many POV chapters, and they aren't juggled very well and make the pacing lag. I also REALLY had a hard time with how Lucy was such a 'special chosen one' trope, not only being 'not like other vampires', but also Forrest Gumping her way through European history (when it was revealed that she was responsible for the end of WWI I could have torn my hair out). But the biggest issue I had was that in an effort to bolster Lucy up, White felt a need to demonize every other character from DRACULA, going beyond a perfectly reasonable 'powerful and privileged men during this time period did pretty questionable to awful things' argument and instead making basically all the heroes mustache twirling villains. Including Mina. And THAT is unforgivable to me.

That said, I love the idea of a Utah based predatory MLM that may have something to do with vampires. No notes on that plot line, absolutely perfect.

lucy westenra was one of dracula’s first victims. she’s spent all of her immortal life trying to escape from his clutches and discover who she really is. in twenty-first century london, she meets another woman trying to outrun her past.

iris’s family has built a health empire based on a sinister secret. when she inherits a house in london, she finds a journal belonging to a girl named lucy, who she quickly becomes captivated by.

unfortunately, i have not yet read the original dracula. i say unfortunately for two reasons: 1) i am unable to make comparisons between this book and that one; 2) i don’t think, after reading this, i’ll like the original as much. i can, however, say with confidence that i love when retellings tell the story of a woman who was pushed aside in the original. i loved getting to know lucy, both the modern-day version and the version from her journal. she went through a lot, but i loved reading about how she found herself.

i also think the writing style worked very well for this book. like classic gothic novels (at least, the ones i have read), it was slow-paced, character-driven, and the writing was a bit...eerie? i’ve read two other books by kiersten white and the writing style in those was a bit different, so i applaud her for being able to switch it up a bit to tell this story.

overall, this was an interesting book, and i’d recommend it to anyone who enjoys dracula/dracula retellings.

Review posted on StoryGraph and Goodreads on 9/5/24. Review will be posted to Amazon on release date.

Holy wow. What happens if you mix Interview With A Vampire with Bram Stroker’s Dracula and make it queer? You get this book! This book was suspenseful, funny, dark, action-packed, and very reflective. Lucy Westenra finally gets to be her own hero that fights back after her death to reclaim her identity and desires. I really enjoyed the way that we got to see old journal entries from Lucy, Iris’s story in current time, and the therapy transcripts telling us about Lucy after becoming a vampire. This story had a whole swath of characters that I enjoyed and found myself delighted to see pop up again in different parts of the story. Overall I had a good time for this but found that there were a few sections that didn’t give the story what it needed and slowed it down. Add this one to your fall TBR for a good time.

I'm so sad because I had SUCH high hopes for this one. I've read Kiersten White before and have loved her writing, but the writing in this one let me down immensely. I haven't read a book from Kiersten White since reading And I Darken many years ago, but I loved that book so much.

I appreciated the three different POV's in here, but I had a really hard time keeping them all straight in my head. I feel like the author had the same problem juggling them all when she wrote them. I can appreciate a slowly-paced story as much as the next person, but this one drug so much that I skimmed a good bit of it. If I hadn't have skimmed, I most likely wouldn't have finished it.

The characters were excruciatingly boring and the plot was almost non-existent. The organization of the chapters felt mismatched and sloppy which made me feel disconnected as the reader. I'm giving it 2 stars because, honestly, the vibes were there. It's the execution that needs some work.

Thank you to NetGalley and Del Rey for providing me with a free ebook in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for this opportunity to read rate and review this arc which is available 9/10/24!

WOW. WOW. I mean holy mother of Pearl but this might be one of my favs this year. This a sapphic vampire romance set in the world of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It is filled with taking back her power, her autonomy and finding love in Irish when Lucy didn’t think she deserved to be loved as a monster. There is suspense and moments of true angst. I bloody loved it.

Dark, beautiful, and delicious. This book has got to be one of my favorite vampire elements of all time. Could not recommend this more!

Thank you NetGalley for the eARC in return for my honest opinion.

I went into this thinking it sounded like an interesting concept, and while some parts did falter a bit, it really met that expectation. I enjoyed the way we are told the story through Lucy and Iris's perspectives - where this fell flat for me were the diary chapters from Lucy. They felt a bit out of the time they were supposed to be written for me and felt more in line with the rest of the book which is set in present day. I'm not sure if it was supposed to be funny, but I really enjoyed the twist of Dracula being in Utah - I definitely was not expecting that. The pacing was pretty solid throughout and characters were interesting enough that if either lagged the other evened it out.

★.5 /5

i would have DNFed this ages ago if not for the fact that this was the only ebook i had on hand and was able to easily read whenever i was incredibly, incredibly bored + was too lazy to add more ebooks to my phone.

no matter how beautiful the prose may be, if the characters don’t feel genuine or real — rather like caricatures, they are — then the prose becomes cheesy by default. even then, the prose was only beautiful at the rarest times; for the most part, the tonal shifts between chapters (time cuts?) were jarring and the general choppiness and monotony of each sentence were just plain difficult to get through, with or without the added shallowness of the characters. so many sentences just starts with “she”, “he”, “she”, “he”. plus, the entirety of dracula’s chapters are just telling, not showing, and “ye imma big man bro rahhhh 💪💪💪”. the dry humour was appreciated, though the sheer amount of it also felt awfully misplaced within this plot.

furthermore, the fact that it took me 56% of the book to finally arrive at a part that grasped my attention (though that lasted only till the 61%) was disappointing. the rest of the 95% just kept DRONING ONNNNN.

alas, the premise of the book was such ripe pickings, but failingly executed and dull.

I just unfortunately was not a huge fan of this one. It was, in my opinion, way too drawn out and slow paced. I love jumps in pov, but with how short the chapters were it made the story feel jerky and disjointed.

Tis the season for sapphic vampires! I LOVED this book. Truly adored it. And I’m not even a big vampire reader - Kiersten White is just that good.

Set across multiple timelines and POVs, Lucy Undying is a gothic, atmospheric Dracula retelling that tells the story of one of his first victims. This is a story centered on women and the humanity and hope within the bleak landscape of vampirism. I love a slower paced, more character driven book with decadent and precise prose, which this wholly delivered on. I adored Lucy’s character and how much care and dedication was clearly put into her personality, motives, desires and hopes. I enjoyed the almost mixed media style of the narrative with the sections from her diary and conversations with a therapist, and found myself laughing aloud more times than I could count. Iris was an equally wonderful character and her backstory was equally hilarious and heartbreaking. The romance was certainly very swoony!

Overall, this felt fresh and unique in a world of vampire retellings, and it just might be new favorite book of the season. Very excited to pick up more of the author’s work!

I think this book had a really unique premise and i liked how the various POV build out this story. I also enjoyed the various pOV of this story. I def prefered the frirst half this story because it was a ltitle but easier. I think this is a really unquie fall read and it if you like a unique narrive strucute i would check it out!!

First off, this cover is absolutely amazing. I'm obsessed with it. Second, I enjoyed this book a lot! My favorite parts were Lucy's POV and the diary entries. Iris wasn't my favorite at the beginning and it took a while for me to warm up to her. But I LOVED Rahul and his husband.

Even though it was extremely hot outside, I still loved the setting of this book and might reread it once it starts getting colder outside.