I actually enjoyed Lucy Undying, but there are some issues that stop me from giving more than 3 stars to the novel. The story is fast-paced, I loved the different perspectives offered in the story, especially Lucy’s pov in the interviews and the journals. However, I found Iris extremely insufferable and childish. I cringed a lot, especially during the Insta-love or the extremely romantic scenes. Moreover, after the 65% mark, the story felt dragged out, with Iris mostly summarizing things just read in Lucy’s journal. But I continued to read it, and the final plot twist was kind of fun.
I think it would’ve been better if it were 100-150 pages shorter.

First of all, we fell in LOVE with this cover. All the kudos to whoever designed it, it's wonderful!

Dracula is one of our all time favorite classics. We eat up retellings in all forms. We knew going into this that we would get gothic, sapphic, and modern, so we were in. This was a very different type of retelling and we know it won't be for everyone, but we liked it. It was nice to have a completely different point of view, even if this was a retelling that doesn't paint all the characters in the most accurate or likable of lights.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC

A brilliant carefully crafted retelling of Stokers Dracula along the lines of the classic Carpenter movie. The author uses a sharp stiletto & putty tool to evoke thoughts & emotions in a smorgasbord palette of intensity turning into swirling colors to paint a gallery of pictures. The mores & behavior of wealthy Victorian England alternates to present day issues as well as the travels of a vampire. It toggles between Lucy, a beautiful, wealthy young 17yro woman of Vic English society via her diaries & stories to a therapist in her second life [who might also be a vampire] and her modern family descendant: Iris, a 25yro young American woman who has inherited much including an old English mansion as sole heir of the family or Lords it belonged to. From Vic Lord family of Lucy to modern aristocracy Iris's American mother creating a new age cult making another whole fortune bilking vulnerable peoples savings. Iris upon landing in London & dealing with lawyer is smitten by Elle whom saves her from being roadkill by a London taxi [the threat is real] she then grabs a cab with an incredible driver Rahuel who after he drops her in front of the foreboding mansion gives her a card for his husband Anthonys restaurant for takeout delivery telling her to call him if she needs anything or a ride. The suppression of women stifled by the clutches of predators regardless of class theme Victorian always makes me think of one thing: yes the atrocity is real of having men & hierarchy in control over your very life, being handed from father to husband if lucky. Anything concerning Victorian England, with its upper classes in particular perversions, the major difference in classes, of the trapped broodmares of sorts with depression & ennui& drugs of upper gentries versus the bleak hardship & trauma of the ones in poverty is astronomical. I think a brief glimpse was caught in the Penny Dreadful series. Poverty meant either children or women were thought of as expendable chattel to sate & use by the wealthy for deviant behavior of theirs for the pretty ones or be worked to death for the rest. Lucy was in love with her former governess Mina & was despondent when Mina became engaged. She also saw Mina was being stalked by Dracula & offered herself instead. How I became a vampire 101. "Besides, isn't loving someone always giving them the power to destroy you?" a line in the book, exquisite. Then present day Iris heiress to the Godalming fortune & forced to be the head of the corporation, the last & only of her line. This is a spectacular must read, the author's a feminist in a manner that works and truly shows all-inclusiveness in feeling & prose without tokenizing or pandering. This is truly a multifaceted perfect diamond I couldn’t put it down except to sleep.

This was a very interesting take on a retelling of the Dracula story. I really enjoyed the female perspective, especially that of Lucy since she was painted as a villain in the original story. It was nice to get another side of her character and how she navigated the time that she was born into as well as the time that passed as she was made and lived as a vampire. Would highly, highly recommend this story if you enjoy getting a look into overlooked characters and how they felt during their stories being told by other people.

"Lucy Undying" by Kiersten White is a bold and engaging read. Lucy's journey from a vampire past to finding freedom in the present is compelling. The book moves quickly at first, skillfully blending past and present, but the revenge plot later on feels a bit clunky. Despite this, the characters are interesting, and the twist in Iris's family history adds a nice surprise. Overall, it's an enjoyable book with a few bumps along the way.

2.5 stars

I thought I was going to love this book but unfortunately it was just not for me. I dnf'd at 40%.
The writing was spectacular, and the writer is phenomenal, but the story was just not a favorite of mine.

I always enjoy a Kiersten White book bc she's not afraid to take risks and bend stories. This is no exception and I'm glad she gave Lucy agency in this. The first 75% flew by, seamlessly going between past (journal form), present and a narration of the past. The transition though is where the story falters a bit. It moves right into a revenge plot but it's not as seamless as the other sections (and frankly the book doesn't need Draculas POV) and drags the story down until the final reveal of who is the mastermind.

Things I found confusing:
- the idea of Draculas brides being brought up, then dropped. This shows up in other lore, but doesn't have any momentum here
- only female vampires in Europe and Asia until he hits the US?
- everyone's cool with vampires still roaming and killing bc...I'm still unclear on this one.. benevolence doesn't seem in their nature and there has to be more than our gang here.

These are just my quibbles that I had once I sat with the ending and I did enjoy this take overall.

To start, I do have to say that I have never actually read Dracula so I don't know if having that prior knowledge would have helped me to better enjoy this book.

What I liked most about Lucy Undying was the way the story was told, unfolding through multiple storylines, with different perspectives from different times.

However, there were multiple things that I didn't enjoy about this book. The first was the insta-love. I usually love the insta-love trope but it just didn't do it for me in Lucy Undying. I didn't really feel a true connection between the FMCs, they were both just in love with each other all of a sudden.

The dialogue, both internal monologue and between characters, felt very basic and boring.

Additionally, I found the modern day FMC to be quite boring and annoying. Most of her storyline was telling, not showing, and her scenes when reacting Lucy's journal just made me cringe.

I would have loved to have more content from Lucy's perspective because I found her chapters and learning about her past to be fascinating. After all, she is the titular character.

I was really excited for Lucy Undying and thought it had so much potential to be a top sapphic fantasy book for me, but I felt very let down by the uninteresting plot lines and the way the characters were written.

If Scooby-Doo and the gang had been on this case, it would have been solved in half an hour, including commercials. Alas, Scooby wasn’t on hand to turn this melodramatic slog into something entertaining before we find out that late-stage capitalism was the real villain all along. Instead, in Kirsten White’s latest novel, Lucy Undying, we the readers are afflicted with more than 450 pages of disorganized epistolary mish-mash that gives fanfiction a bad name.

Why do I summon the spirit of fanfiction? Because in her acknowledgments, White declares that, while she (claims she) loves Bram Stoker’s original Dracula, she firmly headcanons the notion that multiple main characters were involved in a conspiracy to disinherit Lucy and take her family’s holdings for themselves. Also, White seems to think that all the characters in the story secretly loathe each other (which is strange, given how you have instances like Jonathan straight up saying he’d follow Mina to Hell if that was what it took to be with her), and goes as far as writing the “secret diary of Lucy Westenra”, in which Lucy expresses how awful her mother is, how terrible her three suitors are, and how much she hates the society she lives in. See, this Lucy is actually a twenty-first-century girlboss in Victorian clothes because White is one among many authors who don’t seem to be able to do research and find out just how dynamic and outspoken women have been throughout history. But why do that when you can just make your edgy heroine sassy and spiteful to everyone around her and call her “feminist”?

And because we have to find out how Lucy survived the events of Dracula and see what she did throughout the twentieth century, we have “client transcripts” with Lucy’s therapist stuck in between the other main character Iris’s sections and the ‘secret diary of Lucy Westenra’. In these transcripts, we find out how Lucy did things like find a super-secret society of women vampires and stop a major war all by her lonesome by walking in and telling the big-bad generals to stop the fighting right then and there, because she said so.

This wan shade of Lucy Westenra is not the only character we have to endure, though. We also have to put up with Iris, a twenty-first-century American woman on the run from her mother, the leader of a cult-like MLM business who is apparently dead (but maybe not). Thanks to nepotism, Iris is set to inherit the family business, but she wants nothing to do with the business because she has morals. So instead of taking the reins of said business to take it down from within, Iris runs away to somehow be free and yet still try to dismantle said business from without. How will she do this? It’s anyone’s guess including, probably, the author’s. For plot reasons, Iris has fled to London and goes to an abandoned mansion in Hampstead Heath to look for antique furniture she can pawn, instead of just selling the mansion- which belongs to her. Why doesn’t Iris work on selling the mansion that she owns? Well, plot reasons. It would be harder to engineer the (second) meet-cute with a ravishing blonde woman whose identity you’d never guess in a million years.

*sighs*

Some other problems I had with this book:

- The Godalming family is constantly called ‘Goldaming’, and sure, that goes along with the name of the book’s nefarious MLM, but because ‘Goldaming’ is applied to Arthur Holmwood, Lord Godalming, it just looks like White got the name wrong. And sure, I also made that mistake when I first read Dracula, but perhaps you’ll forgive me that because I was twelve at the time.

- In her secret diary, Lucy claims that she doesn’t know how to grieve because her smothering society something or other. But Victorian England is famous for its mourning customs, so… why can’t she grieve?

- Iris is incredibly paranoid because the MLM people are out to get her, but she lets a trio of people waltz right into her life without checking their credentials in any way. I guess they’re just so pretty that they just have to be the good guys.

- These versions of the Dracula characters in no way shape or form resemble their original counterparts, but I guess we’re in a realm where the headcanons are entirely made up and the original source doesn’t matter.

With all that being said, I’ve changed my mind. This mess wouldn’t fit into a half-hour episode of Scooby-Doo. We’d need one of their animated movies, so we can stuff everything in and also make sure that there’s plenty of time for Daphne and Velma, because whatever queerness you might read into that relationship is far deeper than anything Iris has going on.

If you take anything from this review take this advice: don’t read Lucy Undying. Go read Bram Stoker’s Dracula instead. It has plenty of problems of its own, but at least it makes sense and has interesting characters. And after that, go watch some Scooby-Do, where late-stage capitalism is the real villain, too, and you’ll actually be entertained.

-

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

DNF

This author always has such interesting premises, but can never deliver on them. An awesome idea and a wonderful cover. I couldn’t get passed 15%

I was invited by the publisher to read this book. This is definitely not a book I would have chosen to read on my own, but the cover was intriguing enough and the story was ultimately enjoyable. The story follows Lucy, a vampire and one of Dracula's earliest victims, and Iris in the present day. Both women form a bond, not only through mutual attraction: they are both trying to break free from their past and not have it define who they are. This is a pretty layered story, it is a good character study for both women. I enjoyed Lucy's storyline a bit more because she seemed to have more depth. I did, however, think this book was a tad too long.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing/Ballantine/Del Rey for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I was immediately intrigued by the summary and while I found the story itself interesting I wasn't completely hooked and towards the middle was simply reading just to finish.

I liked the characters I guess... though to be honest, nothing about them stood out to me and honestly at times I found myself struggling and had to remind myself that Lucy was the vampire and Iris had the crazy mom.

I enjoyed the twist of Iris's family history, but that was about the only thing that really redeemed it for me.

Thanks for the early copy

Lucy Undying was a creative story with some pretty good surprises. I thought I knew how certain characters were connected, but for some of them I was wrong. It was amusing that a multi-level marketing scheme was at the center of the Goldaming empire, and part of the troubling legacy that Iris Goldaming was trying to escape. And that the scheme involved vampires and special blood products. The story has plenty of great characters — Lucy, Elle, Iris, the Doctor, the Lover, the Queen, Rahul, etc. I liked that significant characters were queer, and that sapphic love was an essential element of the story.

So freaking good. I’m definitely not the sparkling vamp type and this book was definitely not that. It was so original and I loved the concept behind this. I mean it isn’t always about Dracula.

If you're looking for a vampire story about obsession, love, and so many things in-between, this is the perfect book for you. The author pulls from the story of Dracula and twists it to her own beautiful devices. The writing style is unique, and incredible. You will be sucked in by vampire allure and bound to the crafty story this book contains.

thank you to netgalley for the opportunity to read the eARC.

i went into this fully expecting to love this book. sapphic vampires? they’ve always been a hit for me, but i just didn’t care for this one.

this book felt very slow to me. i didn’t think it picked up enough for me to want to speed through it until around the 55ish% mark and even then, i wasn’t that into the story. i often finish books in a little under a week, but this one took me a little over a week. i really had to push myself to finish it.

we followed three different timelines, two being less than two weeks apart, for about half the book which i normally don’t mind, but it really irked me when it switched. i often forgot what happened last when finally getting back to the timeline that ended with a mystery.

i was very close to DNFing this book at numberous points. at the 25% mark, at the 55% mark, at the 62% mark, even at the 91% mark. after finishing it, i almost wish i had.

i was thinking of giving this read three stars since i don’t often rate books lower than that, but i didn’t really care for this book much. i wish i liked it more.

I loved the story, the world building and meeting the different characters. I felt completely immersed in the story and couldn't stop reading it.

Idk, something wasn’t quite clicking for me. It was different than I expected. Maybe that was my fault?

Thanks to NetGalley & Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine for providing me an e-ARC!

**2 stars** I enjoy reading sapphic, gothic fantasies and I was a huge fan of S.T. Gibson’s, A Dowry of Blood but this one wasn’t my favorite.

We follow one of Dracula’s first victims, Lucy in two timelines; her journal that dates back to the 1890s and in the present timeline, 2024. On the other hand, we also follow Iris in the present timeline who stumbles upon Lucy’s journal. Lucy, having been betrayed by Dracula is enthralled by Iris and happens to fall in love with her. Things take a turn when Iris’ mother resurfaces and Lucy’s past comes to haunt her.

This book was more vibes than plot. It was unbelievably slow in the first 45% and this is a longer book being over 400 pages just to be vibes. When reading in Lucy’s perspective, it was sometimes hard to differentiate between the two timelines. I can see the attempt but often the prose was veering towards modern in her journal. There were times when we read Lucy’s journal and in the following chapter we switch to Iris who then proceeds to recap the journal. This was so unnecessary since we literally just read about it.

If this was much shorter, I could have overlooked the lack of plot. I didn’t mind the writing style but at times it did feel too modern, especially in this type of novel.

4 stars

This book was bigger on the inside than the outside. The experience was one of an epic story spanning centuries but was told in under 500 pages. It felt bigger and longer in the best ways.

The story of Lucy and Iris is told using multiple POV's and multiple timelines. The author made this very easy to follow by giving each POV and timeline separate chapters, so it was always clear whose head and time you were in. I particularly loved both of Lucy's timelines, one told from before her "turning" and one told after. This really allowed me to understand the way Lucy was changed by her experiences.

Iris's POV, the other main character, was grounded in modern times but Iris's return to her childhood mansion uncovers links to Lucy and her past which draw Iris back in time. I really loved the first section of this story. Perfect gothic vibes.

This could have easily been two books, in my opinion. The first part was gothic horror, a lovely, lush, romantic slow burn that had the bonus of LGBTQ+ representation. The last section of the book had a modern almost cultish story that was very different but wove the gothic characters into the storyline seamlessly. I really loved how the author brought everything together.

Overall, I love a good gothic, horror, slow burn story full of vampires, multiple timelines, sprinkled with blood and gore. Oh, and dysfunctional family drama and a weird cult. If you like those things too, then you should definitely give this a read.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for the eArc of this book in exchange for an honest review.