Thank you Net Galley for the Arc!

The second I saw this book on instagram, I rushed to request an ARC. Not only am I a huge vampire fan - but the story of Lucy in Bram Stoker's Dracula always sat kinda wrong with me. In short, our girl deserved more.

This book delivers that and more.

The only downside for me was one character POV was far more interesting to me than the other. Which seems to be pretty common in multiple POV stories. So really, not too big of a deal.

Put this on your lists, Kids.

You know what? This book’s cover deserves more than five stars with its eerie, powerful, striking concept that you can’t take your eyes off! And another aspect I’d like to rave about is Lucy Westerna, a great, well-developed character that draws you into her story; you don’t even want to put it down! Especially her transformation into a vampire and her afterlife story intrigued me more than the present-time insta-love story with Iris. I didn’t care much for the instant story part, but I found Iris’ character development not as layered as Lucy’s, which made it hard for me to connect with her, even though I understood her efforts to break free from her family legacy. But at times, I found her a little immature, which rubbed me the wrong way.

The diary entries and the psychiatrist sessions impressed me more, and thankfully, Lucy’s life story, the sacrifices, struggles she faced, her self-exploration in finding her place in the immortal world, her perspective about her maker Dracula, her sexual exploration, and her attraction to Iris, her years-long epic journey, are all well depicted with a balanced pace: not too fast or slow down, still keeping you on your toes and craving more. Even though this is a really long book, you don’t get bored, stop reading, or skim some chapters because the thrilling sapphic journey of Lucy grips you from the first chapter, and you want to know what fate awaits her. This tantalizing, unique, original journey is a riveting fantasy exploration that I highly recommend to readers, especially those who like main characters with fangs!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group / Ballantine / Del Rey for sharing this remarkable fantasy novel’s digital reviewer copy in exchange for my honest thoughts.

I absolutely adored this book. It’s definitely a contender for my favorite read of the year.

We follow three POV’s: Lucy, Iris and Dracula. Lucy is trying to navigate her (after)life, Iris is trying to escape the clutches of her family, and Dracula is on the prowl. I love the multiple POV’s, but especially love Lucy’s. Her journal entries were particularly moving, and I have saved a ton of relatable quotes. I’ll edit my review and add some of those after the release date. I love the feminine rage woven throughout the story, and the growth it inspires in the MC’s. I also love the clever correlation in the storyline between vampires and MLM’s.

10/10 recommend!

Read if you:
• Love vampires
• Love sapphic romances
• Love gothic tales
• Despise MLM’s
• Have a complicated history with your mother

I've read books by Kiersten White before; I particularly enjoyed Mister Magic so I was thrilled to get an ARC of Lucy Undying.
Something I really enjoyed was the formating. Using three different point of views in the beginning, that slowly caught up to one another was a really great way to tell this story. It really highlight who Lucy was and who she is now. It was a nice take on Lucy's character when compared to the original Dracula story. She's a much more interesting and complex character here. Lucy's point of views were a nice constrast to Iris, as each chapter revealed different information I could piece together what was happenening really nicely.

I was less interested/invested in the romance aspect of this story. I loved Lucy's characters and the supporting cast she had over the years while she was searching for Dracula. The Lover, The Doctor, The Queen. They were fascinating characters and really added to the story.

Overall, I really enjoyed Lucy Undying and will for sure be recommending it to my friends once it's out!

i don't know how i feel about this book. i didn't really like it, which is unfortunate since this was one of my most anticipated reads. i found the characters annoying and wasn't a fan of the insta love. the diary entry parts were cool though

longer reviews to come

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC. All opinions expressed here, for better or worse, are mine and mine alone.

Lucy Undying, by Kiersten White, release date: 9/10/2024

Take Lucy Westenra from the original Dracula novel, save her from the decapitation squad and send her to modern London and America. Oh, and make it sapphic!

Confession: when it comes to fiction, I never seem to be completely happy with a contemporary setting. Exceptions to this rule tend to involve science gone wonky or hijacked by Very Bad Men.

That being said, Lucy Undying, in my opinion, truly shines in the sequences that take place in the past, whether it be diary entries or a dictated oral history.

These sequences tell the untold story of Dracula’s first victim from the original novel. We meet a full, vibrant, and fleshed out Lucy Westenra and get to fall in love with her.

The modern sequences featuring Iris, the love interest from 2024, aren’t as exciting. Iris tends to keep most things to herself and because of the first person narrative, we spend most of the book not knowing why she’s doing what she’s doing even though we’re in her head. This, to me, is pure aggravation and did not endear the character to me. But Lucy. Oh, Lucy. I love Lucy.

Overall though, the story was a perfectly fine Dracula adaptation with very few surprises, deviations, or disappointments to the lore(bear in mind, I was not the biggest fan of many of the characters in Dracula)... The modern day narrative and annoying love interest aside, I thought it was an enjoyable read!

4.5 of 5🔪

Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

4.75/5

I really loved this book, but a fair warning to anyone interested, that if you are particularly attached to the characters of original Dracula(barring Lucy) or consider classics to be really untouchable, you may find yourself hating this.

That said, if you are willing to go in with an open mind or unaware of what the novel entails, this novel is a really fun ride. I do think this novel works without having read Dracula, but the reader may be left more in suspense initially.

Getting to the content of the book itself, the first 3/5th of the novel is told mainly in 3 perspectives, first is Lucy's journal retelling the story of Dracula from her perspective, the second is Lucy telling the story of her 130 years of life and journey since then to her therapist, and the third is from the perspective of Iris in present day meeting Lucy, falling in love, and starting the whole plotline of the vampire pyramind scheme.

I love stories of vampires/immortals and the many lives they weave through throughout history influencing the world, so the second perspective was close to my favourite aspect of this book. The characters she encounters during those 130 years(the vampires are mainly the significant characters here, though the therapist was a surprisingly fun addition) were fascinating and how she influenced each of them was rather interesting to read. This book is a story about women reclaiming their personhood, autonomy, sexuality, identity, and themselves, and I think it's best reflected in those sections. I did sort of end up wishing for a bit more of it, it skips a large section of time in the middle, but I highly enjoyed what there was.

What was possibly even better about this book than the recounting of Lucy's vampiric life, was how all the plotlines in every perspective(even short interludes outside of the main storyline) came together, both thematically and narratively. This book is brilliantly plotted. It's not a short book, but the pacing is really strong and there doesn't feel like there is any excess that doesn't serve the overarching narrative and themes. My only slight issue with the overall narrative was that a certain part of the ending felt slightly like a copout that wasn't necessarily earned to give a happier ending, but I didn't mind it too much.

The characters in this book(again, unless you are very attached to the characters of Dracula, but even those characters really) are all interesting and in my opinion, rather well written. I loved the Queen, Doctor, and the Lover. Lucy was just a wonderful protagonist to follow. Iris took a bit more time for me to get used to, her modernity a sharp clash to Lucy's perspectives, but I ended up really enjoying her too. The relationship between Lucy and Iris develops quite fast, but it made sense and all their jokes and quirks were really cute.

The narration of this book blends many styles and most of it mashes quite well. The narration is also often quite funny, how can it not be when a large part of the story is a vampire pyramid scheme in Utah. Few of the one liners didn't always land for me, but the humour meshed with me overall.

To conclude, Lucy Undying is an intricate(and funny) story about women reclaiming themselves. Keeping in mind aforementioned caveats about people's relationship to Dracula and classics, I'd honestly recommend this book to anyone, but especially people who enjoy reading about vampires, immortals, and yes, pyramid schemes in Utah. I think this might end up being a new favourite for me.

Do you love sapphic romance and vampires but hate multi level marketing? If so, boy is this the book for you

We have three main types of chapters: Lucy's old diary from when she was human in 1890, which has similar Gothic vibes and prose to Bram Stoker's original novel; a sort-of monologue interview/autobiography from present day (like Frankenstein from the monster's perspective); and a slightly later present day present tense mystery adventure with a different POV character, Iris. Each of the three has a very distinct voice, and most chapters end in cliffhangers that had me frantically starting the next one.

I found Iris's chapters funny for the first half, but I was way more invested in Lucy. As expected, I LOVED HER! This is exactly the Lucy retelling I've wanted for years. Her tragic suffering as a human, her tragic suffering as a vampire... Nothing destroys me quite like unrequited pining, and Lucy's was perfectly painful. She says something at one point about draining Dracula of blood so she can finally taste her beloved and have a piece of her forever. That's the kind of dark obsessiveness I want from my vamps 😩 I also really enjoyed the various companions she had during her years of undeath: the Brides, the Queen, the Doctor, the Lover. All were memorable and all had wildly different ways of spending immortality. The Lover in particular!! holy shhhhh girl, yikes

Around the halfway point we finally start to hit the good stuff with Iris's family and their multi level marketing evilness (LOVED the literal connection here of MLM and vampirism). A little bit afterwards Lucy's diary part ends, and then about two thirds through the interview is over, and now we're staying in 2024 with Iris and Lucy. IT'S REVENGE FANTASY TIME!

Iris, I liked you, but you made some silly decisions in this latter part of the book and I preferred the Lucy-centric earlier sections. The diary was my favorite part and I was sad when it ended. I also kind-of wish there had been more of Iris's family story in the first half of the book. I get that it was saved as the big reveal for after Lucy's past was fully told, but the flow stuttered a little for me. It kind of felt like two separate novels. Mina being The Big Bad also felt a bit excessive. I kind of wish she was just Iris’s mean great-great-great-grandmother who died and Dracula was the serial-killing mastermind.

A thread throughout the novel was maternal love as violence. That love is like a knife, and mothers cut into us and pare us down until we're the shape they want, or maybe the least disappointing option. I wanted even more of that, particularly with Iris. At the end her mother became a bit muddled with Mina's character, and I cared more about Lucy's revenge and freedom from Mina than Iris's. Though wanting more mother-daughter trauma probably says more about me than the book 🥲

I will publish my review on 8/27/24, two weeks before publication date.

Thank you so much to NetGalley, the publisher, and the author for this early copy in exchange for an honest review.

Lucy Undying is not quite what I expected when I picked this up, for both good and bad reasons. Initially, the 3 main plotlines/POVs seem disjointed; they take place in 3 different times and places in history. There's Iris's plotline, mostly taking place in 2024 England; Lucy's plotline, taking place in the 1890s alongside and a little after the timeline of the original Dracula novel; and then finally a second timeline with Lucy, slightly in the future of 2025 as she talks with her therapist Vanessa about what she did after the end of the Dracula novel. At first, I didn't think Iris belonged here, no matter how funny, dry, and charming she is. It wasn't until about 25-30% through that it clicked in my head, “oooohhh okay, that's why she's in this book.” Iris started to grow on me at about the halfway point. Lucy's diary entries in the 1890s were by far the most interesting parts, building upon the bones of Bram Stoker's beloved dark darling of a novel. These diary entries were what I was really here for.

Lucy and Iris are parallels to each other within the narrative; both are victims of their circumstances. Both have abusive mothers, ridiculous amounts of money and privilege for their respective eras in history, and both are queer. However this novel doesn't really do subtle? it bludgeons you to death with a meat mallet and screams about Sapphic unrequited love and the burdens of womanhood. Iris and Lucy BOTH comment on their common traits in several different chapters. The big plot twists were predictable about 200 pages before they were ever relevant. That's fine, I guess, but I prefer a little bit more left to the imagination??

I will absolutely admit though there's some good here. Alicia del Toro's chapter was my personal highlight of the entire novel, and she was a criminally underutilized character. The author tried some unique things with the Dracula mythos and with vampires in general that were fun and I won't spoil. The modern day vampire cult angle was a fantastic idea, and definitely a pleasant surprise! It's such a shame we didn't get to see more of WHY they're bad instead of being told that they, well......suck. Because well....

This is a romance novel.

It's insta-love, head over heels, obsessive levels of love on Iris's part for Ellie, the super attractive British local who's here to help catalog antiques for the museum. When we get Ellie's thoughts on their relationship later, it's mutually insta-love and that makes no sense for reasons I can't talk about without spoiling one of the twists. Any real plot or character development is sacrificed at the altar of “True Love,” and it's....not worthy of that sacrifice. It doesn't feel real, I mean yes this is a book about vampires and trustfund babies, but I had so much trouble suspending my disbelief when it came to this romance. Other side characters in the novel exist to orbit around Iris, and don't seem to have any existence once she's out of their range.

Even though the romance itself didn't really click for me, I really really appreciate Sapphic representation so much. Someone younger than me struggling with their identity needs books like these to remind them that it's ok to be who you are. Having not just one but TWO main characters who are lgbt, and then a good 6 or so side characters who are ALSO LGBT is super super nice and rare to see in mainstream fantasy. I loved that. If this book had come out when I was a teen, I would've rated it higher just for this fact. Good representation does in fact, matter, and having a diverse cast is one of this novel's strong points.

Teens and booktokers will love this one because it's pretty easy to read, LGBT friendly, and has beautiful cover art that I wouldn't be sad to have a framed print of. I am a bit disappointed to say that it takes more than a vampire's glamor to seduce me. I need substance, I need bite, and this book never fully managed to sink its teeth into me.