Y'all, I had a great time! I ate this book up! This is my 2nd read from Kate, and I will read anything she puts out, no questions asked. I loved the characters and how we got to see them grow through the book and subvert expectations. I thought the SA (trigger warning) representation was well laid out and explained with a caring touch to those experiences. I loved the concept and learning at the end of the book how it came to be. I will be recommending this to everyone I can. What a fun time!

Thanks to Netgalley and Random House Publishing Group for the early arc!

I loved One to Watch by this author and had been eagerly anticipating her next novel. Unfortunately, I found Fang Fiction to be a bit too silly, and the characters fell flat for me.

I loved this book! Tess was very relatable while still being a distinct person and character. The subplot of Joni and Octavia hit in just the right places, and all the twists and turns of solving the mystery of the Isle kept me at the edge of my seat.

I enjoyed the minimal spice, and loved the focus on Tess and her personal healing and journey. She was able to save herself and create the life she wanted, and that left me feeling all warm and fuzzy.

This was such a fun and unique premise! Here we have a book where the world of your favorite fantasy novels is real, and you’re invited! There is a catch though… it’s filled with thirsty vampires. I enjoyed this fun vampire tale a lot. It was funny, it was entertaining, it was creative and so much more. The multiple points of view were really fun and made the story feel alive! There were so many quirky and yet lovable characters. Also, the vampires were broody, grumpy and hot… so what’s not to like!

What to enjoy:
💚 Enemies to lovers
🧛‍♀️ Vampire fandom
🩷 Multiple POV
🧛 Two slow burn romances
💚 Forced proximity
🧛‍♂️ Follows a book within a book
🩷 LGBTQ+ Rep

Quote:
"The whole idea of a 'hero' is so complicated, because heroes put other people before themselves, which is actually a very feminine quality. But heroes are usually men who wouldn't be able to pull off their heroic feats if it weren't for the support and sacrifices of women. And when a woman prioritizes herself in that way, she tends to be portrayed as a villain. So if you're a woman reader who's interested in strong female characters..."
"You tend to get stuck rooting for the villain.”

Thank you to the author Kate Stayman-London and NetGalley for the electronic advanced copy of the book.

This book might have been the best book I have read this year. This is also one of the best modern telling of vampire stories that I have ever read! For all you vampire fans out there, this book is absolutely fantastic. It has been a long time since I was so engrossed and drawn into a book so quickly and so deeply. I've been a vampire fan for years since seeing Interview with a vampire as a kid and have watched tons of shows and movies about them. I also have read an extensive amounts of vampire fiction and fanfiction related to some of my favorite stories.

First thing I will shout out for Kate is writing a female main character that was an adult for a vampire novel. Far too often there are a lot of vampire stories that involve a 100+ year old vampire and a teenager. As an adult fan, you ignore it and just allow the story to play out however it will play out but this was such a nice change. Learning about Tess and Joni were great. I felt so seen as a fellow fan girl and finding friendship related back to something I loved so much.

Second things is that I LOVED the mix of media for story telling. It was so cool that she used text messages, podcast transcripts, emails, and news articles as a part of the story telling. It was not out of place and it wasn't weird, I absolutely adored how it played out. It just added additional fun to the story.

The story overall focuses on Tess, who is a PH.D student that find herself on this Isle of Vampires from this book series she is obsessed with, Blood Feud. She is in disbelief that the book series she has been obsessed with for years is real and that vampires are also real. She is given a mission by Octavia, a vampire from the villain clan, to find her twin Brother Callum. From there things might not be as Tess has read about in the book.

I'm excited to see what else Kate may write and hope there will be more to come within this world. I honestly would love to read more of it. I also wouldn't mind a bonus chapter or see what happens in the future for Tess and Joni as character.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for allowing me a Advance Reader's copy of this book in exchange for a honest review.

It is not often that an author's 2nd book does it for me, but that was the case in this instance. You mean you're gonna give me a story where the protagonist basically gets to live out her Buffy/Vampire Diaries/True Blood fantasy? And have characters who are Spike and Cordelia coded in the best way? Say less. Keeping in mind this also tackles a traumatic subject (SA), I thought the author handled it with a deft touch. If you love your vamps more snarky and less sparkly, this'll be a great book for you to ... sink your teeth into. 😬 🤣

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this arc.

This unfortunately was an DNF for me. While the campy nature of the synopsis drew me in and is part of the book, the underlying SA plot line jumps out of nowhere and really darkens the book. I did not care for that juxtaposition and could not continue the book for very long. Maybe others will be able to, but this was not for me.

Unfortunately this book was simply not written enough for the subject matter to work and felt at times incredibly silly, and not in a good way. Tess was introduced and was immediately unlikeable, but not in a way that felt like it was written that way, just that this was not a character I would click with. This needs some serious editing and perhaps some revamping.

This sounds like such a fun premise - vampires exist in real life (though in secret), and a popular, soapy book series about some of them is actually non-fiction. It was really hard to enjoy the story, however, because the plot is all based off of the main character having been drugged and raped (off-page), and how she eventually finds healing from her trauma through sexy and exciting escapades with vampires. I was expecting something a little lighter when I picked up the book based on the blurb and the cover, and sometimes I just want a break from all the awful things that happen to women in this world. Or at least to be better prepared when it's going to feature so prominently in something I'm reading. As for the book as a whole, it was written with multiple viewpoints as well as excerpts from podcasts and gossip sites. The light narrative style and campy adventure vibe of the plot alongside the darkness of the sexual assault storyline didn't mesh well for me. This book does a good job as a send-up of popular vampire franchises such as 'Twilight' and 'Buffy' - think tongue-in-cheek fanfic - so if those are your jam give this a try. Thank you to NetGalley and Random House | Dial Press Trade Paperback for a digital review copy.

3.25 ⭐

Fang Fiction is supernatural romance novel about a vampires, friendship, and being stronger than your trauma. Tess is ignoring her real life problems by immersing herself in the fictional world of her favourite vampire novel series. Except the world is not quite as fictional as she thought. One of the vampire characters seeks her help to reunite with her twin and Tess must reconcile with her past to save the worlds she knows.

This book is definitely for the very specific audience of teens who read vampire novels but have now grown into adults, which I definitely fall into. The beginning of this book was a lot of fun. I enjoyed the characters and really felt like I got to know each of them as the story progressed. The world building drew me in and I was fascinated by the implications of the magic, creatures, and parallel worlds. Tonal, I did struggle a bit with this book. It started out seeming like a fun, wish fulfillment fantasy romance, but brought in some very heavy themes (tw: sexual assault), which made it hard to know how to feel about the book as one cohesive story. While it was handled well and is an important topic to discuss, it seemed out of place with the more campy elements of the plot.

If you are a vampire romance girly who likes stories of women overcoming their trauma to defeat their enemies and fall in love, this will be the book for you.

I had a marvelous time ruining everything…is how I feel after finishing this delicious novel. It’s been a long time coming! I loved Kate’s debut and love this even more. It was definitely worth the wait. She did a fabulous job in making this fun vampire romance unproblematic. I really hope we don’t have to wait as long for Kate’s next novel. This helped me get ready to jump into my fall tbr. Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for this preview in exchange for my honest opinion. Highly recommend pre ordering it rn!

Thanks to NetGalley for access to an e-arc.

This was a really fun read. I would classify this a bit more on the fantasy side than the romance side. Gives similar vibes to Olivia Dade's Spoiler Alert except the fantasy world turns out to be real not just a TV show.

Definite trigger warning for SA.

Tess is a huge fan of the Blood Feud vampire book series and finds herself pulled into its not so fictional after all world. For all she knows from the books, the heroes and villains are not as they seemed. This is a nice light read read with the one aforementioned trigger warning. I do wish we got more relationship development and more page time with Tess and Callum. The epistles are all great (and I often dislike these!).

Lots of fun, recommended.

This is a very weird book.  I tried to like it.  I like rom-coms!  I like vampires!  But ... The author makes <i>so many choices</i> that I didn't care for!  It's as if she's actively making fun of the entire romance-with-vampires genre, but instead of this being fun or funny, it's just bad.

First of all, it opens with deception and coyness, which always pisses me off, so the book and I got off on the wrong foot.  Prologue ends with Tess leaving and ghosting her former bestie, because that's what she had to do "to survive," and she gets a job on the night shift, and since this is a book about vampires, I assumed Tess had either been turned, or was escaping a vampire named Rick.  As it happens, nope.  Rick is just a run of the mill date rapist.  Great!  This rom com opens with a date rape!  The actual rape is "off screen" but Tess's untreated trauma is very much on screen.  I was left wondering why Stayman-London  felt she had to add this to the plot. For most of this book, Tess's entire personality is "Surviving Date Rape."  Could she think of no other plausible reason for Tess to ghost Joni?  Was it really necessary for Tess to ghost Joni at all? (spoiler-not-a-spoiler: NO IT WAS NOT)  Why did Tess need to ghost Joni "to survive" when the better option clearly was to CONFIDE IN Joni and then seek assistance from therapists (or, better yet, reach out to the authorities and get Rick arrested!).  But, no.  Tess chooses Option C: Tell No One.

The tendency to make Very Bad Choices continues throughout the book - not just Tess, but all of the main characters consistently make the dumbest choices possible.  They've all got a box of rocks for brains.  At some point I just didn't care anymore - when it's OBVIOUS to the reader that the situation is a TRAP and their plan is a BAD IDEA but the characters forge ahead anyway ... well, I just didn't care when they got in trouble.  There was always an easy out, anyway.  I think I have never read a book with LESS plot tension than this one. 

Added to the coyness are the random excerpts from <i>Blood Feud,</i> the VERY uninteresting vampire romance novel that these supposed vampires are in.  (Can you think of anything more boring than a story about twin vampires confined to some magical island with no humans and allllll the magical glamours they could want??  The entire POINT of a vampire novel is that <i>vampires prey on humans!!</i>   Take away the humans and you've taken away ALL the plot tension!)  I had to take a moment to process that level of dullness.  It was impossible to believe that this series became a huge best selling sensation.

Speaking of glamours ... <spoiler>a glamour is just fake, the things they glamoured were just made from air, right? How did the food provide actual sustenance? I kept expecting Tess to be ravenous when she returned from the Isle, but she was fine. How did that work?? I also expected her to arrive back in NYC naked, since she left wearing a glamoured gown. But, no, apparently the glamoured gown survived the trip back to her apartment.</spoiler>

Vampires, of course, abide by different rules in different worlds, but almost in almost all depictions, they do not need to breathe and their hearts do not beat.  So it was really weird that the vampires in this story both needed to breathe AND had heartbeats.

There are random excerpts from voicemails and emails interspersed among the chapters, sometimes from people who have not yet been introduced in the book.  Great! More coyness and confusion!   And there are "news" articles that serve as massive infodumps (as if Vanity Fair would actually cover this crap), what a lazy way to give us more information about the characters.  Timothee Chalamet is mentioned more than once as an actor who could play the novel-within-this-novel's romantic lead, Felix, which makes this feel oddly dated (along with random references to sites such as BuzzFeed), and is also a very lazy way to describe the characters.   I don't spend time reading about Team Edward and Team Jacob irl, and I definitely don't want to spend time reading about TeamFelix and TeamCallum in a novel.

Most egregiously of all, I never believed in the romances that we were told about between Callum & Tess and Octavia & Joni (and I guess poor Flora doesn't get a romance, which felt very unfair). They meet, they fall madly in love, zero build-up, zero chemistry, zero reason to believe in it.

The writing is also oddly clunky, almost as if Stayman-London WANTED it to seem poorly written.  I don't know why she would make that choice, but here we are.  Choices were made.  

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for this free advanced review copy.

The only good thing I have to say about this is, if for some reason THIS novel is ever optioned as a movie, the perfect smoking hot Korean actor to play the demon, I mean <i>vampire</i> Callum, is Song Kang <img src="https://i.mydramalist.com/Z80wgW_2f.png">

Very well done! A love story for fangirls who have wanted to be a part of the story. I'm here for the nostalgia.

Tess's backstory is heartbreaking, and if you're looking for just a light hearted rom con, this the story for you. I enjoyed watching her become the hero to her own story and her friendship with Joni. Romance was a little secondary to me, but that did not take away from the story for me.

I really wanted to push through this book, but I just can’t do it. I’m DNFing at 17%. This feels like bad self-insert Twilight fan fiction, and I cannot get into it. I don’t like the writing and I don’t feel connected to the characters. It was also really hard for my brain to wrap around the main character being assaulted and how that merged with the tone of the book. I’ve read romance novels that handle heavier topics extremely well, but this didn’t seem like the book to do so. If you’re into campy, extremely cheesy vampire books, this may be for you, but it wasn’t for me.

3.75 stars!

Imagine learning that your favorite book series is actually based in truth, their New York is just another plane of your New York, and your fandom about this world drags you face first into this alternate world. That's exactly what happens to Tess, number one Blood Feud fan, trauma survivor, and Shakespeare nerd. Out of nowhere, the vampires from her favorite book turn out to be real, she ends up in their alternate world, and she's the key to survival and freedom for all vampires.

I absolutely loved the world building of this story- from the Isle, the vampires' personalities and actions in Blood Feud vs IRL, the mix in of texts and articles and podcast transcripts, and the stories happening in parallel for Tess and her best friend Joni (stuck back in regular old New York). I also loved Tess's own personal development, in her mind aided by witchy god-ferry-mother Flora but actually by her own damn self!! She had all the tools she needed within herself to turn back and make changes, but needed the push to get her there and get her life back on track. On the other hand, the romances were not super deep and very quick to develop, but that's okay because our human gals are both so wonderful!

Thank you so much to Kate Stayman-London and NetGalley for a chance to read this in exchange for an honest review!

This was an interesting read, but it fell a bit flat for me. I really liked the FMC. I wasnt a huge fan of jumping to podcast and media. And I wasnt super invested in the romance or plot. Ultimately not for.me.

This had all the makings for a story I would love, especially as spooky season approaches, but it definitely fell short and just didn't hit the mark on most fronts.

I had a really difficult time connecting to the characters and honestly really caring about anyone. There were multiple points in the book where I didn't know if I was reading what was happening in real time, what I was reading what was happening in the novel, or what was happening in real time with the vampires themselves. Everything was felt like it was a YA fan fiction (and not in a good way). I kept hoping that it would get better but unfortunately, it just didn't.

Two stars simply because I was getting What We Do In the Shadows vibes in a couple of places.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing Group for an advanced digital reader copy. All opinions are my own and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

Fun title, fun concept. Just not for me. I liked the idea of entering the world of your favorite book series and getting to be a hero. I appreciated the mixed content of podcasts, chapter excerpts, emails, etc. and the friendship between Tess and Joni was really special. I just didn’t care what happened. Love the cover art so much. Thanks to NetGalley for an ARC

This was a very fun vampire romance that had a real classic feel to it; some other reviews have described it as Twilight or Buffy fanfiction, but in a good way, which I think is spot on. It felt like it really leaned into some of the classic, almost cheesy, vampire tropes and was indulgent in a good way.

The writing was pretty straightforward and it was a quick read. The magic system was interesting and there were some fun supporting characters as well. I felt like the author handled the difficult topic of sexual assault fairly delicately; there is an author's note at the beginning of the book with a content warning/explanation. I felt like that was handled thoughtfully, making the experience an important part of what happened to her character without dwelling on it too much for the reader and upsetting the "rom com" vibe of the book. I enjoyed the dual romance storylines (Tess and Callum; Joni and Octavia) although sometimes the POV switches were a little abrupt and in the middle of chapters. I was more invested in Joni and Octavia's romance, although unfortunately I felt like the focus was less on them than on Tess and Callum. The timeline for both these relationships was pretty compressed and with Joni and Octavia, it did feel like there was plenty of chemistry to carry that forward, but I was a little less convinced by Tess and Callum. It did feel like the level of trust between them couldn't have realistically developed that quickly. This was definitely a HFN and not a HEA since the whole will-the-human-love-interest-become-a-vampire thing was kind of unaddressed. All that being said, this was a very quick, fun, indulgent read that will definitely appeal to anyone who enjoyed Buffy, Twilight, or any other classic vampire media.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.