I struggled with this one. The writing was mostly fine but I felt confused with some parts. While it was a different, interesting take on a vampire story, I felt that it fell flat. I just wasn't into it.

I'm a bit stuck with this book, because I *think* it accomplished what it was trying to do, but that accomplishment is also what makes it very frustrating to read.

Lucy, our heroine, is - no beating around the bush - obsessed with her twin sister. She dashes to her side whenever she needs help, sleeps with her husband to try and feel closer to her, and eventually destroys her entire life for the sake of protecting her. There are two ways to view this: one, the book is about the horror of a deeply co-dependent relationship, in which case, mission accomplished! And yet, it feels like there's something missing. Maybe it's just that we see nothing of Sarah before she vampirism takes over, and so it's hard to understand just what Lucy is so obsessed with. It makes Lucy seem weaker as a character, because her defining trait and core motivation for everything she does is protecting Sarah - but we, the reader, can't see what's so special about Sarah that makes Lucy so devoted, and it gives the impression that she's so lacking in personality, she'd latch on to anyone who exerted the slightest force of will over her. There's also a secondary character, Katje, who is in love with Sarah and characterized by being very frail and weak and dependent on her - so is the takeaway here that Sarah surrounds herself with women who don't have the strength of will to defy her? That would be interesting, if the book really committed to it, but it doesn't.

The other way of seeing it is that this is a triumphant love story, and . . . no, that doesn't work at all. As I've said, Lucy is so lacking in spine and Sarah in personality (we see a lot of Sarah post-vampiring, but the book also tells us repeatedly that she is now two people in one body, so that's not really Sarah, is it?) that there's no real reason to root for the two of them. It's especially contradictory because one of the main throughlines is Lucy and Sarah's absolute terror at being sent to an asylum, as their aunt was - but the facts as available to the antagonist characters (Sarah's husband Michael and their family friend Arthur) make it clear that this is the best possible option, because Sarah eats people! There's another throughline, that of male abuse and patriarchy, but it doesn't mesh when the abuse in question is "thinking the woman who's going around stabbing herself in the eye and biting peoples' fingers off should probably not be running around free." What we're left with is two lead characters, one of whom is a pushover and the other one of whom is a cipher, and so we can't really invest in their fates, because there's just not enough "there" there.

(As an aside - I know Grady Hendrix's "The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires" is divisive, but to me, it succeeds where this one fails, because we see the antagonists of that book wielding power over the women in their lives in situations where our heroines are desperately trying to make them see sense. Whereas, in this, every decision Lucy makes regarding her sister is so nonsensical, we end up rooting for the men in her life to separate them because it clearly needs to happen! The book needed to either commit to the Lucy-Sarah relationship being a horror story, or show Lucy as a character with the mental/emotional resources to steer her own life, and it did neither.)

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. When *My Darling Dreadful Thing* was released, I was thrilled, and this story surpassed even my high expectations. It offers a unique twist on the traditional vampire tale, much like *A Dowry of Blood*, presenting a mournful recounting of a vampire's love story. However, rather than focusing on romantic love, it explores the profound, enduring bond between siblings and does not shy away from the complexities and messiness that can arise in family relationships. One of my favorite literary genres features what I call "unhinged women," and I appreciated how the ending embraced this theme wholeheartedly.

A little odd, but not so odd that I did not enjoy the book. I thought it was an interesting take on vampire lore.