This was a delicious and modern take on the Gothic classic Carmilla, a queer novella inspired by Dracula .

Having not read Carmilla previously I was definitely intrigued and in for a wild ride!

Hungerstone starts out with your typical unappreciated upper class wife trying to make her husband of 10 years still happy while he fights against his working class origins and ambitions- all while blaming his bourgeoisie wife for his troubles.

Camilla is restless in fighting her own hunger as she and her husband escape the city to their countryside retreat in order to host another class hunting party. The house is a wreck and she needs to do everything…. All the while her husband is gaslighting her.

When a strange woman is found in a carriage wreck near their property, Camilla takes affinity to her and feels a kinship with her. Making her stand up to her husband, and keep the injured woman while she recoups.

… just in time for strange occurrences to begin!

This book was absolutely un-putdownable! I loved seeing Carmilla satisfy her hunger, find her in her strength and rise above her husband’s aggression that had kept her small and insignificant for so long! A strong sense of feminism and women’s rules place throughout this whole book and makes it exceptionally powerful. I also really appreciate it the economy of female friendships and relationships expressed throughout.

Hungerstone my first Kat Dunn book.

the story was too long for me personally, but I’d rather enjoy the ending and bump it up to a three star rating.

This story was very melancholy and all vibes. Carmilla retelling to the desire, lust, appetite of hunger.

We follow the Lenore as she and her husband move from London to Nethershaw manor in countryside.

She spends her days restoring and preparing this home for her husband’s big shooting event. We very much feel Lenore’s isolation in the manor as a darkened settles over the land.

I appreciated Lenore’s perspective and thoughts. We see her question her position and life state. so much of what was experienced felt told instead of experienced throughout this story.

The story started off very slice of life, hum drum and slow. I don’t feel it truly picked up until the 61% mark from there I ate it up so many undertones in the story as well.

This Book was very hard to rate. I’ve had mixed feelings as to how I was feeling about it. This story was great, and I loved all the components of it and the beautiful writing. I just felt it was repetitive at times.

Thank you to Netgalley and Zando for this ARC review in exchange for my honest review.

Hungerstone is dark and perfectly sapphic. If you grew up watching Carmilla, you will eat this book up. Lenore perfectly encapsulates the longing from a queer woman stuck in a mundane and unfulfilling relationship.

I will say that the first time I tried reading the book, I wasn't into it. The second time, however, I could not stop! I highly recommend that you either come back to the book and push through because it is so worth it! It was everything I wished Nosferatu was. The gothic vibes are immaculate and I will eat up any sapphic horror novel. I was left hungry for more and am excited to read more of Kat Dunn. Just placed an order for my library!

For women who always wanted to eat Claudio's heart out in the marketplace.

Powerful and heart pounding, Carmilla is remade in this Victorian gothic thriller.

Thank you NetGalley for the eArc in exchange for an honest review!

Full of female rage, desire and pain this book will have you running to the next page to find out what Lenore hungers for!

This sapphic vampire novel is a great insight into how often women are trapped by society and how hard we have to work to push down all our pain, desires, discomfort and feeling in favour of being socially acceptable. And I love the references to the original Carmilla but the additional plot lines are excellently done and really build your anger and worry for Lenore.

Hungerstone was heavily inspired by Carmilla and it shows, however, I do think the pacing of this book kept me from fully devouring this book. I loved the vibes I just wish there were a little more going on at any given time.

Yes! Right setting, right tone, right ending. For me, a fun, inspirational gothic trip. Less you know about the plot while going in, more interesting it will be.

I would not want to be in a marriage like that of Lenore and Henry - full of silence, betrayal and what appears to be infidelity. When they leave London for Nethershaw Manor for a hunting party, they come across the mysterious Carmilla and bring her with them to the estate. But all is not as it seems with anyone involved in this novel. Lots of twists throughout - I think my favorite part of the book is the growth of Lenore. A quick, dark and fun read.

Thank you to NetGalley and the Publisher for providing a digital ARC of this title!

Thank you NetGalley and Zando for an eARC in exchange for an honest review!

I love a gothic horror novel and I love vampires, and I’m very pleased that Hungerstone worked well for me. I enjoyed the build up in the story and thought the atmosphere was excellent—it felt damp and ominous, and I think Dunn did a good job at portraying Lenore’s headspace. The tension was solid and it was difficult for me to put this book down, and while I think maybe there were times it was a touch heavy handed, it remained engaging and enraging (Henry I will fight you).

For what do you hunger, Lenore?

Kat Dunn's Hungerstone is EXACTLY the kind of book I was hungry for. It's a masterful reimagining of the vampire classic Carmilla, blending Victorian repression, desire, and the supernatural into a hauntingly beautiful tale. Lenore's transformation from dutiful wife to self-possessed woman is so gripping and much fun to read, and her intoxicating relationship with the enigmatic Carmilla equally charming.
Dunn’s lush prose and meticulous historical detail create an atmosphere both eerie and enthralling. In short, Hungerstone is nothing less than a triumph of feminist horror (my favorite kind) and for sure a must-read for lovers of gothic fiction.

* I'd like to thank Kat Dunn, Zando and NetGalley for providing this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Wow! What a book! I loved every second of it! If you love books where the female character finally remembers that she's more than her husband's propriety and decides to show him his place, this book is 100% for you!

This book is the perfect example why you should never give a chance to useless men incapable of standing on their own two feet. Never ever alienate yourself for them: keep dreaming, keep wanting! As Carmilla says: "wanting is not selfish, Lenore!", it's better to make mistakes and get disappointments than just doing nothing.

Thank you Kat Dunn, Zando, and NetGalley for the Arc!

#womenempowerment #womensupportingwomen #internationalwomensday

Lenora is an orphan raised by her aunt until she marries steel baron, Henry. After they get married, Henry buys a crumbling estate and moves them from London to Nethershaw manor. On their way to the manor, they ride up on a wrecked carriage and a ghostly woman, Carmilla, distraught from the wreck and in need of time at the manor to mend. What they do not expect is that Carmilla is going to change Lenora’s outlook, open her eyes to the state of her life, and give her the strength to do something about it.

The novel starts with the expected pace of a gothic novel. We expect them to be a little slow and broody, foggy and mucky. and filled with mold and isolation. Nethershaw manor is in complete disrepair, and it is up to Lenora to get it into shape before Henry hosted an influential list of visitors for a hunting party. The first half of the novel is rife with the stress of getting the house put together, but also learning about Henry and how he might not be the person that she thought she was marrying. This is a pretty typical of a gothic novel: someone marries into a situation where she did not know what she is getting into.

The wildcard with Hungerstone is Carmilla. She comes and goes as she pleases, and things start to happen to the women in the neighboring village to the Nethershaw. Lenora gives her attention because she is stressed and lonely. Carmilla is interesting and a mystery, and before long Lernora’s feelings for her cannot be ignored. The attention Carmilla gives her is eventually enough to allow Lenora to figure out what is going on in her marriage and her life. In the end, Carmilla could be anything. She could be a ghost. She could be a vampire. She could be a manifestation brought on by Lenora. The final truth is that Carmilla is the catalyst to the changing in Lenora and her life.

The first two thirds of Hungerstone are slow and moody, and when the action does start to speed up toward the last third, there are some pacing issues. The truth is coming out, the consequences are happening, and the house of Nethershaw is about to crumble down, but Kat Dunn stops the momentum a few times for more flashbacks that are unnecessary. This kills the momentum, and an ending that could have felt like a carriage flying off of a cliff becomes very controlled. This does not stop Hungerstone from being a novel I would recommend, but I wish that the final third of the novel was structured a little more reckless.


I received Hungerstone as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Hungerstone by Kat Dunn is dark, atmospheric, and utterly consuming. It takes the gothic vampire story of Carmilla and twists it into something raw and deeply personal. Lenore, trapped in an unhappy marriage, finds herself drawn to Carmilla, a mysterious woman who appears near their isolated home. What follows is an intense, unsettling unraveling of desire, repression, and the consequences of longing for something more.

The writing is lush and immersive, pulling you into the decaying estate, the eerie countryside, and the suffocating expectations placed on Lenore. Every character feels layered, and their relationships are full of tension, whether spoken or unspoken. The book doesn't just lean into horror, it also explores rage, power, and the hunger for freedom in a world that does not easily allow it. Dunn’s storytelling is sharp and deliberate, making every moment feel intentional and weighted with meaning.

*Thank you to Zando and NetGalley for the ALC! All opinions are my own.*

2.75/5

I think I was tricking myself into thinking I liked this book for the first two-thirds of it because I was so excited for it. This book is well-written. The writing is gorgeous. HOWEVER, the numbers don't lie and it just doesn't ever take me this long to read books if I enjoy them. :/ First of all, as a disclaimer, I've never read the original Carmilla so I won't be speaking at all to the retelling aspect of this book. Okay, here goes.

Thing I liked:

The writing. As I said, the prose in this is wonderful. There's strings of text in here that are absolutely the reason I was feeling so duped into thinking I was having a good time with this one.

The narrator. She was wonderful the whole way through. Her voice was so perfectly match to the tone of the book and I loved her. I'm so glad I switched from the ebook to the audio!

The last third of the book. As soon as (view spoiler) the pace picks up immensely. It is one of my biggest to critiques that I wish a bigger portion of the book had a pace similar to this. Which brings me to...

Things I didn't like so much:

Length/pacing. It's my biggest critique of most books I read/the thing I pay the most attention to. You see it mentioned in most of my reviews. I find pacing is what catches my attention more than any plot or character development. Which is why the first two-thirds of this book largely being without any real tension between Carmilla and Lenore left me unwilling to pick this one up to finish it.

The "sapphic" subplot. Here's where I'm most upset. I've read a handful of these "sapphic vampire" novels. All of them have many rave reviews about how queer they are, etc. and it's got me wondering if I'm the problem (and if I am, so be it), because the sapphic plots/subplots in these books are NOT ENOUGH. You cannot throw a scene or two of two girls fuckin' in the middle of a book, maybe one happens to a vampire which is neat, and call it a day. There is no real yearning. There is no tension or buildup to the moment. It's gratuitous and lazy.

In Hungerstone, we get over halfway through the book with nary a TOUCH OF THE HAND, A STOLEN GLANCE before they fuck each other out of nowhere one day. This isn't what sapphic literature should be, and we as a community should not be willing to take these CRUMBS quite frankly. We deserve more and these publishers/authors using these buzzwords to make money off of an already-underrepresented community has to stop.

"I will die like all mortal things.
At least let me taste a little life before I go."

Thank you Kat Dunn, Zando, and NetGalley for the Arc!

THIS is EXACTLY what I want from a Carmilla retelling. The prose is stunning and atmospheric, complete with a spooky gothic setting on the moors that just sucked me right in. Yet unlike the original Carmilla, this is more of a domestic gothic, with some of the vampiric stuff taking the back seat. What we have in place of that is a great story about hunger- hunger for power and a newly discovered hunger to live out ones desires to the fullest. Even though this sacrifices time with my beloved sapphic vampires, I can dig it. Really, the lack of vampirism is my only gripe with this book and I wish we could've actually seen more of Carmilla. Instead, she acts as an agent for unravelling Lenore's carefully constructed marriage, peeling back the layers of all that she knows to see the rot underneath. I saw some of myself in Lenore and so reading this was empowering in a way that I didn't expect.
"If I am mad, it is only because they have made me so."

Carmilla, oh Carmilla. I am convinced that one of the best remedies for a severe people pleaser who does not know how to live for herself in a patriarchal society is in fact, an incredibly beguiling lesbian vampire.

What more can I say other than that if you love to read about lesbians, sizzling female rage, and a setting heavily based on historical records from the exploitative Industrial Revolution, please dive in and ✨enjoy.✨

Thank you to the author, Zando, and NetGalley for the eARC. I leave this review voluntarily.

What a brilliant book and what brilliant prose. This book is what I live for and read for.

I was mesmerized by the prose from the page one. I relished reading hungerstone slowly over a period of time even though I loved it, I didn't want to rush. I wanted to enjoy every word of it.


Said to be a compulsive feminist retelling of Carmilla by le sheridan ,the queer novella that inspired Dracula it intrigued me and left me pleasantly confused as to what was going to happen. No I didn't see what was coming and the end left me bewildered.

There are many elements at work in hungerstone, passion and desire, temptation and anger, hunger and satiety, horror set in gothic setting. Erotism on the verge of vulgarity or is it really vulgar to express your sexual desires if they are not fulfilled by your partner?

Hungerstone starts slowly building a world where women have almost no freedom. The feminist voice is subtle not too loud and yet very clear. Lenore is a bit of unreliable narrator but yet she shines. Carmilla isn't present whole time and yet her presence is felt in the shadows throughout the books. To be honest, it's not carmilla's story but Lenore's. The book surprised me, I did not expect it to go where it did, the ending was almost perfect and I loved it.

It is slow paced at times and that's the only thing that annoyed me. At some points when nothing happened in the book, I was annoyed but prose kept me going and that's why I'm rating it 1 star less or else it was definitely 5 stars read. Prosewise, this book will always standout to me. Wonderfully written if I haven't said that already. If I did, well it is brilliant so it deserves it again.

Thank you Netgalley and Zando publishing for this wonderful ARC in exchange of an honest review.

Hungerstone is a great read for those who enjoy an eerie vampire tale! It reminds me of A Dowry of Blood, although I like Hungerstone better. While the start of the story was a bit slow, it was necessary because it allowed the reader to get a sense the loneliness and despair of the main character before she comes into her true self in the end. The misogyny of the time and place in history made me feel for the desperation and lack of agency experienced by Lenore, the FMC. The pacing of the story picks up quite a bit in the second half as Lenore transforms into a woman to be reckoned with!

I absolutely loved the creepy vibes of this vampire tale! I would recommend this book, especially in the fall around Halloween.

This gothic, sapphic re-imagining of Carmilla sucked me in from the first page and didn’t let go. It’s dark, atmospheric, and dripping with tension...just about everything I crave in a story.