Nghi Vo’s Don’t Sleep with the Dead takes the world of The Great Gatsby and spins it into a haunting, beautifully eerie novella. Vo’s writing is elegant, packed with that same sharp, magical realism that makes this book so compelling. It’s intimate. It explores how we carry our regrets and ghosts with us, whether we want to or not. If you thought Gatsby’s world was just a glittering reflection of wealth and desire, Vo drags you back into its darker corners. The result? A hauntingly beautiful, almost dreamlike tale of love, loss, and a past that refuses to let go. If you’ve ever wondered about the true cost of pretending about what happens when the ghosts of who we were show up uninvited then, this novella will leave you questioning the price of forgetting.

Thank you to Tor Publishing Group for the opportunity to read an early copy of Don’t Sleep with the Dead!

I wanted to love this one as much as I loved The Chosen and the Beautiful, but a day after finishing my second reading of it, and I am still regretfully confused.

What I loved about The Chosen and the Beautiful was the magnificent fantastical elements pulled directly from the wording of the source material. Don’t Sleep with the Dead has some of that same flair, but it stands alone at this point in the TGG narrative, and I didn’t enjoy that as much. I’ve driven myself mad debating on if I think Daphne’s story blooms from Daisy’s inquiries to Nick in Chapter 1 or the ambiguous end of Chapter 6, but I’m not happy with either answer. If I can figure out Nghi Vo’s inspiration for that plot point, I would change the rating to 4/5

Can I give this 10 stars?

I really loved The Chosen and the Beautiful and this one is a sequel, what's happened to Nick Carraway in the 20-some years since Gatsby's death, and it absolutely lived up to my hopes and dreams for it, and then some.

The book is dedicated to all the unreliable narrators out there, and that is just so perfect. I loved that Vo added some meta-type aspects to the story without drawing much on the original story. It was also great to get more information about Nick from himself, to find out more about his past and the fact that's he's a paper boy and what's become of his paper heart since Jordan fixed it at the end of Chosen.

I will admit, that I absolutely devoured this little book. There's just something about starting a new book where the writing is just absolutely top notch that compels me to just read read read. So, I will likely go back and read it again, maybe take a bit more time with it, really savour it the second time around.

While billed as a standalone novella, this truly works best as a companion to Vo's The Chosen and the Beautiful. Both works are less love letters to The Great Gatsby and more diary entries chronicling every high and low of an affair, admitting the reasons it was doomed to fail in equal tandem with the captivation of love.

Content Warnings: Blood/Wounds; Mild Body Horror; Existentialism; Homophobia (Time Period Accurate, Minor)

Note: This novella takes place in the same world, and directly after the events of, Vo's The Chosen and the Beautiful, which I have not read. However, this work can be read as a stand alone work.

I loved this novella. Vo's prose is hauntingly beautiful in its rendering of Nick Carraway and the world he inhabits. Her blending of different cultures, mythology, and the supernatural kept me hooked page after page. There are layers of pretending, longing, and eventually, acceptance. Nick's emotions and actions are complex, sometimes contradictory, sometimes self-destructive, in ways that felt too-true of life in general, but queer life in particular.

I highly recommend this book for those who enjoyed its prequel and for any reader who likes Great Gatsby retellings, queer longing and pining, and men loving men.

I'm glad that I read this in the crispness of almost-winter, as we follow Nick Carraway through the wintry, waning days of 1939, 17 years after the events of The Great Gatsby, which (in this telling) he has just written and published.

Nghi Vo does something very special with this fleeting yet rich novella. It is gorgeous, both lonely and melancholy, expressing nostalgia in a way I'd not encountered before -- capturing one of those situations where your past was by no means "good," yet where you still yearn for the sliver of sweetness that once had been.

I've not read a re-telling of a classic that engaged with the original and outgrew it in this way before; Don't Sleep with the Dead is referential to The Great Gatsby, yet is something fully new and itself. Maybe because it's set in a wholly pessimistic era, far from the glinting glamor of 1922; the reader ironically knows that the carnage of WWI is about to be repeated on a greater scale, and Nick doesn't seem like he would be all that surprised to learn what is on the horizon.

All in all, an absolutely stunning and marvelous little book -- it has so much packed into it, that I fully anticipate needing to do at least 1-2 more re-reads to unpack all my thoughts. I think it's also possible to read this as a stand-alone, though reading The Chosen and the Beautiful would definitely enrich your experience. I plan to pre-order a copy for myself and recommend a purchase for my library.