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.