This book was a great addition to the universe Vo created in The Chosen and the Beautiful. I loved the dark urban settings, and the suspenseful chase that happens throughout the book. The ending was a great payoff. My only wish is that this was a full length book (because it was so good I wanted more!)

4 stars

This is a standalone novella - billed that way and technically formed that way - but readers will enjoy this so much more after having read _The Chosen and the Beautiful_, which is an excellent book, so no fretting necessary. If you're considering reading the novella and haven't devoured the novel yet start from the top.

The novella connects readers with a couple of ol' favorites from earlier classic and Vo texts, and it's clear immediately that neither has forgotten their past. In fact, the past *haunts* them...literally.

I absolutely loved _The Chosen..._ and was thrilled to see this addendum. It's very satisfying in many ways. As a greedy reader, my sole substantial complaint is that I wanted more. Vo does have quite the track record of killer novellas, so I'm hoping we'll get exactly that in future installments.

It's always a blast to go where Vo takes us, and this quick but engaging read is no exception. I'm always looking forward to the creative heights this author will expose us to next.

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

I went into this novella fairly blind. I just saw that it was a standalone companion novella and took that as enough to get started. I'm honestly a little bit grateful and a little bit chagrined at said choice. This was the fantastical and sad sequel to The Great Gatsby that I didn't know was needed. Nick Carraway will always be an unreliable narrator and he did not disappoint here.

Half the time I was lost on what Nick was trying to accomplish, and the other times I was right beside him just trying to find the truth between all the excuses he tried to give. The prose was so lovely and flowing that regardless of Nick's unreliability, I was thoroughly invested.

I do think I would have been better served to have read The Chosen and the Beautiful first, if only so I might have had more information on how this world actually works in terms of magic. This is not to say that the world-building is lacking. But as far as said world-building goes, this surely does read like a sequel and we're expected to know. As far as my rating of 4 stars goes, that's the only reason it's not rated 5 stars instead. If standalone was not put into the synopsis, and I would have read The Chosen and the Beautiful prior to this, it would have been a total knockout.

That all being said, this only made me want to dive further into Nghi Vo's other books. Because if I could be blown away by a story packed into 110(ish) pages, then what can she do with more?

Nobody does urban fantasy like Nghi Vo!!! The Chosen and the Beautiful was a fantastic Gatsby retelling, and Don't Sleep with the Dead carries over the noir dark urban fantasy and ADDS to it. You don't need to read The Chosen and the Beautiful to understand this book, but I think it's a disservice to yourself to skip on a great book that will add some much-needed context.

Don't Sleep with the Dead follows Nick Carraway 17 years after the events of The Chosen and the Beautiful. Starting off, I loved reading a first-person narrative from Nick's perspective! Can we trust anything he's saying? Maybe not, but he believes it. A good unreliable narrator along with the noir fantasy elements gave the novella a hazy feel.

The book is sad, desperate, and full of yearning. I loved every second of it. 4.5/5 stars

Oh Gatsby with demons... I'm glad I could return to the world that had captured my heart so in Nghi Vo's first novel. Good twists and rather romantic.

Some years after the events of The Chosen and the Beautiful--or The Great Gatsby, which in this world is a semi-factual memoir by one Nick Carraway--dead men from the First World War are appearing on the streets of Paris, as early harbingers of a Second, and Nick is trying to figure out whether he's a real person. The case against it is that he is made out of paper. The case in favor has two parts: the man he was cut out to replace was an awful human being, and there are devils around who seem perfectly willing to bargain for his soul.

This novella is a game with voice, atmosphere, and untrustworthy narration that is going exactly where the title warns one shouldn't. Vo's writing always shines with details that give you a sense of other stories happening just outside the frame. Given the opportunity, I might have chosen to follow one of those stories--the Saint Paul cousin who either disappeared or transformed to someone three inches shorter, the ghosts of the trenches in Paris, the demon who appears as a wax model of a secretary--rather than pursuing Nick's particular charming brand of self-destruction. But that's always the question with Nick Carraway's stories: was the tragedy inevitable, or is he simply very good at not happening to act?

At this point, I don't need a synopsis to sign up for whatever Nghi Vo writes. Don't Sleep with the Dead was an eerie romp through the jazz age, and I'm very grateful for the opportunity to read it.

Nghi Vo has a way of writing where the atmosphere has weight. Yes, this is a story of grief, and mysetery, and darkness... but what really stood out for me was the world! This is a setting we know- a city we could actually visit, in a time we could read about in history books. But once again Vo adds a twists that makes it just off-center of the world we know. It's dark and twisted, but we can still relate to the characters and their struggles. At this point I'll read anything Vo writes.

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.