Don't Sleep with the Dead extends the characters of The Chosen and the Beautiful, focusing more on Nick. But Nick isn't really the Nick we think he is.

Nick is just going through the motions of life years after he published his book on Daisy and Gatsby. As WWII looms on the horizon, strange and weird things begin to happen in New York.

Like Vo's previous book, I just couldn't get into the story. Maybe a fully focused re-read is what I need. Her writing stands out with how dense she creates her sentences to communicate beautiful analogies. How she orchestrates her words is quite fascinating.

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, Macmillan Audio, and Tor for an advance copy of the audiobook.

This said it was a standalone companion novella that you could read without The Chosen and the Beautiful and I’m undecided. Added context would have made this much easier on me. Nick was already an unreliable narrator so having an unreliable view of the surrounding events made it hard to lock down what was happening.

The narration was wonderful though. I’m not familiar with Greg D. Barnett yet and he felt perfect for this.

Of all of Fitzgerald's writings, the one that I was always least captivated by was Gatsby. Yet, I was piqued by the description of this novella. Fitzgerald's Nick was in such awe of Gatsby, the Buchanans, and all of their crowd; Nghi Vo's Nick is a bit more jaded with the aftermath. This revisit, for it is not a retelling, leaves the glitz and glamour of Jazz Age and shifts to a dark grim era before the second world war. The ghosts of the past come out to haunt our narrator in this eerily delicious revisit that was even more enchanting as an audiobook. This is the first time that I have read anything from Nghi Vo, but now I want to read more.
I received advanced access to this audiobook thru NetGalley (for which I want to thank NetGalley and the publisher, Macmillan Audio) for an honest review. The opinion expressed here is my own.