lenorayoder's reviews
139 reviews

i liked the setting and some of the art but it just felt really unpolished. all of the exposition is really clunky and the plot is basic and predictable. i know that this is a middle grade book but i still expect more and think kids deserve more. 

Really slow and the creature world-building felt like it had weak spots this time around. The first book was slow but had a setting I didn’t mind dawdling in. This time the setting felt less interesting or fleshed out. I also had some real issues with Matthew and Diana’s relationship with him so all the time we spent with them and the scenery was unwelcome. 

I really liked this book! It was a bit of an odd reading experience, because once the romance gets going it starts to feel like a different and slightly worse book. I loved the first 15% or so of this book and thought it would be a five star read. At that point it becomes clear that Diana and Matthew's romance is going to progress a lot more quickly than I thought, and we start to run into a lot of romance novel cliches. This would have normally merited a 3 star rating, but I think Harkness' world building manages to make the cliches make enough since that I'll forgive their presence, even if I think the book would be better without them and with a slower relationship build. Diana's absolute denial

and spellbinding

make the different tone of the beginning of the book make sense, but I think it's a shame that the beginning feels so much better than the rest of the book. 

I loved all of the world building, and I think it helps the romance and certain plot elements seem less ridiculous. The fact that the relationship we see in this book takes place over

40 days

seems stupid, but Harkness makes it clear that Diana and Matthew are not human, and holding them to human standards is a mistake. These are creatures who can literally experience

love at first sight, as shown by Diana's parents. That's not a dramatization, sometimes it actually happens

. That said, I still think the romance isn't well-written, and is the weakest part of the book by far. Diana could seem like a Mary Sue, but you have to remember that her

mother, Rebecca, seems to have seen her future before even conceiving her. Diana was basically born and raised to create some serious change in this world

. I mean, someone has to do it, right? Of course that's going to be the person an author writes about.

This book was consistently engaging and enjoyable to read. I was constantly theorizing and asking questions. I'm looking forward to getting more answers in the next books, and I know I will because this is clearly a planned out series that's laying groundwork with this first book. I wish the romance felt as polished as the beginning of the book made me think it would be, but I had a fun time and was never bored. 

Final thoughts: I love the Bishop house, we stan characters getting privacy! I hope someone kills

Gerbert dead soon

, what the fuck was that with

Juliette and how many people has he done that to

??? I don't get why everyone was alarmed at the idea of

Matt killing Satu. Like she's going around deeply torturing witches and who knows what else? Sometimes when you behave like that people kill you

! Agatha being the only decent

member of the Congregation

we've seen makes me curious to find out if it's always been

corrupt/fucked up

, or if that's something that developed over time. Don't like the whole

bloodline = power

thing even though it's kind of central to the plot. Given the timeline of these books I think it would be very funny if Diana

gets back to the present "quickly" enough that Hamish never sends her letter backing out of the conference,

and the entire series ends with her giving the keynote presentation she started this book being stressed out about. Perfect ending.

Really liked this! I think the framing device works well here, and allows for closing lines that feel appropriately spooky. I will say that this is less a novella, and more like a small collection of very related ghost stories. Because of that this "book" doesn't have a traditional story structure, it's more like Laura's story, which contains the story Spielsdorf tells about himself and Bertha, the story of the Karnstein estate, the story of the Baron and his ancestor, and sort of the story of the doctor. I think because of the short length of the book and the framing device this works, but you should expect this to not really be a novella going into it.

The scenery descriptions do a lot to set the mood. I love how gothic this story feels. Spielsdorf's description of

Carmilla preying on Bertha is so genuinely creepy and well-written.

Some lines hit really well (

"We now laughed together over our momentary horrors."

)and make the whole book kind of feel like a campfire ghost story which I like. I like that the book kind of has the

Baron clarify the vampire lore

at the end, I think it makes sense given the framing device and clears up any confusion the reader might have had without cluttering up the main story. For vampire lore, I love the idea of a

vampire having an obsession over a victim that they nurture and draw out, while simultaneously gorging themselves on victims they don't care for to tide themselves over

. I also think the whole

'sleeping in a coffin floating in blood seven inches deep with your eyes wide open, heart beating, looking and being very alive and not pale or anything'

thing is a great image and absolutely needs to be in a vampire movie. So gross and fun. In general I like that Carmilla doesn't seem

dead at all - she's not pale, her heart beats, a doctor examining her doesn't find anything unusual - it's just that she has to drink blood and return to her coffin to rest everyday and has other specific traits that make it clear she's not really human.

 

I think the

Baron not seeking out Carmilla's grave and killing her before the events of the book

is a bit of a plot hole, but overall I think the story is good, an appropriate length, makes for good campfire story material, and has fun lore. Worth the read!

cute and fun read. very predictable, though there was an aspect of the ending that pleasantly surprised me. i think i would have liked this better if we had gotten actual

platonic boy-girl friendship representation, and if the main character had broken up with her boyfriend to do some single self-discovery instead of just switching to dating her best friend.

The not-like-other girls mindset was cringe but realistic. I continue to have a soft spot for time loop books <3

love love love perfect! absolutely flew by. love the art. love nick deepening his friendships! this one focuses a lot on nick and charlie but even in the background it’s so nice to see how all their friends are developing. i’m happy they’re both

in such a good place individually and in their relationship by the end of the book,

that had made me a bit anxious in past volumes. tori!

Overall, this is a high three stars for me. There’s a lot to love here, but there are also some significant problems. If a book that I really want to read takes me 19 days to get through (most of those being swallowed by the middle of the book), I just can’t say that I really liked it. 

First the pros: Dracula has the makings of a fascinating villain, evidenced by the many adaptations he’s inspired. There are a few moments that are fairly chilling, but I think his real strength is that every interaction has a creepy and/or disturbing undertone that makes him compelling. And

buying a home next to an asylum

is SO smart.

Count De Ville

made me CACKLE, what a dramatic bitch. I love all of the vampire lore, and seeing how much has changed and stayed the same around vampire (and werewolf!) mythos since this book was published. I’m especially curious about all the rose stuff, I’ve never heard that before. The idea that vampirism is almost a trance state that happens

more and more often before death makes it permanent

is such a good idea and works really well here. 

I love Jonathan’s journals, and how much of a wife guy he is. Which makes sense because Mina is amazing, and I was so relieved when we first switched to her journals and she was an interesting character. Loved when Jonathan threw some serious shade at Van Helsing in his journal

for making Mina upset (“with actually a smile”)

. I found Seward’s

proposal

incredibly endearing. I love the weird dynamic that Morris, Seward, and Arthur have in combination with Lucy and

without her

- those boys are in looooove. I think Lucy SHOULD be allowed to marry all three of them. The whole

vampire hunting

crew is a little stupid (why aren’t they all wearing crucifixes 24/7 at the very least?), but honestly I think that’s realistic. Like Jonathan making a will

in case he dies vampire hunting

and the only beneficiaries being members

of the vampire hunting party

? Iconic. What an idiot. I wonder if he ever

grew that gray hair back out

.

Some of the writing hits really hard - what comes to mind immediately is the description of Lucy’s

evil vampire face, especially the part about Medusa’s snakes

, and Jonathan and Seward’s early diary entries. 

The cons: Dracula is absent for a lot of the book, and when we see him again he’s

not as impressive as he was

in Jonathan’s early diary entries. I don’t like that a lot of his character is interpreted through Van Helsing. I don’t think we’re supposed to see Van Helsing as an unreliable narrator, which is frustrating as both a missed opportunity and because the way he deduces Dracula’s motivations and actions is so flawed that he shouldn’t end up being right. Also all the “child-brain” and criminal determinism was problematic, weird, and really undermined Dracula’s scare factor. The vampire lore also gets a little muddled once Van Helsing starts interpreting. Vampires

resting in holy ground and fixing that by making the ground more holy

was just plain stupid. The

three-foot-long stake

made me laugh and I doubt that was the intention.

For an epistolary novel I don’t think different character’s writing varies enough in tone, and some of the dialogue feels unrealistic, especially characters writing dialogue with accents and poor grammar into their journals - it was irritating to read for no reason, like who does that. Steward’s diary and Jonathan’s early diary feel mostly realistic, but the rest of the time they don’t feel enough like actual entries for me. Also, the in-universe explanation for why this book exists makes all of the really slow parts (and there are SLOW PARTS) make no sense, and I resented those slogs more once I read the explanation. Either filler should be cut out, or the filler should form an actual subplot. There were chunks of the book that took me days and days to read because they just weren’t compelling.

Mina is an interesting character with a lot of potential but Stoker is clearly sexist and that sexism really mars her, and makes a mess of Lucy (and her mom!). Hated how Van Helsing talked about both of them but especially Mina, ugh. Renfield feels like a lost character - it was never really clear what was going on with him, and I think that needed to be clearer with a better resolution, or he needed to be in less of the book. Van Helsing really rubbed me the wrong way, especially with the constant monologuing. I’m surprised he’s become such a focus of adaptations.  

The action sequences are all lackluster, and a lot of them are the result of pretty contrived plotting (like the

keeping things from Mina, then not, then back again

).  Overall I think this book mostly suffers from being a little too long. Some plot points get stretched too far, some themes are poorly defined, and a lot of characters are underdeveloped. If Bram Stoker had had a good 20th or 21st century editor I think this book would have been four or even five stars, but alas. I think the fact that almost every adaptation varies wildly from the source material kind of speaks for itself.

Nice prose and it’s interesting to read this story from one unreliable perspective. The characters are intriguing and feel like real people, but because of the drabble-y nature of the book it never feels like we know them super well. We also never become immersed in any one narrative. The story overall is just a bit too disconnected/ungrounded for me. 

Competently plotted and written, but nothing special. In fact, a little boring. Rose makes for a good villain, but none of the characters are given much room to breathe, including her.  The scenario the protagonist sets up for the finale of the book is pretty stupid given the resources at his disposal. Didn’t get why characters in the year 2000 are so scandalized by a 30 year old man wearing a singlet. 

This was okay - not terrible but not very good either. I think this is a good premise, but the pacing is really strange. There’s also an over-reliance on miscommunication, it causes pretty much all of the big and small obstacles/problems the characters face. I think the characters are also underdeveloped - by the end of the book I still didn’t really feel like I knew them, and it felt like all of their depth was told to me, not shown.