A fun book to get lost in. Not for those who are fans of historical accuracy. I enjoyed the references to traveller culture immensely and would've almost preferred more focus on that life than having vampires bought in.

The Deathless Girls by Kiran Millwood Hargrave is an imagining of the story of the three brides of Dracula. This immediately piqued my interest because I’d already read and enjoyed Dracula, and I certainly appreciate a good vampire story thanks to the Twilight saga. This book, although vampires are a theme here, is on a different level though. It is cleverly crafted, with storytelling that is both rich and delicate.

I thought the idea of focusing on the three brides of Dracula was an admirable premise. Characters that had not yet had their past explained, but ones you had already sensed had an equally rich story to tell. Kiran certainly stays true to the blurb and delivers us a unique gothic tale, involving a sisterly bond amidst a great tragedy and future uncertainty. The book was full of gothic atmosphere, but at the same time felt modern and fresh, whereas you could almost believe this was not a tale set many years ago.

At times, the strong female characters dwarfed the male characters in this book somewhat - but not to an extent that the book is written just for the feminist story tag. I genuinely enjoyed the pace and dialogue between the two sisters and the other girls. Kiran also does an excellent job writing the romantic storyline between two female characters. At no point did this feel forced and added for effect - rather it felt like a natural sub-plot of the story and came across as both credible and beautiful.

My only criticism is the ending felt slightly rushed. I expected a bit more detail surrounding the other bride before the inevitable happened. Or, is this purposely done - will a second book will be written? I hope so. I certainly think there is more to be told, and for me, Kiran has certainly earned the authority over the three brides of Dracula and their future.

This book was a truly praiseworthy read and one I shall recommend. Not just to young adult readers - but adult readers such as myself, too.

This is a retelling of a classic tale. The closeness of the traveller community and their deeply held beliefs is an integral part of the story. It is also a coming of age tale told against a background of cruelty and fear. You are gripped by the sisters' story and Lil's brave decisions while she comes to terms with her feelings for Mira.

I was really excited to read this especially as it is an origin story of the three vampire brides in Dracula. It started off really well and I really began to care for the two sisters who were the main characters - however as I read more I became a little bit bored with the storyline and it was quite slow in terms of plot and action and not as scary as I was hoping.
The villains were also one-dimensional caricatures and I could not take the book seriously because of this. The writing was good in parts but the plot and characterisation could have been much better in my opinion. It was however a quick and easy read.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

This feminist retelling of the Dracula story focuses on two of the brides of Dracula, reimagining them as twin Traveller girls who are enslaved and then eventually make their way to Dracul's castle. Despite not specifying a time or place for the narrative, it nevertheless felt real, with the use of languages helping to cement this. I also liked the relationship between Kizzy and Lil - there was tension there which also felt very realistic for a twin relationship. The story was engaging and I was always curious to see what happened next. It was also nice to have an LGBTQ+ element to the plot, without it being overly stressed or heavy handed. The only thing I was disappointed about was that there wasn't more time spent at Dracul's castle in the conclusion - the last part felt very quick and I just wish the author had lingered more over the details or given more time to the aftermath section.

There seems to be an never-ending supply of books, particularly in YA with new novels being spun out of famous fictional stories. "The Deathless Girls" is a YA version of one of these and is quirky in that it builds a story out of very minor female vampire characters in Stoker's "Dracula". In actual fact, they are so minor I think they only featured in a few background scenes. So it's an interesting, but very inevitable story, as the reader knows what is going to happen in the end. You do not have to have read "Dracula" to enjoy this though, the Count is barely in the book until the latter stages, although his mystique and reputation preempt his eventual appearance.

The story with twins, Lil and Kizzy, seeing their home burned and their family slaughtered and they are then sold as slaves. Much of the novel is about their progression to eventually end up in the clutches of the Count. Teen readers may find this a tad slow, but both girls were engaging lead characters, with Lil narrating the story. Her sister always being the more outgoing and popular of the two. The story puts much focus on the origins of the girls, who are gypsies and are looked down upon most of the others and culturally much information is provided on their background and Lil follows her sister who is taken to Dracula's castle first.

This was an engaging historical fiction novel which wisely spent more time on the girls than on the vampire. Although I would not necessarily call it a horror novel, it will probably have more appeal to girls than boys and has much to say about how women and gypsies were treated in earlier centuries.

I will most certainly be buying this book for my school library.

The myth of Dracula is fascinating, and to go beyond the main character is particularly interesting. In this story, Hargrave focuses on what happened to perpetuate the story of Dracula - the women behind the man, in a manner of speaking.
We begin our story with twins, Lil and Kizzy, seeing their home burned and their family slaughtered. The girls and children of the village are taken as part of a retinue to be sold to the various Counts who rule the land. As twins, Kizzy and Lil are in high demand.
We follow them as they’re taken to the castle,their new home, and put to training. The life is brutal, but even within these walls there are hints of potential happiness.
Sadly this is destroyed when Lil is betrayed. Kizzy is then taken and Lil begins a perilous journey to rescue her sister.
As she journeys across the country to the land ruled by the man known as the Dragon, Lil starts to understand some of the rumours circulating about him. She learns he is able to turn people into Strigoi, and that his skills go far beyond anything they are familiar with.
Much as she wants to rescue her sister, Lil doesn’t bank on how someone used to being manipulated might find the lure of power too promising to give up. And so we learn of the origins of the Brides of Dracula. Hargrave gives a very human face to characters that are always portrayed as inhuman.
A huge thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an advance copy in exchange for my thoughts.

The Deathless Girls by Kiran Millwood Hargrave is part of Bellatrix, a new collection of gripping, powerful and diverse Young Adult novels written by leading female voices and focusing on the untold, mis-told or unheard stories of women in literature. The Deathless Girls tells the interesting tale of two of the so-called 'brides' of Dracula in the classic by Bram Stoker. The whole concept of taking characters with no real backstory and giving them agency sounded fascinating so I leapt at the chance to review this book.

In terms of the story, the overall vibe is exactly what you would expect from a Young Adult novel. It's written in an accessible, engaging and relatively fast paced manner. If you like YA novels, from the outset you are bound to find a lot of enjoyment here.

The story centres on two of the three brides of Dracula, here named Kizzy and Lil who are twins. These characters are Travellers, part of the maligned culture that has been persecuted throughout Europe for centuries. There are two aspects that really appealed to me in this book. Firstly, by choosing a persistently harassed and abused minority group, we are treated to a unique perspective that needs to be heard. It's not hard to leap from their experiences to the experiences of persecuted people around the world today.

Secondly, I really appreciated the exploration of queer female identities in the novel, as well as what it means to be a young woman. This is more important to note when you consider Millwood Hargrave's words in the Author's Note at the beginning of the book. She writes: "Dracula became a perfect vehicle for the Victorians to examine their neuroses around sex, gender, and sexuality, at a safe, cloaked distance. Women, of course, bore the brunt of this..." I love that this project has given Millwood Hargrave to explore the sex, gender and sexuality for a whole new generation in a way that was not possible in Stoker's Victorian era.

I am a big fan of any project that is giving women a voice and I particularly love that this book has imagined the untold stories of characters in Stoker's famous novel. It's a quick and pleasant read and I hope that it inspires the younger readers who pick it up.

Wow.

I have been coveting this book for a while. . I’m familiar with Kiran Milwood Hargrave’s Middle-grade adventures, which have all been received to great acclaim and she herself is an absolute pleasure as a person.

The Deathless Girls is the fabulous origin story of the brides of Dracula, intertextually referencing Bram Stoker's masterpiece. They encounter Jonathan Harker when he falls asleep on a couch, after he was warned explicitly to sleep in no room but his own.

The plot certainly carries something darker with it, up to its twisted fate — and there is no mistaking that this is Young Adult fiction. The world building is, as expected, very strong, and the characters each shine in their own way. I don’t wish to spoil too much.

Lil and Kizzy, twins born under a blood moon, are travellers, their lives brimming with fate, dancing bears, and a wonderful sort of freedom. They are captured, mis-treated and separated, having to come together to save each other in the end.

One thing I really nice was the featured romance in the book. It was really nice to see an LGBT* character, where their defining trait isn’t that they are LGBT*. In fact, it’s barely even mentioned. It’s just there. Naturally.

So indeed. This book features a “classic YA” lesbian romance and it was something that resonated with me mentally and emotionally, particularly towards the end. The prose, as usual with Hargrave, was beautiful, filled with descriptions of castles, twisty woods, and tables laden with platters, in classic fairytale style. There was darkness, but also a tenderness I did not expect when I first picked up the book. It’s certainly a story filled with mythology and legend.

Beautiful.

This is the book that will inject new life into the vampire novel. It’s so beautifully written that I had to stop hi-lighting text. It’s style and voice gives you a rich experience as life as a servant/slave.
There is scope for a sequel, but ends in such a fulfilling and satisfying way that it isn’t needed. It’s perfect for anyone wanting to dip their toes into historical fantasy.
TW:
- there is a scene of attempted rape and allusions to an almost sex slave lifestyle.
- a descriptive scene of genitalia examination in relation to sex slavery and sex trafficking.

For me, I felt it was well handled without being gratuitous and historically accurate, however it may trigger other people.

The Deathless Girls is a YA retelling, or prequel to, Bram Stoker's Dracula. It centres around the "brides" of Dracula and fleshes them out, giving them a past and characterisation all of their own.

To be perfectly honest, The Deathless Girls wasn't quite what I was expecting it to be -- or at least not the first half of the book. Simply because it features characters that come from Dracula, I was expecting something more gothic and more or Dracula-esque. It does get there, and it definitely has some dark moments, but the larger part of the story isn't quite the grandiose, gothic type of horror I was expecting. It's a more realistic, drudgery type of horror as the girls are taken captive and forced to accept what it would be to live a life in slavery. Despite this expectations-issue, I really liked the book.

The Deathless Girls is the first book I've read by Kiran Millwood Hargrave and I thought her writing was absolutely beautiful. She manages to create rich, lush feel even when she's describing quite mundane, depressing situations.

As I said, the vampire aspect of the story isn't quite as prevalent as I thought it would be, especially not in the beginning. Obviously, once you know that it is inspired by Dracula, the reader is aware very early on what's going on and what danger the girls are in. But the sisters themselves don't really understand the full gravity of the situation until quite late on, so there is a kind of tension there as you you see the things that they don't.

For the large part of the book what's far more important than vampires, Dracula etc. is the bond between the two sisters. I thought this sibling dynamic felt incredibly realistic.

We're in the head of Lil, who is very much the slightly-less-attractive, slightly-less-beloved sister of the two. Hargrave really conveys the sense of what it's like to play second fiddle to a sibling. Lil is absolutely devoted to Kizzy and nearly every chance she takes it on behalf of her sister, but there are still moments where she's resentful, or where she feels like she can't quite live up to her sister's potential.

At the same time, as much as you can tell it Kizzy loves Lil, she can be slightly arrogant, slightly vain and slightly selfish. It's a great character study, and really seems to achieve what the author set out to do, which was to give the bride characters -- that feature so briefly in the original novel -- a sense of person and agency.

There's a sort of dread, a creeping menace, threaded throughout the book because the reader is aware of where the story has to end up. I did think the pacing was a tad off -- the ending came together a little abruptly for my personal taste and there were a few things that I thought would happen that didn't -- but The Deathless Girls is beautifully written. It deals very elegantly with the prejudices that would be experienced by the traveller community and by queer women while fleshing out the characters and paying homage to the original text.

So confession; I have not read Bram Stoker's Dracula and so I went into this novel with no knowledge of how it could end. The Deathless Girls is a feminist prequel to Dracula, it's the origin story of Dracula's tragic brides. This was a novel I never knew I needed until I was pages deep and couldn't stop. I devoured this dark and twisted fantasy tale in a day!

We follow the journey of twin sisters, Lil and Kizzy as they are brutally stolen from their idyllic home of travellers and forced to become slaves in a castle, to serve without question and without freedom. Soon Kizzy is stolen away again, she's to be presented to the Dragon, the terrifying figure in the many haunting legends told around fires in hushed voices.

This novel just kept getting darker and darker! The world building was phenomenal, I have never read anything by this author but as soon as I'd finished this novel I was searching the library catalogue for more. It was an intoxicating read, I was fully hooked on our beloved characters and the paths they were on.

Lil embarks on a perilous journey to rescue her sister. It's a story of hope and loyalty, sisterhood and bravery. Along her way she finds herself a couple of companions, one being a servant girl like herself. Lil is confused by her newfound feelings towards Mira, feelings she has never felt before. I loved reading about Lil's self discovery amongst the dangers and adventures of this story.

The Deathless Girls includes such detailed Romanian culture and language interwoven with a classic story. It's novel about the sensitivity, the strength, the determination and the compassion of women. I never thought I would be recommending a vampire book to anyone ever again but I honestly do recommend this beautiful book to everyone!

The Deathless Girls is a re-imagining (of sorts) of Dracula telling the tale of how Dracula’s “brides” came to be. Written as part of the Bellatrix series (YA feminist retellings of classic literature) the story follows twins, Lil and Kizzy, two traveler girls, who are kidnapped from their settlement and sold into slavery to a local lord.

Firstly, I want to make clear that you do not have to have read Dracula to understand or appreciate this story (I haven’t read it!). Dracula’s presence in the novel is that of a background figure, rarely appearing within the novel itself; this book is not about Dracula, it is about Lil and Kizzy!

As you would expect from Karen Millwood Hargrave the writing is exquisite and evocative. She brings the world, along with its horrors, alive for the reader. She is also not afraid to show the horror. Kiz and Lil go through a series of terrible experiences that are brutal. But the violence and horror is never gratuitous.

She also does a great job of building the relationship and characters of the two sisters and ultimately, showing why they make the choices they do at the end. It is not romanticised and my favourite scene in the book may well be a conversation between the two sisters at the end of the book where Kizzy talks about power, choice and freedom.

The only thing I’m not sure was done as well was the relationship between Lil and Mira. I loved the idea of their relationship, but felt it happened too quickly within the story. Given the circumstances they find themselves in, makes it more understandable, but more development would have been good. That being said, this is a small gripe and the book is excellent overall.

Definitely a book I’ll be adding to my collection.

The story of Dracula's brides, so often ignored and overlooked in most versions of the story.


Dracula himself doesn't show up until almost the end, and then only has one scene. This isn't his story; this is the story of the girls he takes, the monstrous choices forced upon them, and the things they have to do to survive. It's about thwarted love, both romantic and familial, and about making your own fate when things are against you. A strange read; I can't say I enjoyed it, but I'm glad I read it.


Receiving an ARC did not affect my review in any way.

This was a masterful blend of the gothic, historical and folklore, telling the back story of (some) of the brides of Dracula. It’s not really a retelling so please don’t expect that going in. Dracul does make an appearance much later but the Strigoi and Vampyre are mostly expressed as constant low level dread throughout the book. There is little action as the girls (Twins in this case) acting as vampyres. In the original Bram Stoker classic, by the way, the three brides are a mother and her two daughters but perhaps that would have entered waters too unsavoury for a YA book. It did jar with my head canon however and that always makes a book a difficult sell. A lot of the book is devoted to the girls’ back story – much kitchen work etc – so don’t expect a classic vampire novel. However it was interesting and the author’s prose is lush and lyrical. One for vampire completists or those who like a slower literary tale.

The Deathless Girls, Kiran Millwood Hargrave's YA debut, creates an origin tale for Dracula's brides. Lil and Kizzy are twins, being raised by their mother, a bear trainer, in a Traveller community of painted caravans. On the cusp of their seventeenth birthday, the girls' lives are shattered when a band of the Settled, who view Travellers as disposable commodities, massacre their community and enslave the survivors.

By taking a female perspective - we see the events through Lil's eyes - and focusing on a community who are 'othered', Millwood Hargrave opens up many topics that (sadly) have relevance in contemporary society: racism; prejudice; the uneven distribution of power in society; white male privilege.

This 'vampire story' harnesses the gothic to tell a coming of age tale which highlights female empowerment. Millwood Hargrave shows how violent, unjust events shape each sister, form their worldview, and affect their life choices. Each has to decide how she will fight back and claw strength from tragedy. Can Lil and Kizzy gain freedom without losing their true selves? Without giving away any spoilers, I'm still pondering the choice they faced, and how each sister comes to her decision from a different standpoint and for a different reason.

Family ties, grief, romantic love, loyalty, sisterhood, vengeance, this is an entertaining and thought-provoking story, and another example of Millwood Hargrave's skill at conjuring imagery - especially when describing the natural world.

Thanks for the chance to read the ebook.

An intriguing tale of family bonds and sisterly love and that isn't just all blood and fangs and immortals.

I always enjoy the opportunity to look more closely at minor characters within an established text so I was very interested to see this re-visioning of Dracula's "dark sisters" as fully rounded characters. I'm not generally a heavy reader of fantasy but the strength of the characters and the recognisable reality of the discrimination against the Travellers held my interest despite the vampire element!

Overall I found this an absorbing and enjoyable read with memorable scenes; I found the castle kitchen scenes particularly well drawn and detailed.

The twist of a lesbian relationship between Lil and Mira was an interesting development and Kizzy's reaction to her sister's new companion was very realistic and believable.

Because of the set up at the beginning of this being the story of the "dark sisters", there some inevitability to the ending however the author has retained some unpredictability around the other characters and their survival to keep the reader guessing. Personally, I did find the ending slightly too quick and unsatisfying in comparison to the rest of the book.

This book is one in the new Bellatrix imprint of feminist retellings of classical tales for young adult readers. Kiran Millwood Hargrave has chosen to rewrite Dracula, focusing on the so-called Brides of Dracula and imagining them as teenage Traveller twins who become vampyres ' by their own choice' in order to have power, escape their fate as enslaved Travellers and avoid separation. I found aspects of the tale interesting, particularly the way in which the author captured the centuries old prejudice against Travellers and the links between power and gender. However I found some of the more 'adventurous' events of the narrative were rather over-simplified. This is marketed as a young adult's book but I am not sure that the author has fully addressed her market here. Some of the narrative seems aimed at younger readers while some of the themes explored are certainly more adult. I received a complimentary ARC of this book from the publisher via Net Galley in return for an honest review. I think the central notion of the series is a good one and look forward to reading more retellings.

Kiran Millwood Hargrave is a truly gifted storyteller. I barely paused reading this dark gothic delight. The relationship between Kizzy and Lil is complex and true, which makes Lil’s ultimatum at the end really powerful to read. I really enjoyed this feminist reimagining of Dracula’s brides and the lyrical style of prose is tender and moving.