DNF @ 43%

This was one of my most anticipated releases of 2024... give me anything vampiric / camilla retelling / gothic and I'll be there expecting to absolutely adore it. One thing I cannot fault about this, was the atmosphere. The gothic setting was dreamy and was exactly what I would expect from a novel like this, however when it came to the characters and plot, I felt as if it could've been 100 pages shorter and would've portrayed the story perfectly. This unfortunately started to drag slightly for me and as it is not the shortest read, I struggled in wanting to finish it.

In Lucy Undying, Kiersten White gives Lucy Westenra, one of Dracula's first victims in the classic novel, her agency back.

The story intermingles journal entries of a young Lucy with transcripts of therapy sessions and a modern-day narrative perspective, in which our protagonist Iris travels to London to try and escape from her family and her expected future as a pawn figurehead in their health empire. I liked that the novel mirrored the epistolary format of the classic and very much enjoyed reading about how Lucy adapted to life as a vampire and how her fate has been linked to Dracula's, alternately trying to find and escape him.

I enjoyed the nods to the classic and the sapphic twist to the story - definitely on to pick up if you were outraged at how Stoker's tale discarded Lucy.

This story is a spin on a Dracula retelling with characters well known by Dracula fans.
For me I did not enjoy the historical element of this but that is definitely a me problem.
The story is engaging and has all the elements that a Dracula fan would appreciate. I will say there are moments where the pacing feels off.

I have been anticipating this read for such a long time and i finally got to it.

This was very lyrically written and not what i expected- in a good way!

Absolutely devoured it, beautiful.

Dracula but make it gay!

The first half of this book is dreadful to read. It’s so boring and nothing much happens. The second half is where everything gets super interesting and cool. And being such a long book, that first half is a killer. But please stick out for the second half (if you have the time to). It’s so worth the read. The twists and revelations in the second half took me by surprise and I enjoyed each and every one of them.

As for the characters, I loved both Lucy and Iris. Some people seem to love one and hate the other, but I really enjoyed them both. It’s been a very long time since I read Dracula, and I liked how this book focuses so much on Lucy and her story as I always felt it was lacking in the original. Lucy Undying added the right layers to keep her story fresh and interesting.

The setting itself is really intriguing. The world is gothic while remaining present day. There’s just something so atmospheric about the writing style.

I think this book is perfect for those who haven’t read Dracula in a while or those who’ve never read it to begin with. I believe a lot of classic enthusiasts won’t enjoy this as much as someone who’s just reading this book for fun.

This is poetic, gothic, and long. This is a sapphic story. I didn’t feel connected to the characters or story but this was not bad. It could appeal to readers who like sapphic romance with gothic twists. Thanks to Publisher.

Not as dark as I expected from the awesome book cover design but an enjoyable read.

Loved the gothic, sapphic vampire vibes of this. Lucy was an interesting character and I found I read through this quickly to see what happened next.

Overall some interesting twists on a classic vampiric story with added sapphic romance.

Sadly ,I've had to do a soft dnf for now and come back to the book in the future. I think the writing was very good. Based on what I've read so far I would still recommend this to people I know would love this type of story.

That was absolutely mesmerising! The story of Lucy Westenra is told through her diary entries during the events of Dracula and therapy session recordings that detail what happened to her in the decades that followed. These are seamlessly interwoven with a present-day perspective from another character in Lucy’s house. The writing is great and structure brilliantly crafted, and I adored all the distinct voices and sapphic touch.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for the digital ARC it has not affected my honest review.

Dracula is one of the greatest books I've ever read and I had such high hopes for Lucy Undying. Unfortunately this book wasn't for me, I couldn't move past the voice of the main character and struggled with the storyline.

Thank you NetGalley and Del Rey for giving me an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I thought this was a really interesting retelling of Dracula, even though it took a while to understand what was happening as jumped around a lot. The characters were likeable and did have some depth to them which I enjoyed.

The plot itself was not particularly memorable, and for me this book didn’t stand out massively. Towards the end I was just looking forward to reading something else.

I was really interested in the idea of a sapphic retelling of the female vampires that were clearly present within Draculas little harem, but were mostly hidden. And I found the book to be a brilliant foray into this theme; one that is well executed. Lucy's relationship with her therapist is one that I particularly enjoyed and couldn't help be amused by the things she disclosed!

The writing felt a little dry in places and it feel like there were some areas that could easily have been completely removed, BUT, on the whole I quite enjoyed the book. You can't do 3.5 stars on here, but that is my rating.

This was an interesting story!! I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this one! I would recommend this book.

Amazing dark and creepy book. I loved seeing Dracula's story in a way from one of the wive's pov and all the struggles she goes through to get where she is.

A superb retelling of one of the most classic stories that has ever been written. This unique spin really lets you see things from a different view and therefore it becomes such a more powerful read.

I really, truly wanted to love this guys.

Dracula is in the running with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein for being my favourite classic novel of all time. I own four copies, have annotated half of them, and written two dissertations about it's representation of the feminine monster. I commiserate with a lot of what White wrote in her acknowledgements at the end of this novel about how the ball is kind of dropped with Lucy Westenra - one of only two major female characters - in the book and all it's major adaptations and I was honestly so interested in reading a what-if scenario featuring a sapphic, vampiric Lucy who survives the events of the novel.

To a degree, what ground Lucy Undying covered within this area are the parts of this book I really enjoyed. It's always interesting seeing the potential perspective of a character who is notably absent from a novel like Dracula, where the epistolary nature gives its cast a vivid personality. Lucy is a character who we only really see through the eyes of those around her (particularly men!), and there's some interesting commentary in White's novel about that. Lucy's diary entries - and her unseen fake diary entries - in Lucy Undying offer a glimpse into a character who is routinely both sexualised and infantilised, and I was particularly invested in the passages and chapters that covered the events of Dracula from her perspective.

I also find the idea of a modern-day vampire MLM hilarious, so White's approach on the idea - tempered with an appropriate amount of ridiculousness - was very interesting to see. It's a natural evolution of the Marxist idea of capitalists as vampires - 'dead labour... vampire-like' - and I would genuinely be so interested in reading a book that was completely dedicated to this idea.

Unfortunately, I don't think both these narratives really needed to be in the same book.

This book is over 400 pages long and by page 300 I felt like some of it could have been cut. I think White struggles with juggling so many point of view characters and narrative devices because we routinely cover the same ground over and over again barely chapters apart with, most frustratingly, one of the two main characters, Iris, consistently spelling out for the reader exactly what she (and we) have just read in Lucy's diary. The narrative is also disjointed in a way that breaks the tone a little, for me, with some strong chapters on either side of the pond being cut too early with an interjection from the other main character's story. Often, we will read an entry from Lucy covering the events of Dracula, then a chapter from the perspective of Iris, who empathises with her situation, then back to Lucy years after her turning as a vampire, confessing to her therapist about how she's been assassinating Nazis or hunting down a serial killer (although I do wholeheartedly support both these activities). All three of these narrative threads are interesting and I might have enjoyed them individually, but instead I felt often that Iris existed purely to hammer home the sympathy with which we're meant to read Lucy - as though, in picking up a book rewriting her end, readers weren't already participating in such sympathies. The result is that I simply didn't care all that much about Iris as a character throughout the novel, which is a bummer when eventually, we sort of abandon focussing on Lucy's history to focus on the aforementioned, admittedly hilarious concept of the vampire MLM.

I won't get too into White's representation of the other characters of Dracula, namely Mina Harker, Van Helsing and the gents who vie for Lucy's affections. Personally, I don't particularly mind the lengths to which White twists and adapts their characters, and I especially think she's right to criticise the men in Lucy's world (especially where she notes the perversion of her blood transfusions). I do think that much of how she portrays these characters, however, is rooted in a deep intention to explore the perceived flaws in the novel that she's taking as an inspirational work and 'fixing' them, and I don't think that will sit right with some readers. I wouldn't say I like how Mina is portrayed in this novel, but that's purely a personal opinion, and I think that for what she is here, she's written competently.

Overall, this novel just fell flat for me because I think it both wasn't what I expected, and the elements of it that I did like were a slog to get to. I am still interested in reading some of White's other work, though, as some of her forays into more experimental narrative in this novel were interesting.

*Thank you to NetGalley and Random House UK, Cornerstone | Del Rey for providing me with this ebook in exchange for an honest review*

I really like Kiersten White's prose and I really loved this book. My only problem was, and that's why I'm giving it 4 stars, was the first POV. I think if it was done from third POV would be better. Other than that, I really loved it.

My expectations for this book were very high, but I was disappointed once again. It seems that vampire stories written from the first-person point of view are just not for me. I got bored quickly and had trouble caring for the characters’ stories. One of the POVs also felt forced, like the author tried too hard to shock her readers.

To sum up, it’s a decent novel, but it just wasn’t for me.

I sadly DNFed this book. The premise sounded amazing and I thought it would be abook that I would love, but I could not get into the story. I will give it another chance in the future. Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an e-ARC.

Lucy Undying is a gothic fantasy that follows Lucy's escape from Dracula and her own self-discovery through time. I found Lucy Undying to be really intriguing, in terms of the characters and the way the story is written. Lucy was an interesting character and I enjoyed seeing her getting to know and understand herself, including her sexuality, throughout the story.
I really enjoyed the unique narrative with Diary entries, different characters points of views and different timelines that all brought the story together at the end. It kept the book mysterious and interesting throughout to see the relevance coming together.
However, I did find it quite slow paced and struggled to get fully engaged and invested in the story. Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy Lucy Undying as much as I was hoping although I can really see the intogue and appeal, and hope others do too!