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!

Lucy Undying offers a new perspective on the story of Dracula. Divided into three sections, the book alternates between different parts of Lucy’s story. I struggled to get into the character's voice and the writing style, it felt both like it was trying to be historical/gothic but also contemporary, but once I got past that I did enjoy it.

IDK i'm torn on my rating. maybe 2.5, maybe 3.5. I thought it was going to be at least 4 stars for the first 40% but alas.

I didn't mind this! This is an alternate ending to Dracula, which I have not read. I did read the wikipedia synopsis AND watched the movie though, so I kind of got the point. This tells the story of Lucy Westenra, who was not actually killed (twice) and lives to the modern age, hunting Dracula. She meets Iris, reluctant heir to a very questionable vampire-adjacent mlm scheme.

I really liked the first part of this book, which was told from three perspectives: Lucy's diary (recounting Dracula), Lucy recounting her post-human years to a therapist, and Iris. One of my favourite tropes is vampire living through historical events and influencing them in different ways, so I thoroughly enjoyed this. I didn't <i>love</i> Iris' chapters as I found her a bit of an annoying narrator, but the rest I really enjoyed. However when the time all catches up to the present day and the mystery of Iris' family begins to unravel, this book really lost me. I just found it WAAAAAY too long and I was desperate for it to be over. The plot itself was really interesting and I loved what the author did with the original story and how it led to many big reveals, but it just needed to be shorter on the whole for me to really enjoy it.

The writing itself is good, and I quite liked most of the characters, although I found many bits to be cringe/cheesy. Overall I think a worthwhile read in the sapphic vampire genre!

I’m sorry but I couldn’t get past the use of ‘bucket of lust’. I don’t think this has been particularly well written or well edited. I loved the premise but truly hated the execution - it would have been better to make this a generic vampire story instead of a Dracula one because the only similarities the characters seem to share are names.

As someone unfamiliar with the full story of Dracula, but having some knowledge of characters in it, I was really excited to read this and find out more about Lucy, one of the protagonists of this book. I loved the multi-POV and Iris as a character, and was captivated by Lucy’s backstory. I was really pleased to see that this had sapphic representation, as it was a beautiful touch and was written very well. This is the perfect read for the Halloween season and for any fans of vampires, including fans of Carmilla. A beautifully-written retelling of Dracula from the POV of a misunderstood and underrepresented character.

Kiersten White has proven to be very hit-or-miss for me, and unfortunately, this one was a miss.

I enjoy a nice dual-timeline story, but this one was all over the place.
The beginning felt incredibly jarring with basically every page being a new chapter with a new date and location and some jumping between them. I like books that use non-traditional storytelling, but you have to know what you're doing and personally, I don't think the author did.
I also did not enjoy the writing style at all, it was too colloquial and modern for my personal taste.

Sadly, I ended up DNFing as I just couldn't get into the story.

Lucy Undying is an intriguing retelling of Dracula from the point of view of one of his victims. The book is split into three parts and the narrative weaves between them. First is the retelling of Dracula, but from Lucy’s perspective. Of course, the men who lived to tell the tell didn’t get everything quite right, and I think Kiersten White did an excellent job reading between the lines and creating a new story for Lucy.

With Lucy’s father no longer in the picture, she is set to be a very wealthy woman when her mother dies. The suitors crowd round her while her mother ails, and then Dracula enters the picture. Looking back with modern knowledge, it’s kind of horrifying that they perform a blood transfusion on her before they know about blood types. She talks later of the horrible experience, in the sections from her therapist transcripts.

The transcripts make up one of the narratives, the time between when she was last seen in Dracula (her demise in the original book is explained away by a case of mistaken identity) and the modern day. She has had quite a life, searching for the one who made her, but instead finding others like her.

The third narrative is in the modern day and told from Iris’s point of view. She says from the start that her mother ran a creepy blood cult, although the specifics don’t come out until later. If you’re familiar with Dracula, you might recognize her surname (although the spelling is changed slightly, maybe to stress the gold part, or maybe it’s just an error that never got picked up).

It was quite obvious who Elle was, but I was still interested to know how it all fit together. The pacing was a bit odd though, almost the opposite of a saggy middle. There’s a point where it’s all wrapping up, but it was at about 70%. The rest felt like it could have been a prologue. It was heavy with exposition, and had quite boring sections from Dracula’s perspective. I’m sure some of the necessary parts to discovering the secret behind the multi-level marketing blood cult could have been fed in throughout the story.

I did also learn about another weird autoimmune condition I’ve never heard of before. Cold agglutinin disease is a real disease, albeit with nothing to do with vampirism.

This is my third Kiersten White novel, and I just adore the way that she crafts her worlds. They always add so much dimension to the story and help the characters grow and adapt. I really enjoyed ‘Lucy Undying’, with its gothic atmosphere and its vampiric core. Each POV was fresh and engaging, and White was able to make it as dark as it was full of love and desire. A really fun and modern twist on the ‘Dracula’ story! If you watched Castlevania and wanted more of a romance between the female vampires, I’m sure you’ll enjoy this. 4.25/5!

This book was deliciously sapphic and a beautiful retelling. I adored Iris and Lucy and was so moved by the way the author adds to Lucy’s story. Every female character was empowering in the way they overcame the abuse the world subjected them to.
I have to say that if I had not been listening to the audiobook, I might have struggled with the pacing of the book, which would have made me give up on it because Lucy’s storyline didn’t fully grab me until later in the book; even though retrospectively, I’m glad we went through all this with her part of the narration because it was essential to see her grow, I admit I was a bit bored with her tale at times. Iris, now, captured my attention from the start.
I was so glad I stuck with it because it was such a beautiful and deserving story.