Lucy undying is a sapphic romance full of self-discovery and a gorgeous gothic atmosphere. For me personally, the pacing was a bit too slow and the story could have maybe been a little shorter, it felt like it dragged for about half of the book. I did however enjoy the twists and turns and especially the diary entries.

Thank you NetGalley, Del Rey UK, and Penguin Random House UK for this arc in exchange for an honest review.

Ugh such poor execution of a tale based on a well loved classic. This book could've been so good but was just cringey with all the modern dialogue and phrases. I thought it would be an epic gothic inspired tale but it completely lacked the vibes of the original tale and didn't give anything new either. This is all to say that I'm disappointed in this book from White because I enjoyed The Conqueror's Trilogy she wrote so much that it is an absolute favourite so suffice it to say that I highly anticipated Lucy Undying but was severely unimpressed.

I DNFed Lucy Undying because even though I really tried to get into the story, I just haven't been able to. I have picked up and put down this book so many times over the last month because I really wanted to love this book, I wanted to love and read an epic gothic, sapphic fantasy but I found the pacing to be off and the start to be quite confusing. I still think this is a good book, just not one for me.

Summary: Lucy Westenra, one of Dracula's first victim, finds unexpected love with Iris in modern London, but Dracula's return threatens their happiness.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for an eARC of this book, all thoughts are my own.

Oh sweet Lucy... your story was EVERYTHING I needed and more.

It's filled with such a dark and lush gothic atmosphere that genuinely made my soul so happy. From the very first chapter I did NOT want to put this down, it's incredibly engaging and filled with so much female rage - we love to see it!! However, don't get me wrong, this is also filled with such heartbreak and longing that you can literally feel through the page. So be prepared for that and be prepared to take it all in and trust where the story is going. Kiersten White you absolutely smashed this and gave the girlies what we wanted/needed. Especially for this upcoming spooky season!

If you're reading this I just want you to know exactly what you're getting in for because this story deserves to be read and appreciated properly... it's long, it has epistolary chapters (I know this can be decisive), and it's a character exploration! The plot will take a minute to get going and it's a such a shame that I've seen a few reviews calling this boring!? (Reading is so subjective so I guess it doesn't matter but I just want everyone to love this ok!!)

You do get to learn about Lucy's 130 years of life where she travels the world searching for Dracula and meeting other vampires on the way but this is NOT an adventure story. Like I said, this story spends time picking apart not only Lucy's life (and death) but a modern day character, Iris, as well. The dialogue change between the two of them can be a little jarring I will admit, Iris is a lot more immature and sometimes I found her to be a little cringe but... let's be honest, who wasn't as a young adult!? The parallels between their lives actually felt quite touching and made the romance that much sweeter as they learn the similarities that each other have gone through.

Even the connection between Lucy and her therapist (yep...) were SO well done and genuinely made me emotional too - especially the ending omg.

This book is a journey, it's self-discovery, and it's BEAUTIFUL - I am obsessed!!!

I think I could carry on talking about this book for a long time, so, here's some elements that it includes that I hope can give you a clearer idea of what this story entails and whether it's truly for you:
-Journal entries
-2nd Person pov chapters
-Sapphic romance
-Different timelines
-Mystery
-Lush gothic atmosphere
-Character exploration
-Female rage!!
-Medium/Slow pace
-Self-discovery
-Complicated (to say the least) family dynamics
and much more.

Note: As it's a vampire story, do expect some gross body horror elements and descriptions.

This might be obvious, but, guess what? It's my favourite book of the year so far...

-Sarah

*Thank you SO much to NetGalley, Del Rey UK, and Penguin Random House UK for the e-ARc in exchange for an honest review*

Let me begin by saying that I absolutely loved the premise of this book and the cover is sublime. And a gothic, vampy, sapphic read = yes please!

I loved the diary more than anything but unforts this story fell really flat for me, it was so slow and I found it hard to concentrate, I did finish but, because of the slow pace, it was a slog.

This was such a fun and unique retelling of Dracula and I will be telling everyone to read it. I wasn't sure what to expect exactly but this did not disappoint.

I gave this 3.75 stars! I really enjoyed this book it was the perfect gothic vampire book! I did like the changes in timeline/pov however sometimes it did take you out of the story. I do also think the book could have been a bit shorter, however I really enjoyed this book and will be recommending it !

This is a brilliantly written sapphic, gothic fantasy with romance and twists and I loved it!

You first meet Iris who is running from her life, and inheritance and comes to England to sell some heirlooms from an old house they have and make some money to disappear.

She makes some friends along the way and finds Lucy Westerna’s Diaries ! The book has all the characters of Bram Stokers Dracula but this is mainly based on what happened to Lucy and how she felt about Mina and what happened to her after she died.

This has beautiful prose and the twist at the end is fabulous.

I would recommend this and many thanks to NetGalley and Random House for my E-ARC.

This book gets an extra star just for the cover alone - it is haunting, beautiful and grabbed my eye from the get go.

I wont lie, I just did not vibe with this book. I was expecting epic gothic fantasy and it just didn't deliver. I found the pace too slow and I struggled with some of the inner monologue from the characters.

I absolutely adored the characters in this book and I was gripped from the start with the story they had to tell.

My issue is down to the pacing of the book the start seemed to drag on for sometime without the sense of a plot for at least the first 40% but when the plot did grab me I couldn't stop reading.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the digital ARC!

I got about 17% of the way through this before realising I probably should have read Dracula beforehand. As you might guess, I've never read it! So the only characters I know are Dracula, Van Helsing, Mina and Jonathan Harker.

Turns out there's more! And that includes Lucy Westenra, one of our two main characters. The other is a new character, Iris Goldaming. If you've read Dracula, you'll probably recognise her surname, too.

For a large portion of this book, we follow 3 separate timelines. Lucy in 1890, which is basically Dracula but from her POV. Then Lucy in 2o24, detailing everything she's done in her life since she 'died'. The other 2024 POV is Iris, who has come to England to find anything valuable to sell from her two inherited properties in her attempt to escape her dead mother's culty business, Goldaming Life.

Some of the main themes of this book are:

Feminism - the original Lucy in Dracula is a vulnerable heiress with 3 men courting her. She ends up meeting Dracula and gets turned into a vampire, before being killed by said 3 men. She has no agency in her life in this time period, which makes sense given her status in London society. Her story afterward is her taking charge of her life and doing what she wants, when she wants. Iris is also trying to find her way, and not be ruled over by men who have nothing to do with her now her mum is dead.

Male privilege - as said before, Lucy's human life is basically for her to be a wife and mother. The men don't care about her, and the later events in this book prove that. Dracula himself is basically male privilege personified - he exists to please himself, and women are just there for him to take. They have no agency in his mind, and the idea of them turning him down is propestorous to him. It's an excellent allegory for how many men feel an ownership over women's bodies, with no regard to their personalities or thoughts. Both Dracula and Lucy's suitors do this, even though one is a literal monster and the others are humans.

Queerness - Lucy is queer, she always was and always has been. In her human life, she was in love with Mina, her governess. Part of this was her desperation to be loved, her father is gone and her mother is a hypochondriac who pretty clearly feels nothing for her. She wants to be loved. After she's turned, she explores her sexuality liberally and becomes a confident queer woman. Iris is also queer, only she's a very confident queer woman. She knows what she wants, and is pretty happy going for it. Two side characters, Rahul and Anthony, are a gay couple whilst another is trans. Vampires overall, except Dracula, are pretty much always shown as queer in some way, whether it's sapphic or asexual. Lucy comes from a time period where queerness was not accepted, whereas Iris comes from a family where it isn't accepted.

Cults - this is ironically the second book I've read from Kiersten White about a cult set in Utah. Mister Magic is also about this, but this book is obviously more vampire focused. It's kinda hilarious that this cult is just a multi-level marketing company, which is very on-brand for Utah, imo.

Overall, I found this fine to read. It wasn't ground breaking for me, and some moments felt a little too over the top (WW1 and WW2, for anyone who's read it). Given I haven't read Dracula, I feel a lot of the backstory was lost on me until I read a summary of that book. Once it got out of the shadow of Dracula, it felt like it improved a lot more.

Really enjoyed this book. Really good story really good characters. Beautifully written gothic fantasy. Really fun read

Dracula is my absolute fave book so I simply MUST read anything to do with it.

The book is fine, but the way it jumps between POVs felt a bit messy, I got confused who was talking and where I last was with said character.

Other than that, it was fine. Nothing wow but nothing awfully bad either

I didn't think I needed this reinvention of a somewhat ignored and extensively maligned literary figure. But boy was I wrong!

The multiple timelines and POVs blend seamlessly, with the beautiful touch of the letters and transcripts that add a truly personal voice to both women. Lucy through the centuries is ever changing, driven by a siren song she doesn't understand but nonetheless drives her very existence. Iris is the perfect balance to her: she knows who she is and what she wants even though the world constructed around her is contrary and dangerous. Although Dracula features in the title, this really isn't about him in the slightest. He's peripheral, a side note, a bad dream everyone wants rid of.

The "heist" aspect fit in surprisingly well, accelerating the plot to breathtaking speed and ending with a crashing of cymbals that left me feeling and completely surprised. But I was never happier to be proven wrong about how a book was going to end.

This book is a mess.

I have to admit - I didn't really like the original Dracula. I thought it was boring and didn't live up to the hype I had been given to by various people all my life. At least Carmilla's not-so-subtle queer vibes made its story ten times more interesting than what Stoker tried to replicate. I thought White's reimagining would capture my interest through taking the POV from the only other significant woman character in Dracula and making her queer.

It really didn't. If anything, I'm left simultaneously confused and underwhelmed.

First off, there is too much going on. The first half of the book was split between Lucy's diary pov (Events before(?) and during Dracula), Lucy's therapy transcript talking about her vampire years after Dracula and before this book takes place, and Iris' pov, who spends the majority of her page time complaining about her mom, digging through Lucy's old house for cash, and ogling at Elle/Lucy. The order typically went Iris - diary - transcript, but that pattern is thrown out the window whenever its convenient. Even if it stayed structured as so, it completely stopped once Lucy's backstory was complete. Then we get present timeline Iris and Lucy with random insertions of other povs scattered throughout. I bet your brain hurt reading that, because it really is as head hammering as it sounds. I honestly cannot think of a book I've read that has been this chaotically dismembered and sewn together like this. It doesn't help that it's such a slog to read through; I started skimming around 300 pages because I just wanted it to be over, already.

Outside the abysmal structure and pacing, I never found myself caring for anyone? Or anything that was happening? It really felt like White was forcing her Dracula takes down your throat, to make you believe how she interpreted the story. This was especially apparent in Iris' pov when she was reading Lucy's diary only to spout out what villains the cast of Dracula were that poor, innocent girl to Lucy's face. White left absolutely no room for interpretation for the reader. I'm sort of torn how I feel about this. From a writer's pov, I get wanting to have your readers understand your work, but the reader part of me is sputtering but speechless. The reader part is definitely winning out here.

I don't know if it's accurate to say this book was a complete waste of my time? The vampire MLM is a hilarious concept that should have worked, but it didn't because this is a retelling of a gothic classic, not a meta-comedy. That's the one that that garnered my interest throughout the second half. Otherwise, I could care less about the other stuff.

Thank you to Del Rey, NetGalley and author Kiersten White for this eARC.

I have to start this review off with a confession - I have never read the original Dracula by Bram Stoker. I bought it many moons ago, but it's kinda just been sitting on my shelf, waiting. i know, I am ashamed of myself.
This just to say, that I am judging this book solely on it's own merit and not necessarily by how good a retelling / reimagining it is.

Let’s start with Lucy’s story. I really enjoyed Lucys POV. She is a well thought out characters with good characterization. I loved to see her her character develop over the course of her afterlife and I felt absolutely drawn in by her story and just wanted the best for her. It kinda reminded me of Addie LaRue, which I loved!

The psychiatrist sessions where so, so well done too and I loved the little “breaks” they gave. The diary entries gave more insight into Lucy and her life before becoming a vampire and gave a lot of context & background to the present time story.

Which brings us to the part of the book I didn’t really enjoy all that much. The present day story - the insta-love between Lucy and Iris was just boring and the whole Vamp-Cult-Wellness-Pyramid Scheme was kinda strange. Also I just really didn’t like Iris. She was boring and also for someone who supposedly is very paranoid she trusts random strangers real quick!
3.5 stars

The premise and blurb of this story had me from the get go, however, the jumpy time frames and narratives really threw me off and I found this quite hard to read. I also really struggled to personally relate to the characters. I have no doubt that this is going to be an amazing story for so many people, it just sadly wasn’t the book for me!

I love the idea of this story, especially as I'm really into Interview With The Vampire right now, but the jarring, jumping narrative was confusing, and I really struggled to connect with the characters. I mostly ended up being a mixture of bored and confused.

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers for allowing me an eARC of Lucy Undying. This was my first book my Kiersten White and I'll definitely be reading more from her!

I was initially a bit confused about the time jumps between the 3 POV's, however as the story went on I was able to cement the differences in my mind and follow the story without difficulty. I enjoyed having the different perspectives, was intrigued to see how they would all come together and how it was all relevant to the story. I particularly loved the integration of the past and present Lucy; it gave such a rich depth to her character and I could really see her development. I loved the woman that Lucy becomes, how she loves herself for who she is and won't accept anything less. I think this is a lesson that we can all learn.
I really enjoyed the acts of feminism- how we see past Lucy trying to make herself small and pleasant for those around her, how the men in her life only want her for one thing and have no understanding of who she really is. There was a quote that really struck me "Dear, dear Mother, who loves like a knife, slicing me into ever smaller pieces until I’m exactly the shape that pleases her the most". I know this is about Lucy's relationship with her Mother rather than the men around her, but it feels apt; having to cut away pieces of herself to fit the needs of those around her.
So going from that to the fierce and self-assured woman she is towards the end of the book was great to read and go on that journey with her.

I really loved most of the writing in the book, there was some beautiful poetic sentences that made me feel like I was reading a classic. However, there were also some that made me cringe. I think this was more about trying to demonstrate the change in time for Lucy and as part of Iris' character. However, for me, this removed me from the story a bit, especially sentences like "my butter chicken".

I thought that the relationship between Iris and Lucy was beautiful. They had such a great dynamic between the pair of them, they played off each other well and their slow burn into romance felt really well done. I think that Iris' utter devotion to Lucy no matter what, and her ability to love Lucy for who she was, was really beautiful and I loved reading how this affected Lucy's character development.

A main negative for me was that the book felt too long. There were parts that felt like they dragged on and could have been chopped from the story. This is a small criticism though and overall I really enjoyed the book :)

I thought I might like this book because I loved Dracula and the side character this book focuses on, but I was really confused reading this. The book focuses on Lucy Westenra in an alternate version of the story where Lucy survives as a vampire after the events of Stoker’s Dracula. Lucy’s story is told to us in different parts in a nonlinear timeline in three different povs: Lucy’s diary entries as a young girl, a transcript from her conversation with a therapist in modern day, and finally a pov from the girl who gets caught up in her story, Iris. All three fell flat for me.

The diary entries were the most disappointing and pretty useless, since everything that happens in them are also told to us by either Lucy herself in the therapy sessions or Iris, who is reading the diary. Iris is not reading the diary along with the reader, which would make sense, but instead she is reading and reacting to entries that we have already read like a hundred pages ago, which got old very quickly. The diary entries are the closest to a retelling of Dracula, since it is retelling the events of that book. In White’s version, every single character except Lucy is an evil villain out to take advantage of her. This also got old quickly. We constantly get told by both Lucy and Iris how baaad these famous characters like Arthur Holmwood and Dr. Seward are, but the reader is never trusted to make their own judgement of them based on their actions. This is one of my biggest problems overall: the characters are constantly explaining the plot and the twists to the reader, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination. The diary entries feel very modern, Lucy reads like a 21st century feminist who is trapped in the Victorian age.

The other povs aren’t much better, I didn’t like the writing style in the modern chapters at all. At least Lucy as a character is a little likeable, but I thought Iris was insufferable, she made me cringe a lot. The pacing was really off too, nothing happens for 250 pages and suddenly shits going down. You find out what happened to Iris very late in the book, which makes her motivations unclear. The book just needs editing overall, the original name Lord Goldalming is written like Goldaming in the entire book; I think this is a mistake by the author, don’t know how nobody caught this. I give it two stars for at least keeping me interested in what would happen. Thank you to Netgalley and Del Rey for providing me with the e-arc i exchange for an honest review.