This novella has one of my favorite types of main character: selfish, preoccupied, a little fussy, very disturbed when things don't go their way. I loved the format, the procession of cruise days, some of them interesting some of them dull, and the increasing frustration with the experience of being on a ship on the water. It captured very well the suffocating experience of being on one of these ships, with the same people all around you, the same locations, a big floting hotel that never changes and which you can't leave even if you very much want to. But that element of it is a backdrop. Our main character and her husband are escaping into this queer cruise after a disastrous end to one of her flings. The goal is to have fun, live a little, forget their troubles. But they meet someone fascinating and strange aboard the ship and things start changing too much.... I loved the dynamics between all the main three, the jealousy and indifference, the hate sex and bored sex and occasionally really into each other sex. This is so much a book about a relationship without being unbearable. I found it fascinating and delicious.

eARC review for Vampires at Sea by Lindsay Merbaum: 2 stars ⭐️
🌊🐚🛳️🩸💋

Afraid to say this arc was a swing and a miss for me. The premise sounded fun and sexy to me — vampires having orgies on a cruise with some queer drama? I was down for a good time. To be fair, the book did have all these elements, but I thought it was all pretty underwhelming. Let’s break down my thoughts more thoroughly:

What I Liked:
- The humor and general campiness of this book. The main character, Rebekah, pulls no punches from page one (describing how hot she is and her partner’s 🍆 size) and is quite funny (her internal dialogue about the caste system of the cruise ship amenities had me chuckling)
- The writing was generally enjoyable, and I flew through the book in just a few sittings.
- The characters were all interesting to read about! Each character was a flawed and strange individual with unique desires and fears.
- I liked how Hugh and Rebekah’s relationship is described as an ancient, timeless thing. It’s easy to envision them moving from era to era together and time just passing by.

What Could’ve Been Improved:
- The writing is very choppy at times, taking readers from one scene to another with no to little transition.
- The war subplot was extremely random and unnecessary. This development added little if anything to the plot.
- The story somehow devolves into what I can only describe as an absolute fever dream. Rebekah aimlessly wanders the cruise ship for large amounts of the book, complete with her inner monologue of circling obsession/paranoia/hatred/desire, broken up by the occasional strange vision/trance/ dream and/or various sexual escapade. I felt like a massive amount of this book was just Rebekah sulking around the cruise ship thinking — this should have been edited down significantly.
- My biggest complaint: all the best and most memorable parts of this book were summarized into single sentences! Multiple times, an event or conversation that had been building up for 20+ pages was either: summarized in a single sentence, or described as a total letdown. I felt like I was being literately edged the entire book.

This is a LGBTQ+ book. Rebekah & Hugh are on a queer (their word) cruise on the Black Sea. They are all set for some rest & relaxation until Hugh becomes enchanted by a social media influencer. Rebeka's true nature is unleased and the question becomes who will survive.

While I liked the writing style overall, I really didn’t connect with this book. I like ambiguity, but there were a lot of things that were too unspoken or unexplained that just made me confused and at the end I was feeling a bit lost and not understanding what I was supposed to get from the story.

this novella is really slow at the beginning which is frustrating in such a short story and the mc is very self indulgent to the point of it being tiring but i do know we aren't supposed to like her so it isn't as off-putting.

it's a story of a pretentious and narcissistic old soul vampire on a cruise with her husband to feed off the depravity, struggling to deal with change in her life and in the world around her. it has all the promises of a fantastic book but it just didn't hit for me.

also there is a LOT of gratuitous sex in this book which usually absolutely doesn't bother me except that nothing about this book is remotely sexy and often is instead simply miserable and repulsive. i really don't think stories about emotional vampires are for me.

2.5 ⭐️⭐️✨✖️✖️

Dark but not hitting it for me. Plenty of potential. It took me a very long time to get through this read and in the end I DNFed

I wanted to like this more than I actually do like it. I can't say exactly what didn't land. Vampires. Vampires at sea! What's not to like?

I think the humor didn't quite land for me, in the end. I'm guessing it is probably there for other people; it felt like walking past things that are the same shape as things that are funny and the same color as things that are funny but, for whatever reason, were not funny. So instead of reading with a wry smile and enjoying the over-the-top atmosphere, I'm reading this with a straight face to find out what happens plot-wise. And I'm not sure that the plot is sufficient to hold up that level of scrutiny.

Hopefully, this isn't you. Hopefully you find this book funny and sly and witty. I really wanted to like it more than I did.

1.5 ⭐️

It may sound harsh, but there was no real payoff from this book.

I found the concept of vampires feeding off emotion instead of blood interesting, and the whole premise for this book sounded wildly entertaining when I first read it. However, it ended up being rather dull. A lot of detail was skipped over; I wouldn’t even describe it as very erotic, since the sex scenes weren’t that explicit.

There was no satisfying conclusion, and I was left unsure of what the point of the plot was. I understand that this was a short book, but it didn’t excuse the lack of care & detail.

A self-centered, slutty vampire goes on a queer pleasure cruise with her husband while a war is going on around them. They meet a mysterious person that may challenge their relationship. Described as “a smutty, super-queer horror-comedy featuring unbridled narcissism”.

I jumped into this book not really knowing anything about it except that it featured vampires and I liked the cover. The cover is quite deceiving in my opinion and doesn’t fit the vibe of the book at all. That said, I found this story to be really fun and engrossing but also quite witty and endearing at times. The characters are a bit insufferable but I was kinda obsessed with them. I devoured this novella.

Thank you to NetGalley and Creature Publishing for an eARC. This comes out October 7th.

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers for providing me with an eARC of this title.

This is probably closer to a 3.5 for me. I enjoyed it. I hadn't read anything about it or what it was about, and going in blind was fun. I don't know what I expected but this wasn't it. I enjoyed the writing style. I loved that this was just a novella. I felt like that was the perfect length for this story.

This book was a masterclass in leaving you wanting more. I know the plot was technically there, but I still felt very underwhelmed by it all. I kept thinking that something (besides sex and excuses to show off the writer's vocabulary) would happen, but alas, it seemed I was out of luck.

I wish the book had been stretched out just a little bit more and had more development. From the description, I wanted to love this book (hello?? Queer vampires on a cruise?? Sign me up!), but unfortunately my expectations were too high.

Firstly, they weren't traditional vampires, rather the emotional kind, which would have been a fun twist if the characters had any redeeming qualities at all. Of the three main characters, I hated Hugh the least but that may have just been because he had the least amount of time spent on him.

I thought the setting could have been fun, but instead it felt like a bunch of queer cliches one after another like the author hit them on a dart board. Also the "war" subplot? Had no substance and seemed to only be mentioned when the author wasn't sure how to make the characters do what they wanted next.

As far as the language of the book itself goes, it felt like a smutty English project where the author tried unfortunately hard to sound intellectual while speeding through any of the important story parts, like dialouge. At one point, there is a line that literally reads: "he says something I can’t even comprehend or remember because it isn’t a reply, so I don’t bother recording it." And things like that happen several times. I feel like we never actually get to connect with the characters and learn what's happening in the story because half of it has been cut out.

I wanted to like this book more but I just couldn't get into it in anyway. Luckily, it's pretty short so it was a quick read, only about an hour and a half of my time.

Somehow this book managed to keep me entertained JUST enough that I wanted to finish it (I’m sure it being a novella helped as well), yet I didn’t really enjoy it. The premise was oh-so-promising! I’m all in for campy and funny, which based on the literal description on Goodreads which said it was “hilarious”, I think it was fair for me to expect that. But funny it was not. Rather, it was sad, in a pathetic kind of way.

When Hugo gets sucked into the spell of Heaven, a non-binary magical creature, his lover of centuries, Rebekah, grapples with how a world without Hugo would be (and what kind of creature is Heaven). One moment she simply cannot stand the thought of existing without him, and the next she seemingly doesn’t care. All within the span of a few days...on a cruise ship. I suppose after hundreds of years of living one may tend to be a bit fickle, but rather than giving us some depth into Rebekah’s reasoning the story felt disjointed.

Overall, novella’s have such a limited amount of time to grasp us and pull out the connection and emotions that are intended; a feat undoubtedly difficult for many established writers. This one just landed flat for me and didn’t really make me feel anything at all for anyone, and I would have appreciated it more if at the very least it would have delivered on it’s promise of being “hilarious”.

Vampires at Sea has a bold premise with emotional vampires on a queer Black Sea cruise, and I enjoyed the sharp, self-absorbed narration at times. It had its moments, but overall it didn’t really stick with me.

⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

ARC review time! Vampires at Sea is a pretty light and funny book about two married vampires who decide to take a little vacation on an adults only cruise. When weird stuff starts happening (weirder than two vampires on a tropical cruise) the fun quickly comes to an end.

This was a bit more sexually explicit than I was bargaining for, and I think that took away from the story a little bit. However, I don’t typically read very many romance adjacent books so take that opinion with a grain of salt. Otherwise I enjoyed the concept of this, it just wasn’t exactly my cup of tea.

#netgalleyreviewer #netgalley #bookreviews #readmorebooks📚❤️📚

🚢 Vampires at Sea by Lindsay Merbaum follows a queer vampire couple on a hedonistic Black Sea cruise, feeding not on blood, but on emotions. Rebekah and Hugh are immortal lovers navigating kink, ennui, and the seductive chaos of a mysterious influencer named Heaven. It's horny, haunted, and hilariously self-aware.

The book is a full of sarcasm, and existential dread. Rebekah’s mantra—“We’re on vacation!”—echoes through the pages like a desperate spell to ward off reality. But beneath the orgies and opulence lies a sharp critique of identity, desire, and the loneliness of immortality.

If you like your horror queer, your comedy biting, and your vampires emotionally ravenous, this novella might just sink its teeth into you.

I literally had no idea what to expect when I started this book. I will say the cover was a little off putting because it gives the vibes of a historical setting, so I wasn't expecting a modern-day cruise ship to be the setting.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Creature Publishing for allowing me to read an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Vampires at Sea is a smart, witty, and fun novella that will leave you wanting more! It's a quick read, but holds your interest and makes you root for one of the villains.

The plot follows Hugo (Hugh) & Rebekah, both vampires, who have been together almost forever. The decide to take a cruise together, and find a smorgasbord of queer community passengers for them to feast on. I guess neither of them feast on blood, as traditional vampires do; Hugh seem to get off on grief/sadness, and Rebekah preys on lust. On board the ship these to get into all sorts of kinky situations, including threesomes, foursomes, and an orgy. But when the couple meets non-binary social influencer "Heaven" early on in the cruise, what starts as a fun "playmate" begins leach from them, and then puts their relationship at risk. As Rebekah becomes more and more morose and withdrawn, she seeks pleasure in other ways and is determined to prove that heaven is dangerous.

The writing was wildly entertaining and made me laugh out loud in certain parts. I've never read anything like it before and really enjoyed it. It's very Fright Night meets gay cruise. Will definitely be recommending this one!

Vampires at Sea promised queer vampires on a cruise, with smut, humor, and a touch of horror. Technically, it delivered on those points, but the execution didn’t work for me.

The vampires here feed on emotions, not blood. Desire becomes food, and while that’s an interesting concept, the sex scenes felt clumsy and unnecessary, they were so dry! I don't think it added anything to the story. The main character is a narcissist (fitting for a vampire), while the love interest is caught in an existential crisis. I couldn’t connect with either of them. The antagonist also felt underdeveloped and out of place, Heaven was a joke that was not funny.

The queerness, which I usually love in stories, felt more like an afterthought than something naturally woven into the plot, sometimes even a little derogatory. The supposed humor fell flat too, not dark, not ironic, just forced. And the historical backdrop of war made no sense, if it was done to create the cognitive or emotional dissonance, then it was badly done.

The one redeeming moment for me was Rebekah watching Hugh in the auditorium. There, the writing briefly captured the kind of atmosphere I’d hoped for.

Overall, the story didn’t land for me. It had a fun premise but it was all over the place and I want to forget about it now.

Thank you NetGalley and Creature Publishing for the ARC. All opinions are my own.

The characters were interesting and the story was engaging. I will look for other books by this author.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing an eARC of this book!

The premise for this story is very interesting, but I'm afraid the execution was anything but. I went into this thinking I was going to get a lush, atmospheric and spicy character study. What I got instead was a couple of toxic and narcissistic (not the entertaining kind) vampires. The writing also just didn't click with me and I felt like I was reading a bad attempt at a 500 page classic, not a 168 page erotic story. It's safe to say I was thoroughly bored and underwhelmed.