A review by bookishvicky
Lucy Undying by Kiersten White

slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

Thank you to NetGalley and Del Rey for an advanced eARC of Lucy Undying in exchange for a fair and honest review!

Rating: 4 stars
Pub Date: Nov 10 2024

“I have hidden sharp teeth after all, daydreaming the deaths of three perfectly fine men. I should repent. But repentance never seems to take with me.”

I was so, so excited to read this book, being an avid vampire fiction fan and lover of Lucy Westenra, who absolutely deserved her own book. However, Lucy Undying just didn’t scratch my itch for Lucy love.

The dialogue, format, and characterization of Lucy were all beautiful. I loved the epistolary formatting reminiscent of Dracula, and I found that despite going between three time periods at one point the narrative was easy enough to follow, and each kept me excited to learn more. 

I ADORED reading about the Doctor, the Lover, and the Queen, these three nameless vampiric women Lucy encounters and tries to make companions with. Each had such distinct voices and personalities, and I could probably read a whole book about them. 

However, despite the gorgeous language and unique characters, I found the plot to be lacking. The subplot about Iris and Godalming Life just felt out of place, and I wasn’t as invested in it as I was Lucy and Iris’s romance. 

I also found that the book was one hundred pages longer than it had to be, and things sort of declined in excitement and pacing once the narrative took the characters to Boston. 

My biggest disappointment, however, was the handling of the classic Dracula characters. I of course expected some subversion of the source material since Lucy is still alive here, but making certain characters villainous and resentful toward Lucy when in the novel they were anything but… kinda threw me for a loop. 

Obviously this is just White’s interpretation, but personally it wasn’t my cup of tea to see characters from what I interpreted as a novel about the bonding together of humanity to defeat an evil being somehow turn out to be money hungry baddies. 

I will say, there’s a point in the novel where it feels like White is directly writing to Lucy, and it was touching and raw and I found it to be such a fun idea to write a love story and letter to a classic literature character who got the short end of the stick. 

While this wasn’t my favorite interpretation of Dracula, I did have fun with it. The language was just so unique and distinctive and I liked Lucy and Iris’s romance. (You don’t need to have read Dracula before this to fully understand it, also, but it does add a layer having that prior knowledge.) 
Expand filter menu Content Warnings