A review by shirumoon
Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite

challenging dark tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? N/A
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

2.25

I did NOT read this back in the day as a teenager, in fact I just read Lost Souls as a 27 y.o. Since many of the really positive reviews acknowledge at least some nostalgia playing a role in that, I felt the need to point this out.

Anyways, this is one of the first horror novels I read as an adult und the very first of this author. Everyone online seemed to be hyping this book up for its poetic prose and yup, it was well written. Deranged smut lovers will also get their fix here even though those scenes are kept rather short. Other than that, it was also interesting to see a book with an abundance of queerness, although it did contain some problematic tropes and languge regarding that.

Now onto the aspects that I really disliked unfortunately:

This book in general barely made me feel anything, there were a few cute moments between characters who are friends and about two genuinely scary ones that felt like well done
supernatural
horror. Other than that it was mainly
roadtripping, substance abuse and vampires being vampires  
  which is just not enough to keep me engaged. The pseudo-dark and depressed goth subculture vibe made it even harder to get through and to relate to the characters but like I said, I'm just not the main demographic of this book. I jsut would have wished for some earnest interoception of the characters and for less redundance in certain plot points, this could have added at least one more point in my rating.
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