A review by z0diackiller
Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite

5.0

“Nothing gazed around at the kids in the club. They were all so beautiful. He loved their choppy hairstyles, their costume jewelry, their ragged black or multicolored clothes. He loved the way they all somehow looked like him, and he wished he could make friends with every one of them.”

Another -WILD- ride from Poppy Z... and I loved every minute of it. Written with the same seductive flow as Exquisite Corpse, the reader follows quite a few lost souls as they make their way to New Orleans all for very different reasons.
When I started this book, I honestly didn't know what to expect. Drugged club kid vampires? A violent, graphic oversexed horror? Capes and blood-drinking? Thankfully, it was a pleasant surprise. Yes, cliché goth tokens are mentioned quite frequently, but, hey, Robert Smith is pretty great ;)

I signed up for dark obsessions, gore, and rape, and I got it. Not as much as Exquisite Corpse, but Lost Souls had extra angst.

What I really got and loved most about this book was the "doing drugs at 2 a.m. energy," self-destruction, and the search for belonging. Not only do you get nostalgic for your teen years (I took my share of 3 a.m. bus rides through the city) but mostly I felt the yearning for a community. I don't feel like I really found my own community until my adult years, but I did eventually. And I'm thrilled Nothing found his place with his family.