A review by teniamonet
Lucy Undying by Kiersten White

4.75

But as my mother taught me, if someone frightens you, make them love you. Then you will be in control. 

Going back into the past to Lucy Westernra’s life before becoming a vampire and after was the best bit of this book in my opinion. I especially loved the client transcripts where she is speaking to her therapist Vanessa about what she’s been doing with her eternal life. Lucy, the Queen, the Doctor and the Lover were the most interesting characters. I didn’t care too much for Iris and her chapters that weren’t helping us find out more about Lucy and what the connection between the two were.

Mina being connected to the Goldaming empire was a twist I wasn’t expecting, I really didn’t see her being a vampire and still being alive in the cards.

Even not knowing who I was, barely remembering what I had been before becoming this creature filled with panic and need, I remembered Dracula.

He had wanted me. He had claimed me as his own. And yet I was alone. Not for long, though. Dracula’s brides were already on my trail. And not just them. There were so many like me out there, waiting. So many I’d meet and love and betray and hunt and kill.

Is it murder when a wolf sinks its teeth into a rabbit? When a hawk snatches a mouse? Where is the line between murder and survival?

There’s a theory I have of vampirism, though, having met so many of our kind. What we held in our hearts the moment we died doesn’t change. It never leaves us. We’re not just preserved in body, we’re crystallized in soul and mind. Frozen.

I had never noticed before, but the Lover was well and truly insane. With vampires, it’s a fine line between reason and madness. We all tiptoe along it. She just tiptoed firmly on the wrong side all the time, rather than some of the time, like I do.

But what devastate me was that I really did understand her. The Lover desired above all else to be coveted and claimed.

I had let Raven touch me and control me. I had let the Queen hold me captive. I had let the Doctor use me as one of her tools. And I had let the Lover spin me into her glittering web of madness and hedonism.

What would I give, to be seen? To be carefully studied and perfectly understood? Would I let someone carve me up, if it meant feeling like i was loved? I knew the answer was yes, because it had always been yes. I had let others bleed me dry for the sake of feeling wanted, even before Dracula came into my life. I wasn’t any different from the Lover. Staring into a face I adored and finding only pathetic need and madness, my questions shifted. I no longer cared why Dracula had killed and changed me.

I wondered why I had let if happen.

Lucy, you’re not a monster…You were a nineteen-year-old girl who was stalked, manipulated, and murdered. You’ve told me almost nothing about your life before that, but I can connect the dots that you were never truly, selflessly loved. You’ve been looking outward for that love ever since, treasuring your idea of this Mina, desperate for validation from the monster who changed you, trying to find communion with other lost, desperate souls.