Dracula Daily is a captivating reimagining of Bram Stoker's classic novel, presented through the innovative lens of modern digital culture. Matt Kirkland curates the original text in chronological order, mirroring the dates of the diary entries and letters within the story, allowing readers to experience the narrative in "real time." This approach breathes new life into the tale, making it more accessible and engaging for contemporary audiences.​

What sets this edition apart is the integration of reader-generated content—memes, commentary, and artwork—that emerged from the popular Dracula Daily email newsletter. These additions provide a communal reading experience, reflecting the collective insights and humor of a diverse online community. The inclusion of such content not only enhances the reading experience but also showcases the enduring relevance and adaptability of classic literature.​


Final Verdict: Dracula Daily is a testament to the timelessness of Stoker's work and the creative potential of reader engagement. It is an essential read for both longtime fans of Dracula and newcomers seeking a unique entry point into the classic.​

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars​

Note: This review is based on an advance reading copy provided by NetGalley.

An absolutely blast! Such a fun and accessible version of Dracula without changing any of the classical source material. Had a ton of fun reading along and sharing the funny comments with friends as we followed along with Daily as it happened.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for granting me free access to the advanced digital copy of this book.
This was a wonderful book and I'll be purchasing it for the library!

As and avid consumer of the Dracula Daily subscription emails, this was so much fun. It's a way of reading a beloved book in a new way that allowed me to be even more fully immersed in the story.

Thank you Netgalley for the digital arc.

Thank you to Netgalley and Andrews McMeel Publishing for the e-ARC.

One of the comments on page 259 said it best:
As a long-time fan of Stoker's book, Dracula Daily has me absolutely stoked because after decades of movies and TV adaptations slipping further and further from Stoker's work, and watering down Count Dracula's character into a generic romantic vampire and his enemies into milquetoast Victorian twats, the internet is rediscovering that “Dracula” is really about a Victorian D&D party going full murderhobo on a megalomaniacal vampire supervillain as revenge for vamping their polycule sweetheart.
I've loved "Dracula" since I read it for the first time years and years ago, but reading it in chronological order adds a new level of intensity and realism to it that reading it in published order doesn't -- and the hilarious commentary from the internet truly makes it even better.

The book itself is also absolutely beautiful. 10/10

A fun way to engage and to get people to read the classic Dracula. Also includes Social Media reactions & comments from people who have participated in the Substack before it was published.

I’ve been meaning to actually sit down and read Dracula since I got it whenever in 2022 or ’23, whichever. I subscribed to the original Dracula Daily emails, even read a couple, and then missed a bunch of ones.

I liked how it was formatted in the review copy. The original text normal (so like any other book) and the comments and/or fan art made by readers on the margins of the pages.

Really, I think all classics should be read like this or sort of like this. The bite-sized chapters makes it easier (of course not every classic has dates like in here but you could still read one chapter a day). You could even follow along in a normal copy of Dracula – keep to the dates in the book and browse the tag on various social media sites. Obviously it will be different to what was gathered in this book, but still nonetheless fun.

*I received an e-arc of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

I had never read Dracula before Dracula Daily actually, and reading this has made me interested in reading the original finally. I overall enjoyed Dracula Daily - more as a commentary one internet and fandom culture than anything else. The book seems sort of gimmick-y - and a bit like a cash grab after the popularity of the internet community of "Dracula Daily" but it was a good read none-the-less and serves as a fun time capsule of a moment in time of the internet.

3 Stars

I have always been familiar with Dracula and had read a kids abridged version but never the full version. I thought this would be a great way to do it, and boy was I right. I think that even though Dracula has a great root in horror and starting off the vampires we know and love it is also incredibly hilarious. The extra content we get from comments and tweets just adds to that humour and I love it. It also helps keep the pacing of the book from being overwhelming and draws your attentions to connections you may not have noticed. I also love the idea of reading the book as it is happening in real time is such an amazing and unique idea.

This slightly remixed version of the classic vampire novel, Dracula, brings a new fun twist to the story as throughout there is commentary collected from the community formed when Dracula Daily was first created.

I really enjoyed the experience of reading this format of the story and it added humour and intrigue as well as giving a baked-in sense of community like you had snarky friends sat next to you and were reading alongside.

Thoroughly recommend this edition for both readers familiar with Dracula's tale and those who are coming to it for the first time.

I LOVE the idea of taking an epistolary novel and putting it into chronological order like this. I feel like the story was easier to follow & made a lot more sense than when I read Dracula on my own for the first time a few a years ago. I also really liked the idea of including the Internet commentary as I think it really does help to better understand the book. I think my main feedback would be to make sure that the memes/posts included are fairly spaced out. There were some times I was reading and I just wished there was something like that to help explain what was going on, but then a few entries later, there'd be like 6 posts. I also think putting them closest to where they're relevant since there were some *minor* spoilers for the day's entries in some placed at the beginning on entries instead of the end.

Dracula Daily by Matt Kirkland was a funny and interesting take on the classic Dracula story by Bram Stoker. I thought the journal entries by date idea was inventive and it made the story feel more realistic. I absolutely loved all of the commentary and pictures that were included as part of the project! This was so much fun to read and helped me fall back in love with an old favorite.

This was my first time reading Dracula, and I would not have wanted to do it another way!
Reading the book in chronological order on the day the actions takes place not only put some perspective into the novel, but took a classic and broke it up into bite sized pieces for me (someone who is not a classics reader), making it much less daunting of a read.
THE MEMES were amazing. Not only did they make this book much more fun and enjoyable to read, they also helped with my comprehension of the story.
I loved doing Dracula Daily this year and would highly recommend it!

A bit of simple fun. Unique and interesting way to read Dracula. Definitely made for hardcopy rather than device.

I loved reading a classic this way!!! The memes made Dracula so much fun and reading the story in order of how it happened on the day everything happened was so interesting.

I really enjoyed reading the Dracula Daily emails as it spaced the story out of the course of about six months. One of my favorite aspects was the fan art and tweets that the community added about each email, and I was so glad that this book found a way to bring that context to this version of the novel. It's a fun way to experience Dracula.

Dracula Daily, what I refer to as the Dracula Devotional, is a great, easy to digest way of reading through Dracula, which can be daunting. Reading through any classic can be daunting. But, what makes this fun, is that you get to read the entries for that specific date in the book. So from May 3 all the way through November, you can count on an entry. It’s the same as the newsletter that you can sign up for, but with an added bonus of fun added in the margins, such as memes. I love what they’ve done with Dracula Daily, and I promise if you’ve struggled with Dracula before, you won’t regret this one!

Giving this one star more than the OG Dracula, because Dracula Daily was such an omnipresent, genuinely wholesome experience in 2022. This is nothing but a chronological edition of Bram Stoker's epistolary work, but just like on tumblr, the commentary in the margins is what elates it to new levels of fandom entertainment (though I do hope that the shitposters on social media were asked for permission before being mentioned in this publication). There is even fanart! You had to be there.

Dracula Daily documents an experiment in reading the events of Dracula in real time online, along with plenty of commentary from the internet. It was an interesting idea and I had some fun jumping between the book and the current day comments. I also liked the concept of reading it in real time, but did get distracted from this because it's just not how I read. I do like that I can use this Dracula Daily to repeat the experiment any time in the future. An interesting concept that influenced how I view this classic.

I participated in Dracula Daily last year (although I failed to finish it), so I was very curious when I heard it was getting published as to how they were going to format it into a book in a way that justified it's existence over a regular copy of Dracula. I think the direction they took worked out really well. I'm glad they included the commentary from last year's participants because the online response is what led me to Dracula Daily and is half the fun of the project. The illustrations and fan art were a great addition too.

This is perfect for someone who wants to read the classics but has a hard time getting into them. The tweets and comments in the margins provide a break from the story and are like little rewards, egging you on to get to the next one. Stoker's prose isn't super convoluted for a classic (except for maybe when Van Helsing is talking), but the comments and images do also aid with reading comprehension and processing the absurdity of certain scenes.