A vampire story is never just a vampire story. Vampires can represent repressed desires, societal taboos, the shadow self, and more. In this story the vampire represents lesbian desire, the lurking presence of death, the animal nature within each human, and more. Sadly, I did not find this vampire to be very well written and/or translated.

The narration was written mostly in past tense first person. This had too many limitations for the complexity of the historical setting in Buenos Aires during the yellow fever plague. There was one section that read like a history book with dates, names and places all perfectly remembered (in a recollection of the remembering at that!). Then we switch to a present tense diary format where dates should make sense, but don’t really add very much. The two primary characters also seemed uncannily self aware and able to describe the symbolism in their own actions, yet also incapable of making fairly obvious connections. We’re supposed to believe a modern person would not clock a blood-thirsty fanged succubus as a murderous vampire? There were just too many leaps of faith for me.

What I realized when I was 85 percent into the book, was that this vampire was really constructed as a deus ex machina for a present day story about anticipatory grief and queerness. I wish we had gotten to that meaty part sooner. I could have done with far fewer descriptions of pale skin heaving in the moonlight.

The subplot about terminal illnesses from yellow fever to progressive paralysis was better developed in the last 15 percent of the book, but not enough for me to say I enjoyed the reading experience. I will be taking away the themes of resisting/embracing death and vampirism as its own kind of terminal disease.

I received a digital advance reader copy of this book from NetGalley and Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Random House, in exchange for an honest review.

This gothic sapphic vampire story started off super steamy and intoxicating. I literally could not stop reading it and read 50% of it in one setting. The writing was beautiful, storytelling was spell binding and I also loved how unlikeable our MC is. She is a creature of the night and is not shamed to say it.

On the other hand the second part i found myself bored and when i realized the plot of the second part i felt it was rushed. I did enjoy the fact that our original MC had a bit of redemption with the favor she did.

Overall I highly recommend this book.

This was a really interesting and quick read following a vampire and a single mom. I really loved the premise, but I found the writing style to be plain. It was told entirely in summary, which makes things boring fast. Additionally, the relationship between the two main characters is extremely rushed; I was shocked at the ending because there had been very little lead-up to it.

If you like stories about female oppression, sapphics throughout the centuries, and vampires, this book is for you.

Thank you to the publisher for my e-copy.

this was very atmospheric and the gothic vampire vibes were exactly what I needed while reading this. marina yuszczuk's writing makes this story similar to carmilla, dracula and even your typical shirley jackson novel and I really enjoyed this book about sapphic vampires with a sloooooow burn.

dnf @ 38% / Ch 7


Unfortunately, more literary in nature than I had expected, and not in a way that compels me to finish. I did really like how the vampire in this book is brutal and animalistic, and I feel like that could be used to some length in the literary aspects of this book. However, when the plot is this sparse, I prefer to have strong literary elements to balance that out (and visa versa).

I didn't have strong feelings of like or dislike towards this book, and I just didn't feel that interested to keep reading. While I didn't feel compelled to finish, I would definitely be curious to read more from this author if more of her work is translated into English.

Fleeing her discovery and the murder of her sisters, a vampire flees Europe in the Nineteenth century and lands in Buenos Aires to begin a new. As the village turns into a larger city, yellow fever plagues its residents, and the times begin to change, she’ll have to adapt and fit in with the humans to survive. In modern-day Buenos Aires, a woman struggles with the slow dying of her mother from a terrible illness and struggles with her own identity in relation to motherhood. Years ago, she waited for some fantasy to happen, something monumental that would change her life, and now, she’s faced with such a situation and will have to make a choice that will redefine her yet again.

I knew I was going to like Thirst when I read the summary, and I have to say, the text didn’t disappoint. It’s a beautiful, macabre blend of horror and literary fiction with two portraits of longing, of yearning, of unquenchable thirst if you will. It seems like women do a so much of those things, and I love how the author examined them in the context of horror. To me, horror lets us examine not only our own fears but also the dark recesses of ourselves, the darker parts of humanity.

Heather Cleary’s translation is excellent. I obviously could not read it in the original language, but I highlighted so many passages as I was reading, and the words resonated with me, making perfect sense but also presented in such beautiful language. Definitely recommend this one.

3.5. I enjoyed the pre-modern day part of this book so much more. The writing was gorgeous, but the plot fell flat for me. I wanted more of the vampire lore/vibes. I still think it's worth checking out. (Also wondering if some of the plot didn't translate well?)

I was hooked as soon as I heard this was queer and about vampires! That has been such my vibe lately. Let me just say the writing in this book is spectacular! It’s so rich in detail I genuinely felt like I was in the book! I really liked following both of the timelines and I think they intertwined really well. This is one of those stories that is not for everyone but boy is it for me. I just could not put this book down, and it’s a book where I can’t really explain why. I was simply enthralled and I can’t wait to read more from this author!

Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk is a Latin American vampire novel split into two parts. The first part is set in the 1800s and starts with a female vampire escaping her hunters in Europe by hiding on a ship. The ship lands in Buenos Aires, and she makes a good life for herself. The second part is modern day, where a woman is given a key to a crypt by her dying mother and meets the vampire. Both sections are good, but the first section is brutal, fast paced, and engaging. The second part is more about mortality, loneliness and longing, and the agony of watching the slow process of a mother dying. (It is never stated but the deterioration of her mother makes is feel like she has Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), a neurodegenerative disease where the patient slowly loses function of both skeletal and smooth muscles, until the respiratory muscles finally fail). Both parts are good, but so different, with different tones and feelings.

The writing is sharp and beautiful. This is no doubt a novel from an Argentinian writer. The style of most Latin American writers are long paragraphs that tell the story more than show the story. There might be a year or ten years on one page, everything summarized. This is also why many Latin American novels are fairly short. The style of these novels means that you have to be a very good writer, someone who does not spare a single word, and you have to find a good translator. This translation by Heather Cleary is very readable and engaging. Yuszczuk’s talent is writing a story that is compelling in a style that should not work as well as it does.

When I was reading the first part of the book, I realized that I do not really read many vampire novels. I do not find them to be top of my list of horror subjects. I do have a list of top five vampire books and movies, but I do not consider myself an expert in the subgenre. I do know that I always have this feeling that vampires should be sexy, that biting someone on the neck is the way that they feed but also foreplay toward something more sensual. Many vampire stories that I have read hint at this or ignore it completely, but this sensuality is front and center in Thirst. The vampire story is a subgenre that has been written so many times that there are not many new things that can be done with this story, but Thirst does utilize the parts of the vampire mythos that really makes the story entertaining.

I received this as an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I was transported into a world of grief and death. I could not put the book down. This is a sapphic vampire literary masterpiece. This was written beautifully with so much yearning and had an overall gothic atmosphere that made you feel that you were living it. I need more, promptly. My mental sanity depends on it!

Thank you NetGalley for this eARC in exchange for an honest review!

Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk is gothic fiction at its best. Lots of sex and death. Read this if you loved Carmilla.

Thank you to Dutton & NetGalley for the copy! This was painstakingly beautiful — the picturesque gothic imagery, the two-fold narratives between each woman and century, the vacillation between life and death, which is undeniably where both agony and pleasure reside. In the first part of this story, we are told the history of a young woman turned vampire who soon flees to Buenos Aires following the witch hunt and persecution of her kind. As she ventures through new cities, she lavishes in murder and flirtation until the gluttony inevitably catches up to her. As a last ditch effort for survival, she preserves herself in a tomb with the sole key given to her most trusted companion.

Years later, we learn through journal entries about a single mother, Alma, who is attempting to support her own mother's wavering health. While reconciling with her mother's declining mental state, Alma learns of a key that has long been concealed by her parent, passed through generations.

I love a good vampire story, but Thirst serves to be far more compelling than its typical counterparts. Yuszczuk subverts the standard trope of the avaricious, impassive vampire — rather, she illustrates the depth of emotion within her character, allowing for both the hedonistic nature of the vampire to coexist alongside the loneliness, yearning, and grief born from her character's constant exile.

The vampire's origin story was enthralling, but the story began to lag at times throughout the second part. Overall gorgeous prose and unsettling ending!!

Honestly, I'm really kind of happy that we're getting a bit of a wave of literary fiction that focuses on vampires. We get what feels like two very different novellas that end up being linked; one is a female vampire who emigrates to South America, and a woman with a dying mother and a son and friends who don't understand, and a mysterious mausoleum. The way the two halves end up connecting is pretty obvious if you think about it for a few seconds, but the unraveling of how they're connected is still incredibly well done. Definitely worth your time.

Such a lush, lyrical prose that I just wanted to take a bite out of. Told a beautiful story, and I can't wait to physically see this book on the shelf at my store!

This book took me a while to get into. The writing is phenomenal and the plot is good but it’s not my absolute favorite. I still enjoyed it though.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review. I really wanted to love this but I ended up being so bored through a lot of it. I had to push myself to finish, even switching over to the audiobook at about 45% which helped a little but not enough to rate this higher. The writing is beautiful and the vampires POV had great vibs but I guess this just wasn’t for me.

I am not sure what to think about this book, honestly. It starts off as a typical vampire tale, meets somewhere in the middle of the past and then catches up to the present. There wasn't anything particularly novel about it that sets the thirsty vampire apart from other sympathetic vampires. In fact, she's probably less sympathetic than the Cullens (definitely), Lestat (probably), and even Dracula. As a history of the city of Buenos Aires, I'm sure it's interesting. But even from that perspective, I didn't quite get enough of the city to understand how the changes impacted the people (human and non-people) who populate it. The second narrative, from the perspective of a woman named Alma, ended with absolutely no narrative resolution or clarity. If I am going to recommend a sapphic (which this only marginally is) vampire tale, this probably wouldn't be it.

For the concept of lesbian vampires, I will think about this book often. The writing was very beautiful and mesmerizing at times. Other times it was a bit difficult to follow but still added to the atmosphere of the book. I enjoyed it but also probably won’t be obsessed with it.

I adore media that meditates the reality of living as a vampire, the nihilism and gothic depravity was realized with wonderfully translated prose. If the novel solely followed the first storyline and setting, I would give it an easy 4 stars or above. However for me the inclusion of a modern half with a second main character took a lot of the wind out of my sails. Both halves eventually intersect but by that point I was getting a bit fatigues by Alma's story and wishing to return to the macabre 1800s horrors. I am not against vampires in modern day, I just felt like this was too much tonal whiplash and not a familiar character to help ease that through. My issues with the structure do not take away the obvious writing talent on display here and I am not too much displeased not to recommend this book nor hope to read more translations from this author.

This was a bit of a departure from my normal reading. Thirst is a creepy atmospheric horror novel that follows a vampire from her “making” in the dark ages of Eastern Europe to present day Buenos Aires.

This reminded me a lot of The God of Endings in that we get to see vampires in a not-sexy way. Unfortunately, the truth is, if you take the sexy out of vampires they are actually the worst. It’s an awful existence with a lot of existential crises and self-loathing. This book was different than The God of Endings in that the vampire doesn’t seem to feel too bad about killing people. She mostly accepts her existence and is almost angry that she can’t just go around murdering at will.

The first half of the book is from the un-named vampire’s POV. The second half follows Alma, a single woman with a young son whose mother is dying. Within each half we get to know the main characters pretty well. There is a final section where their stories intersect and I found this to be very rushed.

If the author’s goal was to leave me feeling an overall sense of unease than she was successful. I felt icky and creeped out while reading but I didn’t especially enjoy it. Readers who love the horror genre will likely find this more to their taste. The writing is excellent, it was the subject matter I struggled with.