Lucy Undying is the collision of two very different stories—the first is a punk, new adult coming of rage plot following Iris, the reluctant heiress to a vampire multi-level marketing cult, and the other is a queer, feminist reclaiming of Lucy Westenra (which, at varying times, feels inspired by Dracula, Interview with the Vampire, and Captain America: The First Avenger—no, I’m not joking). When Iris and Lucy meet in London, romance sparks and dark secrets unwind, threatening Iris’s freedom and Lucy’s greatest wish: to be seen and truly loved.

Lucy Undying has glimpses of brilliance—Lucy’s commentary on female desire and the “neediness” so often vilified in women is moving and lovely, and Dracula’s narcissism is cruel and well-depicted. The changes White makes to Bram Stoker’s narrative are clever (if somewhat predictable), and result in an eerie and entertaining conspiracy. I don’t think one needs to have read Dracula to follow Lucy Undying, but familiarity undoubtedly improves the reading experience, and I particularly enjoyed White’s callbacks to small but memorable moments in the original text (the garlic flowers, blood transfusions, and escaped wolf, to name a few!)

Unfortunately, White’s writing struggles to find a cohesive tone—in concept, queering Lucy feels like fertile ground for feminist literary fiction, but attempts to get there are held back by the Iris narrative, which seems YA both in plot and writing style. Similarly, the vampire MLM scheme is engaging and fun on its own, but is distracted by breakaways to Lucy’s vampiric past. Lucy’s characterization suffers as a result—though elements of her narrative are poignant and striking, she lacks the gravitas one might expect from a 100+ year old vampire plucked from a literary classic, and the insta-love romance (complete with painfully quirky couple names like “my little butter chicken”) feels more immature than earth-shattering.

Ultimately, there are just better sapphic vampire stories out there. As a Dracula fan, I don’t regret reading Lucy Undying, but I’d encourage others to check out queer vampire picks like Carmilla or Dowry of Bl00d instead.

Thank you to NetGalley, Ballantine, Del Rey, and Random House Publishing Group for this advanced copy. You can pick up Lucy Undying: A Dracula Novel on September 10, 2024.

It's spooky season, so I figured this would be the perfect read to ease me into fall. And it is a good fall book... but boy does it eaaassseee you into things. I think it's more my mood/current reading behavior than any problem with the book itself, but I struggled to pick this one up and stay invested, Despite following 2-3 characters (Lucy past and present), none of these characters stuck out to me enough to care about what was happening to them. Nothing pulled me in and made me want to keep reading. I got about 14% in and realized that I could put this down and not think about it ever again. So, I'm afraid that's what I did.

Now, if you're looking for a moody, sapphic, atmospheric story about vampires with massive character studies, this is your book! But I'm afraid it wasn't for me.

See link for full review details. 3.5 rating, enjoyed the second half of the book the most. Loved all the twists

Lucy Undying by Kiersten White is a fabulous reinterpretation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I was able to read and fully enjoy the story without having read the classic text. But now that I know Lucy and the characters that surround her in life were created by Stoker, I’m eager to pick up my copy of the original novel.

We learn about Lucy’s life through a diary she wrote in 1890 at age 19, and the stories of her afterlife are shared through a transcribed therapy session in 2024. This was a very clever way of providing her full history and worked well with the present day first person narration of Iris.

When we meet Iris, she has traveled to London to sort out part of her recently inherited estate. It quickly becomes clear that she is caught up in some nefarious organization and her trip to London is only meant to be a quick stop to fund her escape.

Iris discovers Lucy’s journal hidden under the floorboards of Hillingham, the old mansion owned by and long-ago abandoned by her family. She finds a kindred spirit in Lucy who, like Iris, is dominated and manipulated by her mother and feels trapped in a life she does not want.

With a supporting cast of largely all female vampires, White spins a distinctly feminist retelling with cutting commentary on the predatory male gaze. Lucy was taught to be demure, quietly appealing - a blank canvas that men could project their own desires onto. It’s what made her an easy victim, and what continues to make women targets today. Keeping women quiet, afraid to cause discomfort or raise conflict, is what still gives predators the confidence that they can take whatever they want and get away with it.

I wish I could share a sample of my favorite quotes, because White composes so many beautiful passages about time, home, femininity, and sense of self. You’ll just have to read the book to discover them for yourself, along with all the great twists and sapphic romance I’ve skipped for fear of triggering spoilers.

1890, Lucy is a young woman with no freedom in her life. Immortality gave her a new entitlement to claim her identity as a woman she never could when she was alive, to be authentic inside and out. Kiersten White’s Lucy Undying spans centuries, depicting a young woman whose real story began when she became unalive as one of Dracula’s first victims. Woven through time from the past to the modern day, where another young woman named Iris unearths a mystery after her mother’s death. Traveling to London, she discovers a secret family home tucked away like a time capsule and within the untouched walls are mysterious diaries and transcripts that tell the story of a young woman named Lucy. Kiersten White writes an absolutely rich, atomsoprehic, and breathtakingly amazing female spin on Dracula that is long overdue! The intersection of these two women’s stories illustrates the pain of love and family relationships that carries across time and generations.

Confession time: I never actually finished reading Dracula. How is such an iconic and influential book so incredibly boring? Well, Kiersten White solves that problem with a retelling that focuses on Lucy Westenra. Jumping between time frames and points of view, we get a new perspective on what could have actually happened in Stoker's novel and how that story might continue to this day. My only complaint is that it felt like two novels. At the two-thirds mark, it felt like a tidy ending was wrapping itself up, but then the book continued on. Split into two, I would have happily devoured both books. I look forward to what Kiersten White writes next.

I absolutely loved this book! I devoured it in three days and I don't think I have ever finished a book that quickly in quite a while. I loved how the author introduced twists because they were there before I could even guess as to what was going to happen. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and I am looking forward to recommending the book and reading more titles from the author.

Lucy Undying: A Dracula Novel by Kiersten White is said to be a Dracula retelling but if you are Dracula purist, this book is not for you. Thankfully, I’m not a Dracula purist and quite enjoyed this sapphic retelling.

The men who stopped Lucy after Dracula turned her, and eventually destroyed Dracula to end his terror, failed. Lucy continued to live beyond 1890, traveling across continents during the World Wars, spending time with other vampires Dracula has turned. I wish I could read a book about many of the relationships Lucy had within the book to be honest (the doctor, the lover, and the queen specifically) as I was really drawn in by her attempt to make these lovers her companion.

Meanwhile, the people around Lucy continued their lives, moving to America and starting a large corporation, Goldaming Life. In 2024, Iris Goldaming returns to England and the ancestral family home and finds Lucy's diary, and Lucy herself.

Iris and Lucy are living somewhat parallel lives, surrounded by possessive mothers and dismissive men, while they're just trying to exist in the world. The two women bond over their shared experiences, and work together to find the independence they each desperately need.

Overall I would say the book pacing was good, though it is a long read. I did really enjoy this book and would highly recommend it!

Thank you netgalley for this eARC in exchange for my honest review.

I've been obsessed with vampires since the twilight era of my life many years ago; Because of this, I will pick up anything slightly romantic with vampires in it. The premise of this book seemed incredible. Vampires? LOVE! Multi-POV? LOVE! Romance?! LOVE! But I just could not get into the story. It felt slow to me, and if there isn't plot happening, I get bored very easily. I didn't finish this one, unfortunately.

White is becoming one of my favorite authors. I love how unique her stories are. Even with such a classic tale about everyone's favorite vampire, she somehow made it new. It's a very dark and gothic but also very witty story that might be a little slow to get going, but definitely is worth the slow burn.

"Where does love come from, and why does it feel so much like fear?"

♡ Gothic Romance
♡ Dracula Re-imagining
♡ Sapphic, all the sapphic
♡ Family Trauma & Hierarchy
♡ Revenge Plot

Keirstan White has a new fan in me. Lucy's story had me transfixed from the very first pages of her accounting, and I was eager to learn more about this girl who had her life stolen from her for the sake of love.

White's writing is compelling and evocative, enthralling and eerie while simultaneously bringing a lightness to the story with Iris' humor in dark times.

"I was looking for a higher purpose, and in my world, Dracula was both devil and god. Destroyer and creator."

After 19 years in a loveless family, Lucy becomes just another victim in a string of young women left behind by Dracula with no rhyme or reason, and no sense of direction. Her family is gone, her fiancé tried to kill her, and her beloved is a whisper on the wind. She recounts for us the next 100+ years of her hunt for her maker and her reason for existing.

Meanwhile, Iris, heiress to a soul sucking multi-billion dollar corporation, is fleeing from her inherited responsibility after her mother's recent demise. Plagued by her mother's expectations of her even after her death, she falls into Lucy's journals that she discovered at a family estate in London, becoming enraptured by a girl whose life mirrored so much of her own.

"It wasn't that my mother didn't love me. It was that her version of love was another form of violence."

This is a story of pain and rejection, survival and self-discovery. And love. So much love, though we'll have to walk through hell to find it.

"Thank you for at last answering the questions I feared I would die with - the reason, the purpose, the point of me? It was love. It was you."

This is for the daughters ( or anyone ) who has ever felt the sting of a narcissistic parent or the manipulation by someone you loved and trusted. For every one us made to feel shame with an out of context verse from the bible, twisted to make us feel small.

"...we both know innocence is weirded as a weapon against young women. A whip to wound us, ties to bind us. A commodity to be traded and sold. By the time we know what innocence truly is, it's been taken from us and we're shamed for its absence."

I didn't know a book about a forgotten victim of Dracula could alter my brain chemistry so much or bring me to the brink of weeping alone in my room, but this one did.

Thank you so much to NetGalley for the advance reader copy. I will be going out and buying a physical copy to annotate and hold dear the moment it hits the shelves.

In Lucy Undying, the vampire Lucy Westenra is spared from her garish fate and given new life, new experiences and even a chance at love. In the present day, Iris travels to London to escape the clutches of her powerful family and is instantly drawn to the beautiful and enigmatic woman who unexpectedly saves her life.

Told from several point-of-views-initially from Iris and shifting to Lucy’s diary in 1890 and then her therapy transcripts in 2024-readers are given a glimpse into Lucy’s life, death and her remarkable experiences thereafter. I found the events taking place during Dracula and Lucy’s eventual attempts at seeking out a meaning to her new life to be intriguing and the various women she crosses paths with are each uniquely interesting in their own ways.

Lucy Undying is unflinchingly sapphic and it was refreshing to read about women finding love without being punished by the narrative for it. Some love is unrequited as well and there is also an emphasis upon the more toxic aspects of devotion and how damaging people pleasing and the unconscious desire to cling to familiar patterns of behavior can be.

Nevertheless I found Iris’ attachment and affections towards Lucy to be quite sudden and while her character was meant as a foil to Lucy’s own-a young woman with an overbearing and abusive mother and seeking to escape the chains of wealth and expectations-at times I felt she needed something more to be a fully-fleshed out character.

While some of the prose is quite beautiful, there are also parts of the dialogue that are somewhat awkward. Also, if you are a Dracula purist, then you may not enjoy Lucy Undying. I appreciated an attempt at a different interpretation of the events of the novel, despite not being fond of Lucy Undying’s portrayals of the characters.

Thank you to NetGalley, Random House Publishing Group-Ballantine, and Del Rey for access to this ebook. All opinions expressed are solely my own.

Thank you to NetGalley and Del Rey for an advanced ARC of Lucy Undying in exchange for a fair and honest review!

Lucy Undying is a Dracula retelling. In it, the men who stopped Lucy after Dracula turned her, and eventually destroyed Dracula to end his terror, failed. Lucy continued to live beyond 1890, traveling across continents during the World Wars, spending time with other vampires Dracula has turned. Meanwhile, the people around Lucy continued their lives, moving to America and starting a large corporation, Goldaming Life. In 2024, Iris Goldaming returns to England and the ancestral family home and finds Lucy's diary, and Lucy herself.

I've loved Kiersten White's writing for a long time, her 'And I Darken' trilogy is one of my favorite YA series, and she nails it again. Iris and Lucy are living somewhat parallel lives, surrounded by possessive mothers and dismissive men, while they're just trying to exist in the world. The two women bond over their shared experiences, and work together to find the independence they each desperately need.

I don't want to reveal too much of the story, but there is an additional plot focusing on Goldaming Life. It's an interesting idea, but I find learning about Lucy's life from 1890 to 2024 (which she tells through her therapy appointments, how perfect!) the most engaging parts of the book. I highly recommend Kiersten White's writing, this book definitely included.

Thank you to NetGalley and Del Rey for an advanced eARC of Lucy Undying in exchange for a fair and honest review!

Rating: 4 stars
Pub Date: Nov 10 2024

“I have hidden sharp teeth after all, daydreaming the deaths of three perfectly fine men. I should repent. But repentance never seems to take with me.”

I was so, so excited to read this book, being an avid vampire fiction fan and lover of Lucy Westenra, who absolutely deserved her own book. However, Lucy Undying just didn’t scratch my itch for Lucy love.

The dialogue, format, and characterization of Lucy were all beautiful. I loved the epistolary formatting reminiscent of Dracula, and I found that despite going between three time periods at one point the narrative was easy enough to follow, and each kept me excited to learn more.

I ADORED reading about the Doctor, the Lover, and the Queen, these three nameless vampiric women Lucy encounters and tries to make companions with. Each had such distinct voices and personalities, and I could probably read a whole book about them.

However, despite the gorgeous language and unique characters, I found the plot to be lacking. The subplot about Iris and Godalming Life just felt out of place, and I wasn’t as invested in it as I was Lucy and Iris’s romance.

I also found that the book was one hundred pages longer than it had to be, and things sort of declined in excitement and pacing once the narrative took the characters to Boston.

My biggest disappointment, however, was the handling of the classic Dracula characters. I of course expected some subversion of the source material since Lucy is still alive here, but making certain characters villainous and resentful toward Lucy when in the novel they were anything but… kinda threw me for a loop.

Obviously this is just White’s interpretation, but personally it wasn’t my cup of tea to see characters from what I interpreted as a novel about the bonding together of humanity to defeat an evil being somehow turn out to be money hungry baddies.

I will say, there’s a point in the novel where it feels like White is directly writing to Lucy, and it was touching and raw and I found it to be such a fun idea to write a love story and letter to a classic literature character who got the short end of the stick.

While this wasn’t my favorite interpretation of Dracula, I did have fun with it. The language was just so unique and distinctive and I liked Lucy and Iris’s romance. (You don’t need to have read Dracula before this to fully understand it, also, but it does add a layer having that prior knowledge.)

**I received this arc from Netgalley and Random house in exchange for an honest review**


“Your story matters because you matter .” What a story Lucy Undying is! This is a unique spin on a Dracula retelling which is told in a dual timeline. The author weaves a character with such depth in Lucy, the FMC, through her complexity, intensity and intrigue. In 21st century London, Lucy meets up with the alluring Iris whom she shares a desire to break free from a past filled with trauma and emotionally abusive inept mothers. The plot is so unique with its historical elements, gothic vibes , betrayal, unrequited love and childhood trauma/abuse. I enjoyed every aspect of this story and the characters opened my mind to the beauty of love between females.

When describing Lucy Undying as epic, it's a great description for multiple reasons. First, this book is long as it's almost 500 pages. Trust me. this is one you'll be reading over the course of a few days but not in a bad way. Second, this book is broken down into a few different timelines and while it might seem confusing at first, you quickly find out how everything is connected. Lastly, there is an epic romance here and as a romance reader, I was living for it.

If you've never read Dracula such as myself, this plot might not make sense to you. For those who have read Dracula, this is probably familiar. We're following Lucy Westerna's life before she becomes one of Dracula's victims. That story is told through diary entries that Lucy wrote as a teenager and those were easily some of my favorite moments. Seeing how things played out for Lucy was honestly sad but not surprising in so many ways.

The other timeline is the present day with Lucy talking to her therapist and essentially giving us the account of what happened after she became a vampire. Since she is hundreds of years old, there was a lot of ground to cover. I adored that Kiersten White chose to tell that story with a therapist as I can just imagine it so vividly. It makes for a fun picture although Lucy's story is anything but fun. Our girl is riddled with trauma that seems never-ending

The third timeline follows Iris who recently lost her mother and has run away to England. While there, she ends up running into Elle, a gorgeous and mysterious museum worker. It's obvious the two have something there but Iris is determined not to have anything ruin her chances. As you can see, there is a lot going on in Lucy Undying but once you start reading, it's incredibly easy to catch on.

As you might imagine, all of the different timelines come together and Lucy Undying has everything you're looking for in a vampire novel. There is the sapphic romance between Elle and Iris, the mystery of what happened to Lucy, and if it's connected to Iris and if Dracula is really behind everything. The author did an amazing job of weaving everything together and making the reader question what they know and how it all comes together.

Since I'm not well-versed in the original text, I wasn't able to figure everything out until pretty close to the end. Even so, Kiersten White put a unique and modern twist on Dracula and it just felt right. I don't want to give too much away because once you start reading, you won't want to put this book down.

Kate’s Thoughts
I am going to preface my review with some caveats. The first is that I have genuinely enjoyed all of the books that I have read by Kiersten White. Like, not a clunker in the bunch in my experience. The next is that I have a very, very personal connection to the original story of “Dracula”, as I read it in my all time favorite college class which was taught by my very favorite professor turned friend Andy, who tragically passed away due to a brain tumor far too young, and his analysis and contextualization of the novel made for very rewarding reading. And I really liked the idea of approaching Lucy Westenra, who was basically a character to be a tragic woman victim to drive the men in her life towards justice, to get some more complexity and time to shine. After all, we know that women don’t have to just be victims there for man pain. With these things in mind, I was so, SO anticipating “Lucy Undying”, White’s newest retelling and reimagining of a classical piece of Western literature. My hopes were so high.

And man. I really didn’t like this book.

There are many things that I didn’t like about this book and I don’t want to turn this into a long rant, so I will do my best to keep this brief. What I will say is that I started out liking it for a bit. Some of the set up was promising. But then it fell apart once we got into the nitty gritty. This book is told in multiple perspectives. The first is Iris, a woman living in the modern day who is trying to escape the clutches of the toxic MLM that her family, particularly her now dead mother, has been running and has made them powerful and dangerous. When she arrives in London to try and sort out some property that her family has, she finds the diary of Lucy Westenra, the tragic victim of vampire Dracula (but also almost everyone around her) centuries before. Iris has also met the mysterious ‘Elle’, who is quite obviously vampire Lucy. Along with the present day, we have TWO perspectives from Lucy. The first is her diary from her time shortly before becoming a vampire (which Iris has found), as well as transcripts from therapy sessions that let us know what Lucy was up to AFTER her turning and before now. It’s a hefty amount to juggle, and unfortunately it isn’t juggled very well, feeling meandering and bloated. It’s a lot of telling instead of showing when it comes to Lucy and her exploits, and it makes the pacing lag as we jump between the three. I wish that one had been cut completely to be frank. And then to make matters more convoluted, the tone does a sudden shift later in the book, and it feels like two different novels being combined into one, but shoehorned in in an awkward fashion.

But the most egregious thing to me was how in an effort to bolster Lucy up beyond the admitted victimized waif that she was in the original text BASICALLY EVERY OTHER CHARACTER FROM “DRACULA” has been turned into a devious villain who meant to do her harm. And look, I get the drive to do so. I wholly understand the way that many women were treated during the Victorian era by the men in their lives. I can understand wanting to make The Five Heroes perhaps not as gallant as the original text did, that maybe they were men of their time with all the baggage that comes with it. Hell, I can even perhaps get into the debate of trying to treat a dying Lucy with blood transfusions when she wasn’t REALLY consenting to it (though it sure wasn’t unheard of, and I know this because I once worked in a historic upper class Victorian house in St. Paul that has SO MANY medical horror stories, especially for the women). But making Dr. Seward a psychopath? Making Quincy a total dumb dumb? Making Arthur scheming for more wealth? MAKING VAN HELSING AN ‘OLD PERVERT’?! Hated it. And the biggest sin? Mina is not exempt from this. So what is supposed to be a feminist re-envisioning makes the choice to throw the only other woman from the original text under the bus to make Lucy look better and wronged and scorned and etcetera etcetera. It’s the same lazy trap that that vanity project “Maleficent” fell into, and I HATED that movie and I really disliked this book because of this. I admit that I may be too personally fond of the original story to really give this the fairest of shakes, but this kind of approach almost always sticks in my craw, beloved text or not.

I do have a positive I will share because it’s only fair to do so after this long rant of a review: I absolutely loved the predatory Utah based MLM storyline, Goldaming Life and how Iris and Lucy connect to it. In the author’s note White mentions that she’s writing a book that does more Utah MLM culture deconstruction and oh my GOD I am SO here for that. Though in another moment of ranting, Arthur’s title in “Dracula” was spelled “Godalming”, not “Goldaming”. I think this was just a misspelling as there was no indication that misspelling was intentional. I’m hoping this will be corrected in the final product.

I still intend to keep reading Kiersten White’s books, as overall I still really like her as an author. But I really disliked this book, which was such a disappointment because I had such high hopes for it.

Serena’s Thoughts
If I just type “same” and call it good, would that count for my half of this joint review? But honestly, much of what Kate expressed was my own experience as well. I want to re-emphasize truly how much of a shock this was. Like Kate, I’ve loved every book I’ve read by this author. Sure, I’ve had favorites (I particularly enjoyed her “Vlad the Impaler” trilogy), but none of them have whiffed nearly as badly as this one did. I’m honestly not sure what happened. It could be simply a case of the author having too much tied up in her own head canon regarding Lucy (as she admits in the author’s note in the end), and then the story itself was lost in the shuffle.

I’ve only read “Dracula” once, so I don’t have the same deep ties to the story as Kate does. That being the case, I was happy enough to go along with the reinterpretation of some of these characters. But very quickly, I ran into the exact problem that Kate expressed: the “reinterpretation” was the same for every single character, namely, they were all terrible people in comparison to Lucy. I really lost it, however, when this carried over to Mina. I truly dislike it when authors attempt to write “feminist” re-tellings of classic characters and the way they end up showing this is by demonizing the other women surrounding them. It’s just icky. This was made all the worse for Lucy then being written as your tried-and-true special snowflake who literally inspires every other woman around her and, yes, essentially ends WWI all on her own.

Beyond that, while I think the modern day story was better written, I don’t feel that it fit comfortably alongside Lucy’s own history that was slowly unfurled through diary entries and therapist notes. It also wasn’t helped that, personally, this storyline was simply of less interest to me. I can see that it was better done, but my original draw to this story was in the original “Dracula” time period and characters (I’ll also say that I think the cover is a bit misleading, as it definitely leans towards a more historical/gothic vibe than the large chunks of contemporary horror/thriller storylines that we got here).

Overall, I have to agree with Kate in pretty much every way. This was a disappointing read, all the more so for it coming from an author who has been such a sure thing in the past.

Kate’s Rating 3: A huge misstep from an author I usually quite enjoy, “Lucy Undying” is bloated, convoluted, and relies too much on demonizing other characters in order to bolster Lucy up. Very disappointing.

Serena’s Rating 3: A bizarre missing of the mark from an author who has had great success tackling similar re-tellings in the past.

The way this book had me sobbing.
Technically is a retelling of Dracula, except viewed under the lens of abuse he inflicted on his victims.
I’m still processing all my thoughts and feelings but dang this book hit me hard.
Highly recommend and by far White’s best adult book yet!
4.5 stars

A Mike Flanagan-esque modern interpretation of a horror classic with DoTerra scented undertones.

I really enjoyed Lucy Undying though, throughout the book, I wondered how the story could have been improved if it WEREN’T a reimagining of a famous and well known story (along the lines of The God of Endings). White is a very strong writer with range — I read this book back to back with Mister Magic — and I look forward to reading more of her novels in the future.

Wow I wanted to love this so much! The cover is breathtaking and that's about all it has going for it. It has so many view-points and time jumps so much that the story gets lost. And it could have been a beautiful story had it been framed better.