Finally, a book with Dracula that is NOT dreadfully boring. Sorry Bram Stoker, but your book was a snoozefest.

This? A book about Lucy. Past, present. I was all here for it. This is told from transcripts from a therapist, Lucy's journal and from Iris.

It starts off a little confusing. But each chapter was quick and super engrossing. I found myself not wanting to put the book down. So I barely did.

Now I can't say much because this book is simply an experience. You need to read it. It'll all make sense. And honestly. Where the author took this, fully believable. I had thoughts while reading Dracula. It's nice someone talented did too!

I'll just say it was really nice to see Lucy through someone else's eyes. I loved her growth. I loved her. And now, we understand her.

The chapters are really short, I didn’t really get my bearings, and the writing itself isn’t as clean-cut and plays with point of view in a way I wasn’t up for today. I stopped 5% in. I think this will end up being pretty niche in terms of market/readership, not that that’s a bad thing, but probably not the right fit for our small libraries. I imagine this will be a 3-4 stars with 5 for the right readers.

Thank you to NetGalley and Random House Publishing for the ARC.

Finally, a really good telling of Lucy’s story. And it is everything I hoped it would be and more!



Lucy’s undead life is everything her mortal life was not. Exciting, Freeing,Full of Danger. In life she may have started as a silly girl, but in death, she is an amazing woman!

This is one of those books that you don’t want to give a thing away to spoil the next reader’s enjoyment, so let’s say I loved it. I will read it again. I have told everyone about it.

Brilliant!

NetGalley/RHPG/ Ballantine/ DelRey September 10, 2024

The writing was phenomenal. Plus, this book has got so many elements that I love in a book; an angsty sapphic romance, a fantasy world that will not leave my mind and characters that took hold of my heart. I just know I’m not going to get over it anytime soon.

Ebook received for free through NetGalley

Oh my gosh! I absolutely loved this book and couldn’t put it down. Didn’t even realized I needed to read a vampire book and it was incredible. Love the way it was laid out, the scene changes, the characters, and everything. Perfection.

first of all, this cover is GORGEOUS. genuinely so stunning and one of my favorite book covers ever.

I went into this knowing nothing about Dracula by Bram Stoker. i really wish i read the novel before Lucy Undying but oh well. i love that this is queer vampire retelling. i think we need to have more gay vampire books. especially sapphic ones. the romance was insta-lovey but i didn’t mind.

i feel like there was too many different POV’s and it made it hard to get into the book. when one person’s POV got good it would then switch to someone else. the switching also made it harder to follow the plot. the chapters of Lucy’s diary do not sound like they came from a girl from 1890. sounds more modern than old fashioned. no way she knows about gravity. another thing i didn’t love was that i felt like Kiersten White tried too hard to appeal to gen z. some of the phrases used made me cringe.

over all, i had things that i really enjoyed. Lucy Undying isn’t my favorite book in the world but i know people who would love this!

DNF first chapter.

I have been seeing quotes from my friends reading this book and was massively turned off of my initial excitement for this book. The cover is stunning and I love a good dracula inspired book but that couldn't save this for me. I had to reread that first chapter way to much for me to be interested in continuing this book. I think this could work for some people but I am not one of them by any means.

This was an interesting read. I can't say it kept me invested though, I had to put it down a few times and then almost force myself to continue it.

Not saying it was bad, just perhaps not my type of novel. It was well written and had a great premise but fell flat for me.

The cover art is gorgeous and I would recommend this to a few people I know that would love it.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book is phenomenal when it’s in Lucy’s POV. The author’s metaphorical prose were amazing, and she delved into one of my favorite characters from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The first half reminded me of A Dowry of Blood in the best ways, but I did not care at all for the chapters in Iris’s POV. If it was just Lucy’s journal & life story, then it would have been a much higher rating. Especially without the super weird, cultish aspect in the setting half.

This cover is simply stunning. I love the details, the colors, the gothic feel. It definitely demonstrates the vibes of the book.

I grew up as a fan of Bram Stoker's Dracula so I was intrigued by this title. Lucy is an interesting character and I liked that she got her own book. While the POV switches could be confusing at times, I overall enjoyed this. Vampires, gothic setting and sapphic romance? All good things in my book. I liked that Lucy had layers and she was complicated. She wasn't a dimwitted girl like she'd previously been portrayed to be.

A fun read that will delight vampire fans.

Man, I was SO READY to love this because I adored The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein and this beauuuutiful cover, but I just didn’t.

This was honestly just pretty boring, and the way it was written was confusing. The timelines were hard to keep up with and it seemed like there was too much going on. I didn’t love either Iris or Lucy very much so it was hard to become invested. Just overall a big letdown, I’m bummed!

Firstly, thank you Netgalley for the ARC!

I just need to preface this by saying, this was one of the longest books I have read under 500 pages.

The jumping from storyline, to storyline in the first half of this book was so hard for me, I hated that we would just cut from one story to another- and it made it hard to keep up.

I also had a hard time connecting to Iris, I found her unrelatable, and very surface level; especially compared to Lucy, who is so layered, and complex!

SPOILER:
I HATED that Dracula worked for a god damn MLM. I do not understand how that was even a sentence I have had to type out, but here we are.

There were parts of this book I liked, kept me intrigued even. But this story dragged on FAR too long, it could’ve been easily wrapped up, and been far more engaging in under 300 pages in my opinion.

This novel is not horrible, I loved Rahul, his husband, and I loved Lucy. However Mina, Iris, and the lot made this story lackluster.

I give this story 2.75 stars.

Absolutely fangtastic! The prose, humor throughout the book and characters you just fall in love with! A unique remaster of Dracula, powerful females whose timeless beauty is in more than their looks!! 10/10 recommend.

I’m such a fan of Kiersten White’s YA books and I enjoyed Hide too, so Lucy Undying was really exciting to me because I know White is good at giving a voice to a sidelined female character in a classic book (see The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein). I’ve never read Dracula and knew basically nothing about Lucy Westenra so I can’t speak to whether this book kept the true spirit of its inspiration.

I did enjoy the book overall and White’s writing shines at points, especially with Lucy’s diary entries. Unfortunately, I do think this book suffers from slow pacing and it doesn’t fully immerse us in the mind of its titular character, Lucy, since half of it takes place in the modern world from someone else’s perspective.

Lucy’s diary entries and learning about her past was much more interesting to me than following Iris in the modern day, so I wasn’t invested in half of the book. Iris’s chapters could be a slog to get through but I did enjoy the parallels of her story to Lucy and how she held up a mirror to Lucy’s life. I didn’t buy into their romance but I did buy that they had a connection that Lucy had been seeking from other people her entire life.

Lucy herself is an interesting character and we see who she was as a human and afterwards, when she becomes a vampire. Her deep loneliness in both eras of her life touched me and her longing for love, unconditional and true love, resonated. White is great at writing complex women but I wish we had more time between seeing what Lucy presented herself as and who she truly was. Some of her relationships with other women, while interesting, were also very short and I wanted to be more invested in them. If we hadn’t spent time on Iris, I definitely think these relationships would’ve been more fleshed out.

The plot of the modern storyline, while clever, doesn’t truly add to what I loved about Lucy and felt like it belonged in a completely different book. I think it’s fine to have half of the book set in modern times but that isn’t its main draw and the villains weren’t strong enough to pull it off.

Overall, Lucy Undying is an interesting homage to the original work but feels disjointed at times because of its other protagonist and the modern setting of half of the book.

Thanks to NetGalley and Del Rey for an ARC in exchange for my honest review!

This review will be published on my blog (clearsummers.wordpress.com) and Goodreads on August 27, 2024. It will be published on Amazon on the pub date.

Lucy Undying was a unique story revolving around our Lucy from the original Dracula and Iris who is a victim to the Goldaming life and her mother's abuse. This story was told in a unique way revealing Lucy's past and her present day happenings with Iris. There are also chapters in which Lucy is talking to her therapist and reveals all her past and sometimes present troubles. Honestly, fans of the original Dracula might not love this book. Everyone except Lucy from the original story is a villian (and the cowboy, he's a sweetheart and I loved him). Of course Mina is a huge presence in the book as she was Lucy's friend but her true character in this book will leave original Dracula fans in shock. I personally enjoyed this book and its uniqueness and the author's portrayal of grief and abuse and how the characters overcome it and find themselves. But...As much carnage as there is and as many vampires are involved it didn't give me the gothic vibes I was wishing for. It ultimately is a love story. This book is going to be an absolute hit for some readers, some will appreciate it for it's originality and uniqueness but others are going to struggle with this one. It was certainly a wild ride and I did enjoy the different POV's and diary entries from before Lucy was turned into one of Dracula's vampires.

Thank you to NetGalley and Del Rey for the ARC of this book!

Lucy Undying takes the story of Dracula's victim Lucy Westenra and makes her the center of this tale that spans decades. We learn about Lucy through her journals, which are being read in modern day by Iris. She is immediately enraptured by Lucy and ho she had to hid her real self from the world. Lucy gave herself to Dracula to save her love, Mina, but we find out there was actually more to Lucy's untimely death than meets the eye. Gothic, fantasy, sapphic romance, self-discovery, friendship, and revenge all play major parts in this fresh take on Dracula and vampires. Has elements that remind me of Blade and House of Usher.

“Stories are hauntings, aren’t they? The ghosts we carry with us everywhere. I’ll try to tell you my stories in order. Build a house for you where all my ghosts can be contained and haunt you in a way you can make sense of.”

“If my heart beat, it would beat your name.”

I’ve always loved vampires, especially Dracula! I watched the movie Bram Stoker’s Dracula as a kid and was immediately drawn to it. It was dark, gothic, sensual, romantic- everything I still love! Lucy Undying gives us the story of one Dracula’s brides. Poor Lucy was young and naive and wanted love so badly. In Lucy Undying we are given glimpses into Lucy’s past and present. We watch her unrequited love for her governess in life and death, and her searching the world for meaning. She wants to find Dracula and meets other brides along the way, bonded by blood and loneliness. In present day she finds Iris, someone to love and an ally in her journey of self discovery and revenge. Iris is a mirror to Lucy, reflecting back the intense want for freedom and peace. I LOVED this book. Lucy and Iris both pulled at my heart strings and I loved the twists and turns their story took. I was riveted from the first journal entry. Lovely writing and really creative writing. Loved that Lucy got her own story and found love!

vibes: Dracula but with a closer look at the sapphic parts, sometimes women just need to kill people, parallel narratives

Heat Index: 2/10

Lucy Westenra was famously a victim... But what if she actually did go on to "live" as a vampire throughout the centuries? She's been trying to evade her maker ever since her first death, which leads her to Iris in the twenty-first century. Iris has her own past she's trying to escape, and she and Lucy find a commonality in one another... and love. Yet neither of them are truly free, and without defeating those coming after them, they can never truly be together. A little easier said than done when one of those threats is... Dracula.

I was really excited about this one--that cover! Dracula! Sapphic vampire romance! And it's... a book I'd recommend to a certain audience, yes. Namely people who really enjoy retellings of gothic tales with a flipped lens, queer retellings especially. Yet, I don't think it reached as far as it could have.

There are several different primary narratives here (though they aren't quite the only perspectives you'll have). You have Lucy's diary from her human life, Lucy telling her story to a therapist, and Iris's much more straightforward twenty-first century point of view. Personally, I thought the diary entries were really interesting and indeed pretty tragic. Lucy's therapy sessions are both a cool tribute to Interview with the Vampire (or so they read to me) and like.. genuinely funny. I like her. I like Vanessa, the therapist. They're the kind of unhinged I believe Lucy, with everything she's been through, would be.

Then you have Iris.

So like--this book is in many ways a romance. Specifically the romance between Lucy and Iris. Obviously, I, as a romance reader, am so down for this. And I'm glad that White gave Iris a POV, as it can be so difficult to write a romance through only one POV.

The issue is that Iris isn't super interesting. In theory, her story should be--there's a lot of work done, and it's the kind of darkly comedic take with a decent amount of commentary on twenty-first century life that I would normally be down for. But Iris... just doesn't have a great voice? And her romance with Lucy is very instalove.

Instalove can be sold (controversial take, I know) but when you have the story splintered in so many different directions, you really can't settle into it. Because yeah--we get Lucy's POV, but much more so in the past, or in tellings of what she did in the past. Not so much when she's with Iris. Lucy is a compelling person, I just didn't really get why she was so into Iris.

Also, Iris really does seem to only exist in relation to Lucy, at points. In the sense that she's there to make sure we're interpreting everything else correctly. There's a whole section where she sort of summarizes reading Lucy's diary, and tells the audience everything we should take from them, basically? And I was like--cool, I did get all of those things when I read them. It was a bizarre moment, in a book that I would say is overall pretty well-written otherwise.

Some people won't like the humorous tone. I personally did. By and large, besides moments like the above in Iris's sections, I think the writing is pretty solid. There are some pretty turns of phrase, and a clear love for the gothic. I didn't agree with some of the takes on certain Dracula characters... both from a Dracula perspective, and a "sapphic retelling" perspective.

Like, this book is interesting, for the most part. And I don't think it's bad, per se. But it's definitely not everything it could've been.

The Sex:

The sex is by and large off the page or briefly summarized. Honestly, I kind of felt like the Kiersten White YA books I read way back in the day were... more explicit? I don't know. Kind of wanted more from a sapphic vampire romance, though of course that's all up to her and valid and so on. I just would've Liked To See It. Might've added some more bite (get it) to the story.

Overall--I'd say that this will be right for some readers. And I feel like I should've been among them? It just didn't quite work for me.

Thanks to NetGalley and Del Rey for providing me with a copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I like Kiersten White's retellings of Camelot and Frankenstein, and I enjoyed this one too. I would have liked more of Count Dracula in this one, but conversely, people who haven't read Dracula can probably still understand it. The original Dracula is an epistolary novel, and Lucy Undying is an epistolary novel in a modern format: told in letters and diary entries but also therapy session transcripts. This is a re-imagining of Lucy Westenra, a character from Dracula who is "innocent and virginal," with 3 suitors, before becoming a ravenous vampire. The original Lucy preys on children as a vampire, and many critics call her an example of the Victorian "angel/w***e" dichotomy. So, I liked how in White's re-imagining, Lucy says preying on children is taboo even among vampires. The cult was interesting. So were the explorations of Lucy's sexual attraction to Mina, which is present even in the original.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review!

As a huge Dracula and vampire enthusiast, this book had so much promise but fell so short.

First, the change of POVs and timelines was very confusing and hard to keep track of. Iris POV was always so dull and it dragged, making it so much harder for me to keep reading.

I can understand the twist the author was trying to give to this Dracula retelling but it just didn't work for me. A vampire MLM?

I really do appreciate that the author wanted to give Lucy a story since almost almost all of the books, movies and shows reduce Lucy to just Mina's best friend with absolutely no depth but this book missed the mark.

Goodreads review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6445259751?book_show_action=false

Fable Review: https://fable.co/review/4eafffd9-a39d-4fcc-ba7f-4d073a049228/share