I was really looking forward to this book but for me, it was mediocre. I was not crazy about the writing style especially between the POVs, chapters from the blood feud books, the podcasts…the story was different but also similar to a book I read earlier this year. In the middle it was really hard to keep my focus and I felt like it dragged. I thought it was a fun different take on vampires but it wouldn’t necessarily be a book I recommend over others! Thank you for the opportunity to read it early and I know there is definitely an audience out there that would love this book!

A quick and easy read with fun characters. The writing is straight-forward, but full of silliness that made it more enjoyable to read.

Thank you to NetGalley and Dial Press for the advanced copy!

2.5 stars, rounded up because the good parts were so good I can’t bring myself to give it 2 stars, but I actually kind of hated this book. A lot.

The mixed format writing style was really fun, well-executed, and perfect for the story. I enjoyed it a lot!

Tess is a great main character, and she felt very real in the first 10% of the book.

Once we get into the plot though, I felt like it all fell apart. This book has the really fun idea of sending a mega fan into the world of her favorite comfort novels to live out everyone’s self insert fanfic dreams. Honestly, who hasn’t passed time by imagining a similar scenario? The problem I think this book faced is that we know and love characters in our favorite works, but we’re being tossed characters here that we don’t know. It basically felt like reading a self insert for a fandom you’ve never heard of. All of the Blood Feud characters felt two-dimensional and their plots felt, frankly, ridiculous.

If you still want to dive into this, prepare for a LOT of niche vampire media references. I’m a Buffy fan, and even I thought it came up wayyy too much. We get it, you like Buffy.

TW: SA
On a more serious note, this book deals with serious topics like SA and I think it is handled very well. Tess and her journey with this is the only reason I’m knocking my review up a star into the neutral zone. But that part of the book was so much better than the rest that I was disappointed that Tess’s character and development was wasted on such a mediocre book.

Overall, I didn’t like it but that doesn’t mean you won’t! There were a lot of great pieces I really admired to this novel but unfortunately I just could not get over how bad the bad parts were.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC for my honest review.

Please read the trigger warning before reading this book as it might trigger people dealing with SA.

Fang Fiction was about Tess, an SA survivor that dropped out of Columbia and who now works at a hotel in New York City. She is a huge fan of Blood Feud, a book series about vampires. Many fans think that the vampires in the books are not fictional, including Tess.

The characters were well developed and had a lot of personality. Tess's relationship with her best friend is complicated and, at times, heartbreaking. The theme of the book was wonderful. I enjoyed how Tess grew from being traumatized and alone to being brave with friends that would risk their lives for each other. I also enjoyed how it wasnt just an epiphany, but it took time for her development like it would in real life.

I enjoyed One To Watch by Kate Stayman-London and look forward to her future books.

Thank you to NetGalley and the author for giving me the chance to read and review this ARC. I rather liked the idea of the fiction we read becoming reality. I mean, who doesn’t relish the idea of jumping in as the main character in our favorite fantasy?

I was actually really enjoying this story and felt like it could’ve been longer. Once off the Isle, the ending was completely rushed. I needed a bit more meat to that part of the story. It just felt too easy.

Other than that, I enjoyed the character growth and development, especially Tess’s. She went through a traumatic experience that too many women face and handled it the only way her body and brain would let her. Kudos to the author for tackling a difficult issue and not just tiptoeing around it.

This was overall a very fun read. I love the romcom twist of being in a vampire world and still keeping threads of comedy. I generally prefer my romances on the lighter side and thus didn’t go too dark at all.
I loved the inclusivity of the Octavia/Joni storyline and Tess being plus-size. As a fat, queer girl myself, I really enjoyed both of these factors.
The start of the story was a little slow for me, but I do understand there was some decent world-building and background set up, between current time and the novels within the series. The end also was a little slow for me. From when they go to the masquerade until the end, I’m not sure exactly what it was, but I was waiting for more action-y things to happen.
Overall, yay to the fun twist on a traditional romcom and yay to inclusivity.

The title and book cover grabbed my attention. The combination of fanfiction and vampires was alluring. This was definitely campy, and I enjoyed the story. I did find some of the switches in timeline and point of view to be confusing at times. The writing was also juvenile at times, but I think that’s part of the camp.

This was a fun, entertaining book -- it's silly, campy, and enjoyable in the same vein as TV shows like Buffy (which it even acknowledges in the book itself). It sometimes reads a little too YA, and some parts of the plot are rushed; but overall, it was a fun read!

This one’s interesting, because it feels SO different from Kate Stayman-London’s last book. I’m always really impressed with this author’s capability to write a really diverse cast regarding race, gender, and sexuality, with it mostly feeling accurate to the world she’s built. I was swept up in it all, and I think it’s honestly good to read if you enjoyed Bride by Ali Hazelwood.

Stayman-London’s fun, fantastical romp through a vampire novel come to life will absolutely have fans swooning and falling in love with the immortal Yoo siblings. Perfect for fans of Bride by Ali Hazelwood.

Fang Fiction has the cozy, adventurous vibes I needed poolside. A diverse cast, vibrant settings, mouthwatering fictional food, spicy scenes, and a life-affirming protagonist journey. Felt like a love letter to the urban fantasy (vampires especially) genre.

I really loved this book. It had vampires in just the right amount, characters who loved books and reading and a sort of possible setting and premise. Thank you NetGalley!!

The perfect book to sink your teeth into!

Oh, how I loved this! It was the perfect amalgamation of campy goodness, vampire antics, and y/n fanfiction that any fangirl that was around in the early 2010s would be obsessed with. I had such a blast reading this.

If you loved y/n fanfic, First Kill, or vampires in general this book is the one for you!

DNFed at 33%
I’ve been picking this book up and putting it down for 2 weeks now when I can typically finish a book this length in one to two days. The writing style was not for me as it came across as trying to be campy but ended up just being bad. Obviously I don’t expect a book about vampires to be realistic but the way Tess just goes with whatever is happening around her seems so far fetched ?? This snippets of books/podcasts/texts/etc at the beginning of the chapters were unnecessary (at least they were up to the point when I stopped reading, idk if they become more important later) and I started skipping them at chapter 6. Overall this book was just not my taste even though the plot sounded right up my alley.

The premise of Fang Fiction is very intriguing and kept me interested. This book mainly follows Tess, a super fan of a popular vampire series - Blood Feud - that she turns to for comfort after a traumatic event.

Tess meets one of the Blood Feud characters IRL, and discovers her favorite novels are not a work of fiction. Tess is tasked with an adventure to save the Isle where Blood Feud takes place. Tess meets an array of characters including the romantic leads of Blood Feud - Felix and Callum. I found the Isle and its workings the most interesting part of the novel. However I felt there was a lot of time spent on details that wasn’t always necessary to the plot.

While I felt parts moved slowly, I did enjoy following the story of Tess and vampires of the Isle. What I didn’t like was after a few chapters the perspectives changed to other characters. While it was easy to tell who is speaking, and I appreciated knowing their POV, it felt weird that the POV shifted for the first time after 30% through. There’s a lot of back and forth between real life and the Isle. Sometimes the shifts felt clunky. The first half of the book had either a text, podcast transcript or another intro that gave insight to a chapter - which I thought was interesting. This stopped halfway through but then started up again. I was bothered by that and wished for consistency.

Overall, I enjoyed reading about the world of Blood Feud and I think there’s potential to make more stories in this world. I would even read the Blood Feud book as I found the story extremely interesting. I would recommend Fan Fiction but highly encourage readers to look at the warnings in the author’s not prior to reading.

Thank you NetGalley and Random House Publishing for an advance reader digital copy. All opinions are my own and I leave this review voluntarily.

Overall this book was an entertaining read! I’m a huge fan of cheesy vampire media, so this seemed right up my alley. I really enjoyed the romance aspect of the story, Callum and Tess’ dynamic and relationship progression was very cute and sweet. I loved the inclusion of a main protagonist who was notably plus sized, but also that it wasn’t such a huge focus of her character and story. She was desirable and sexy, and that was never in question in relation to her body type. I enjoyed the Buffy vibes and references, and that there was a little bit of mystery with the author’s identity. I wasn’t a huge fan of all of the fantasy aspects of the book, but I think the semantics of that are a hard thing to flush out in a single novel. I really enjoyed this book and look forward to future books by this author!

Really wanted to like this one as the premise sounded interesting. However, I had to DNF as the writing style just wasn't for me.

This book sounded like so much fun, unfortunately, it didn't fulfil my expectations at all, so I had to DNF it halfway through.

This book didn't read like an adult novel, more of a 2010s YA fan fiction. The hefty dose of trigger warnings was an unexpected and unwelcome surprise. The writing was mediocre and head-hopping annoyed me to no end, the plot didn't hook me as well.

Fang Fiction, by Kate Stayman-London, tells the story of Tess, a former graduate student at Columbia who is assaulted by another student in her program, a horrible violation which prompts her to leave academia. When the novel begins, we meet Tess as she's working nights and managing a glamorous hotel called The Georgia and re-reading her favorite vampire books, the Blood Feud novels. However, everything changes the night that Octavia Yoo, one of the central vampire characters from Blood Feud, walks into the hotel and asks for Tess' help. Then, it seems that the world of Blood Feud, and its characters, may be far more real than Tess had ever anticipated

I really enjoyed this book! I thought that Tess' story was heartbreaking, yet ultimately empowering, and the journey that she embarks on over the course of the novel was incredibly moving. I think that, at one point or another, every reader has imagined what it might be like to slip into the world of their favorite book and Fang Fiction absolutely fulfills that dream! I loved Tess, Callum, Octavia, and Joni as characters; they felt strong, compelling, and distinct.

Overall, there's a lot to be gained from the pages of Fang Fiction and I really liked it!

My favorite movie when I was around 10 years old was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The original Buffy with Luke Perry and Kristy Swanson. I was obsessed. Reading Fang Fiction by Kate Stayman-London put me right back in that feeling I had during my Buffy obsession. This book was so fun to read. It has humans and vampires and witches and book fandoms and love. It has the story of a friendship tested and a story of survival. Also, there’s a playlist on Spotify. I love books that have a playlist created by the author. I loved every second I spent with this book. I am going to need a physical copy for my shelf. Thank you NetGalley and Random House for the opportunity to read this book before it is published.

When friends asked me to describe this book I repeatedly said, "it's like twilight, if twilight didn't take itself so seriously." This was silly, heartfelt, fast-paced, and generally a good time. A very fresh twist on a vampire novel. Modern, sexy, witty, and had me laughing. It managed to keep my guessing through most of the story, I would definetly recommend this to people looking for a paranormal rom com. Make sure you read the author's note, some of the content could be triggering. The interview with the author is also a wonderful touch.
Thank you net galley for giving me this book to review.