This was a pleasant surprise, I enjoyed this Carmilla retelling. The setting, and prose was enjoyable. It is an atmospheric tale that will not disappoint. I will be sure to read more by this author. Most definitely would recommend, I may be in a reading slump after this because it will be hard to match.
Thank you to Zando Projects and NetGalley for the advanced reader copy
4.5 star

we LOVE lesbian vampires and feminine rage!! Hungerstone was so good--I couldn't put it down. Can't wait to reread this one come spooky time when I need my vampire fix.

For what do you hunger?

I loved the premise of sapphic vampires, a female revenge story, and the internal hunger.

I struggled with the fact that Carmilla wasn’t really a character, but more of a figure who awakens the buried hunger in women, pushing Lenore toward change. But at the same time, I believed in her power to manipulate Lenore. And become her obsession. She’s more of a weird, dark spirit than a vicious vampire. This aspect is left for the reader to interpret.

From the reader's perspective, the characters and plot lack depth. Lenore's story is hardly compelling. The best parts are the themes of hunger, female rage, and the dismissal of women as hysterical.

At times, the narrative moved really slowly and felt like it was eating its own tail. It’s a slow burn. The beginning and the end of the book were the most exciting to read. I really liked the moments when reality blurred into a dream, creating the feeling of being trapped by something sinister. The atmosphere was strong, even if I wasn’t engaged the whole time. The opening scene with the blood was the most powerful. I wanted more of those weird, haunting elements.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a digital copy of this book

I was easily immersed into the dark and romantic atmosphere of this novel. Sucked in by the keywords of “sapphic vampire”, I knew this would be a fast-paced read for me. The early English estate setting mixed with the annoying capitalist husband made for the perfect backdrop to bring in a spicy, dark vampire to disrupt it all. I found myself rooting for the downfall of this household and wanting for everyone to turn to the dark side. I did find myself sometimes annoyed with the main character unwillingness to let go and see the truth. This could be easily chucked up to the fact that people of this time were very conservative and prudish, but I feel like the novel would have flowed more if the main character had trusted her instincts earlier.

Hungerstone by Kat Dunn completely captivated me from start to finish. This book delivered everything I could have hoped for—beautifully evocative writing, rich world-building, and characters that feel so vividly real they leap off the page.

Dunn has an incredible talent for weaving emotion and tension into her storytelling, and Hungerstone was no exception. The plot was gripping, with twists and turns that kept me hooked, but what stood out most to me was the depth of the characters and the relationships between them. Their struggles, triumphs, and vulnerabilities were portrayed with such authenticity that I couldn’t help but feel fully invested in their journey.

I loved every moment of this book and can’t recommend it highly enough. If you enjoy emotionally resonant, beautifully written stories with unforgettable characters, Hungerstone is an absolute must-read.

A slow-creeping hunger that eventually consumes you until you have no choice but to embrace it - or die unfulfilled.

Hungerstone, a Carmilla retelling, is a perfect read for fans of A Dowry of Blood (or An Education in Malice, another Carmilla retelling) and other vampire narratives. Slow to pick up momentum, at no point are we - the reader - ever certain of how the events in this book will unfold.

Lenore, an unappreciated wife of a steel owner, meets Carmilla - thrown from her carriage and in need of care - during their trip to their isolated mansion. Locked alone with no one to talk to other than Carmilla, who slowly infects her mind with desires and wants that she’s never before allowed herself to feel, leaves Lenore with a hunger that she cannot help but do whatever she can to sate - at any cost.

My only complaint within this book is that at times I felt the narrative moved almost too slowly with Lenore as our main character, where things would happen in the narrative and yet she would do nothing about it. In many ways I, as the reader, almost felt like Carmilla - waiting for Lenore to make her decision and being less than patient in the process of doing so. A few times it felt like things had paused in the storyline simply to allow Lenore to ignore her surroundings and do nothing, but overall I found this story to be compelling and had to read until the end to find out how - exactly - Lenore would finally slack her hunger and find freedom.

A huge thank you to the author, NetGalley, and Zando for providing this e-ARC.

4/5

Hungerstone is a dark reimagining of Carmilla set on the backdrop of the Industrial Revolution that seeks to answer the singular question: for what do we hunger? Ten years into her marriage to a powerful steel magnate, Lady Lenore Crowther has lost much of her former self to their union and left unable to contend why their relationship has soured. On the night the couple travel to their new home in Derbyshire they happen upon an overturned carriage in the road and meet Carmilla, the young woman caught in the accident, and an enigmatic and magnetic individual who will transform their lives forever. In her latest novel Hungerstone, Kat Dunn skillfully renders decadent gothic prose turned inwards by the insatiable appetites of a woman long since starved. This violent reimagining of a classic sees Carmilla as a figure who awakes in Lenore a hunger long buried; and Lenore is burdened in answering its knawing ache, a release she hungers for in turn but also fears. Hungerstone is a novel for the starved - those starved for power and control and those crushed under the stifling weight of possibility, industry, and a loveless marriage. Dunn explores all of these facets through Lenore's search for agency as she unroots the poison at the heart of her marriage and learns a truth that threatens to undo her. Lenore's fragile world is made manifest in the crumbling manor of Nethershaw which falls into further disrepair even as attempts to retrench its edifice are made. Hungerstone's main strength is in this overwhelming imagery which straddles the line between hauntingly beautiful and grotesque. The bloody scenes of the starved grasping at anything to slake the hunger to the twisted imagery of Lenore feasting upon food that does nothing to quell her appetite all served to build a disquiet beneath the narrative and Lenore's eventual undoing. Using Carmilla as a lens to explore hunger and women existing under patriarchy is a fascinating idea and one I reveled in while reading. I loved not knowing if Carmilla was someone real or imagined, or even a manifestation of Lenore's hunger and desire staking a claim. Hungerstone allows the reader to parse this meaning throughout the novel while striking a deadly blow upon its end. This is a bloody, grim view into wanting of all kinds but I thoroughly enjoyed where Dunn drew this abundant feast of a tale to a close. Very good for her.

It’s not often that a book makes me feel so seen. Carmilla is on that list, and I always go into a new book that mentions Carmilla as cautiously optimistic. Hungerstone is definitely one of the best.

Lenore is a character that I couldn’t help but fall in love with right away. She’s an unreliable narrator with a super tight POV, but the way she experiences and describes her world makes reading Hungerstone immersive and enjoyable. Despite some of the plot points being predictable, the overall story is still interesting because it’s interesting to Lenore.

And Carmilla! I found myself wishing we’d had more time with her at the end, but I wasn’t disappointed or felt like I was missing anything. The mystery of who/what she is and what happens next make the story feel complete.

Kat Dunn is an incredible writer and I’m eager to add Hungerstone to my shelf.

3.5 stars

Thank you Zando and Netgalley for providing me with an e-ARC of this in exchange for an honest review.

This book was so haunting and atmospheric. The prose was beautiful, the pace slow but simmering with anticipation. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this one.

I’ve not read Carmilla, so I have no idea what’s been borrowed and what hasn’t, but this book really stands strong on its own. I love me some sapphic vampires, and I absolutely love a revenge story. The female rage was palpable by the end of this book and I was enraptured.

I struggled to really connect with the characters on any kind of emotional level, which is the only reason this isn’t rated higher. I still thoroughly enjoyed this book.

I definitely recommend for fans of historical horror and gothic classics.

Thank you so much NetGalley and Zando for providing me an eArc in exchange for my review!

Hungerstone by Kate Dunn follows Lenore, a woman choked by societal expectations, who moves to the crumbling Nethershaw estate with her iron magnate husband. On their rain soaked journey out to the mansion, they come across an overturned carriage. In that wreckage, they find the alluring Carmilla. So begins a slow descent into rage and madness.

This book is slow, it takes it's time building tension, but it never drags. This is an in-depth character study of our long suffering lead over an action packed ride. You feel every ounce of Lenore's loneliness and frustration, her desperation to cling onto her station in life. That only makes the finale that much more cathartic. Carmilla, our other main heroine, can be unpleasant at times. She is cruel and cold, but it serves a purpose, to break Lenore of her rigid upbringing. The eerie atmosphere suffocates you, Neathershaw is a rotting beast at the heart of this story, you can practically taste the wet earth of the moors. That's one of my biggest high points of this books, the writing. It's decedent and lush. Everything is described so well I could picture it all. That includes the more horrific aspects of this novel.

What a freaking delight to be in the midst of a vampire media renaissance. Kat Dunn’s Hungerstone takes J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s classic, Carmilla, and adapts its Sapphic narrative from implicit to taking center stage.

Thank you so much to Kat Dun and Zando for the e-ARC!

In this adaptation of Carmilla, we follow Lenore, a woman stagnant in a transactional marriage. Her life orbits around maintaining her husband’s society standing. With a backstory of familial tragedy, the perspective of her world is narrow and lonely.

When her husband, an aspiring captain of industry, whisks her away to repair his newly-purchased crumbling mansion and transform it ahead of a party for potential investors, Lenore glumly accepts her fate.

But when they happen upon a carriage accident and discover that the chillingly beautiful woman inside needs somewhere to stay while she convalesces, Lenore begins to discover that this stranger may be the key to her own awakening.

Overall, this was less overtly vampiric than I expected it would be and delved more into Lenore’s dynamic with her husband than I anticipated, both especially in comparison to Le Fanu’s original (or my beloved Carmilla YouTube series 🥲). That being said, this takes Carmilla’s conceit and draws it out into a domestic gothic.

I thought this worked really well, especially in tackling what it’s like when you grow up needing to prioritize someone’s needs over your own. I thought a lot about Count Orlok’s quote from Robert Eggars’s Nosferatu while reading: “I am an appetite, nothing more.”

As a femme person, I saw a lot of myself in Lenore, especially the voracity with which she faced her appetite nearly consuming *her* once she finally allowed herself to discover and embrace it.

Thank you for the ARC!

An expanded and reimagined version of the classic Carmilla, Hungerstone focuses on Lenore, a late 19th housewife of a wealthy factory owner and how her life changes when she and her husband get in an accident involving Carmilla. This is a vampiric, sapphic love story with a huge focus on female rage so it was very interesting.

5/5 stars. Absolutely amazing. I could not put this down. I had to eat dinner and I was reading the whole time.

Now that I devoured this, I understand why everyone is mentioning female rage in reference to this book. I was internally raging for Lenore!!

After ten years of marriage to Henry and no child on the way, Lenore feels the weight of burden strike their relationship. As Lenore and Henry prepare to host a special hunt, it brings up memories of the prior hunt and the secret that they've both been keeping since then.

Their lives get thrown for a twist when a carriage accident nearby brings a mysterious Carmilla to their home. As they offer Carmilla shelter to recover, they notice that she is sickly and weak during the day, but becomes much more lively during the night. Carmilla becomes a thorn in Henry's side as she works to help Lenore find herself. Lenore is hungry and needs to eat.

This is a beautiful retelling of Carmilla. The prose is stunning and makes you feel as though you're in the story yourself. There are so many amazing quotes from this book that I wish I could share. The story is atmospheric, mysterious, and tense. The characters were written extremely well. The characters that we're meant to love, I loved and the ones we're meant to hate, I certainly hated. While this is a slow-burn romance, the rest book certainly didn't feel slow to me. And the wait was well worth it. I love that this story dove into the problems with gender roles and expectations that are imposed on women. It was a beautiful story of Lenore's self-discovery and acceptance of herself, flaws all included.

The ending of this book was amazingly poetic. I left this story feeling overwhelming satisfaction and I can tell that this is a book that I will reread one day. This book isn't your typical horror novel, even though it is tagged as such. Please don't go into this book expecting scares. The horror comes more from the atmosphere and the depravity of the characters.

Thank you to NetGalley and Zando for sending me an eARC of this book. All thoughts are my own.
I immediately preordered this book upon finishing reading.

TW: Gore, death, blood, vomit, gaslighting, violence, infertility, cannibalism, misogyny, murder, toxic relationship, confinement, infidelity, sexual content, death of parent

This is a book I loved for its subtleties as much as for its loud elements. It's easy to focus on the rage, the blatant injustice, the hunger, but I really appreciated the ways in which this book portrayed the quiet horrors of being a woman, among other things.

I have read Carmilla a while ago and I can't remember anything so I can't make a direct comparison of the two, and I think I haven't read any of the other books the authors that Kat Dunn took inspiration from. But I loved this and I feel like it came from such a raw place that if you've ever experienced 1% of what the protagonist has lived through you can't help but immerse in the story as if you're in it yourself. The writing was also exquisit and I can't but recommend this.

Kat Dunn’s Hungerstone is a spellbinding gothic thriller—lush, eerie, and brimming with forbidden hunger. Lenore, trapped in a loveless marriage, finds her world upended when the enigmatic Carmilla arrives, awakening cravings she can no longer ignore. As the moors grow darker and village girls fall ill, Lenore’s desires tangle with danger, leading to an unshakable reckoning.

Dunn’s prose is rich and atmospheric, layering Victorian repression with queer longing and simmering rage. The novel pulses with themes of female autonomy and the terrifying cost of wanting more. Tense, intoxicating, and beautifully written, Hungerstone is a bold reimagining of Carmilla, reclaiming gothic horror with a voice both feral and exquisite. It lingers long after the last page—dark, defiant, and utterly consuming.

I’ve been very excited about this book ever since I heard of it because ‘Carmilla’ by Sheridan Le Fanu is one of my favourite works of 19th century literature, for very obvious reasons. I read it when I was too old to be considered a teenager but too young to be considered any kind of adult. It was very formative and I read it because I saw a review comparing it to Dracula, which also has a lot of homoerotic subtext. In ‘Hungerstone,’ the figure of Carmilla makes an appearance here as a grown woman and fleshed-out character.

Most interesting to me was the language used to describe Carmilla in the early weeks when Lenore gazes upon her—the language of eyes, teeth, lips, skin, heat, cold, states of undress, a hypnotic voice, tearing meat, pointed words arrowed across the dinner table—which shows how much every interaction with her guest whether big or small affects her. Two-thirds of this book is a slow-burn with liberation as its end-goal.

Lenore’s reciprocal and honest relationship with Carmilla is what sets her free from the chains that she has lived with all her life, first as a neglected child, then a neglected orphan, and more recently a neglected wife. The natural next step is: revenge. I liked best how Lenore carries out her plan alone with no help from the supernatural. When she comes into her power, she does so as a hot-blooded fully human woman for whom the last straw propels her towards taking matters into her own hands, very literally—men think women weak but they forget that women have nails and teeth aplenty. he final act of this book was delicious and I relished every page. It’s always so gratifying to see a woman’s rage honed into a sharp weapon, so precise and exacting in its moves.

Full review on Substack 🖤 https://tinycl0ud.substack.com/p/hungerstone

🥀 Carmilla retelling
🥀 Gothic horror
🥀 Slow burn, lesbian romance

The writing is gorgeous. I highlighted so many passages. Lenore’s feelings of inadequacy, and people pleasing tendencies, resonated deeply with me. I could feel Lenore’s loneliness in my bones. Her pain, was my pain. Her yearning, my yearning. The madness freedom and clarity brought her was heart wrenching and I wanted so badly for her to have everything she wanted, and more. I loved Lenore, and Carmilla for setting her free. I loved the lavish descriptions of food. I loved the ending. I loved this book.

All I have to say is GET WHAT YOU DESERVE GIRL!!! I support women’s wrongs 🫶🏻

No but this book was so good and so infuriating at times also. I just got progressively angrier until I was screaming at the FMC to stand up for herself and allow herself to want things. I do feel some of the negative self-talk got a bit repetitive. But that ending made up for the frustration IMO!

The character development was deep and complex. It actually made me sad how much I related to Lenore’s feelings or destructive patterns at times - they were described with such accuracy. I started feeling everything the FMC was feeling and felt so connected to her. The writing style was weirdly addictive to read, despite this not being a fast-paced book.

Also as a heads up, there were some random vampiric innuendos but this is not a vampire story! It’s very much a historical literary fiction book with a gothic estate mystery/romance. There’s some aspects of horror as well which I loved, but may gross some people out.

This makes me wanna grab my girl best friends and just be completely wild and free 💕

“Poor Lenore Crowther, so terribly sad about the inconvenience of her own murder.”
Ok so when is this/Carmilla in general getting the 2024 Nosferatu treatment?
This book is so tense, sexy, and dirty I’m obsessed. Literally a perfect example of gothic fiction - the tension between what Lenore wants and what she thinks she must do for her husband/society, the way Carmilla allows her to finally reach her most base desires… plus the class commentary!!! PERFECT for your vampire hang over plus lesbians so who doesn’t want that??
5 stars I need to read everything Kat Dunn has written

As an educator, a reader, and a student of English literature, I have a really deep connection with Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla. I was a little bit hesitant going into this just because I love the original so much, and when I first started reading I was getting very very caught up on what the author decided to change versus didn’t, things like names and ages and further context. However, as I read on, I began to love this book in a very similar way to how I love the original Carmilla. I absolutely love that the author chose to keep Carmilla’s character essentially the same, and so many of the additional scenes have become so important to me, particularly the hunger stone and Lenore’s confrontation with Henry.