Wow! What a book! I loved every second of it! If you love books where the female character finally remembers that she's more than her husband's propriety and decides to show him his place, this book is 100% for you!

This book is the perfect example why you should never give a chance to useless men incapable of standing on their own two feet. Never ever alienate yourself for them: keep dreaming, keep wanting! As Carmilla says: "wanting is not selfish, Lenore!", it's better to make mistakes and get disappointments than just doing nothing.

Thank you Kat Dunn, Zando, and NetGalley for the Arc!

#womenempowerment #womensupportingwomen #internationalwomensday

Lenora is an orphan raised by her aunt until she marries steel baron, Henry. After they get married, Henry buys a crumbling estate and moves them from London to Nethershaw manor. On their way to the manor, they ride up on a wrecked carriage and a ghostly woman, Carmilla, distraught from the wreck and in need of time at the manor to mend. What they do not expect is that Carmilla is going to change Lenora’s outlook, open her eyes to the state of her life, and give her the strength to do something about it.

The novel starts with the expected pace of a gothic novel. We expect them to be a little slow and broody, foggy and mucky. and filled with mold and isolation. Nethershaw manor is in complete disrepair, and it is up to Lenora to get it into shape before Henry hosted an influential list of visitors for a hunting party. The first half of the novel is rife with the stress of getting the house put together, but also learning about Henry and how he might not be the person that she thought she was marrying. This is a pretty typical of a gothic novel: someone marries into a situation where she did not know what she is getting into.

The wildcard with Hungerstone is Carmilla. She comes and goes as she pleases, and things start to happen to the women in the neighboring village to the Nethershaw. Lenora gives her attention because she is stressed and lonely. Carmilla is interesting and a mystery, and before long Lernora’s feelings for her cannot be ignored. The attention Carmilla gives her is eventually enough to allow Lenora to figure out what is going on in her marriage and her life. In the end, Carmilla could be anything. She could be a ghost. She could be a vampire. She could be a manifestation brought on by Lenora. The final truth is that Carmilla is the catalyst to the changing in Lenora and her life.

The first two thirds of Hungerstone are slow and moody, and when the action does start to speed up toward the last third, there are some pacing issues. The truth is coming out, the consequences are happening, and the house of Nethershaw is about to crumble down, but Kat Dunn stops the momentum a few times for more flashbacks that are unnecessary. This kills the momentum, and an ending that could have felt like a carriage flying off of a cliff becomes very controlled. This does not stop Hungerstone from being a novel I would recommend, but I wish that the final third of the novel was structured a little more reckless.


I received Hungerstone as an ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Hungerstone by Kat Dunn is dark, atmospheric, and utterly consuming. It takes the gothic vampire story of Carmilla and twists it into something raw and deeply personal. Lenore, trapped in an unhappy marriage, finds herself drawn to Carmilla, a mysterious woman who appears near their isolated home. What follows is an intense, unsettling unraveling of desire, repression, and the consequences of longing for something more.

The writing is lush and immersive, pulling you into the decaying estate, the eerie countryside, and the suffocating expectations placed on Lenore. Every character feels layered, and their relationships are full of tension, whether spoken or unspoken. The book doesn't just lean into horror, it also explores rage, power, and the hunger for freedom in a world that does not easily allow it. Dunn’s storytelling is sharp and deliberate, making every moment feel intentional and weighted with meaning.

*Thank you to Zando and NetGalley for the ALC! All opinions are my own.*

2.75/5

I think I was tricking myself into thinking I liked this book for the first two-thirds of it because I was so excited for it. This book is well-written. The writing is gorgeous. HOWEVER, the numbers don't lie and it just doesn't ever take me this long to read books if I enjoy them. :/ First of all, as a disclaimer, I've never read the original Carmilla so I won't be speaking at all to the retelling aspect of this book. Okay, here goes.

Thing I liked:

The writing. As I said, the prose in this is wonderful. There's strings of text in here that are absolutely the reason I was feeling so duped into thinking I was having a good time with this one.

The narrator. She was wonderful the whole way through. Her voice was so perfectly match to the tone of the book and I loved her. I'm so glad I switched from the ebook to the audio!

The last third of the book. As soon as (view spoiler) the pace picks up immensely. It is one of my biggest to critiques that I wish a bigger portion of the book had a pace similar to this. Which brings me to...

Things I didn't like so much:

Length/pacing. It's my biggest critique of most books I read/the thing I pay the most attention to. You see it mentioned in most of my reviews. I find pacing is what catches my attention more than any plot or character development. Which is why the first two-thirds of this book largely being without any real tension between Carmilla and Lenore left me unwilling to pick this one up to finish it.

The "sapphic" subplot. Here's where I'm most upset. I've read a handful of these "sapphic vampire" novels. All of them have many rave reviews about how queer they are, etc. and it's got me wondering if I'm the problem (and if I am, so be it), because the sapphic plots/subplots in these books are NOT ENOUGH. You cannot throw a scene or two of two girls fuckin' in the middle of a book, maybe one happens to a vampire which is neat, and call it a day. There is no real yearning. There is no tension or buildup to the moment. It's gratuitous and lazy.

In Hungerstone, we get over halfway through the book with nary a TOUCH OF THE HAND, A STOLEN GLANCE before they fuck each other out of nowhere one day. This isn't what sapphic literature should be, and we as a community should not be willing to take these CRUMBS quite frankly. We deserve more and these publishers/authors using these buzzwords to make money off of an already-underrepresented community has to stop.

"I will die like all mortal things.
At least let me taste a little life before I go."

Thank you Kat Dunn, Zando, and NetGalley for the Arc!

THIS is EXACTLY what I want from a Carmilla retelling. The prose is stunning and atmospheric, complete with a spooky gothic setting on the moors that just sucked me right in. Yet unlike the original Carmilla, this is more of a domestic gothic, with some of the vampiric stuff taking the back seat. What we have in place of that is a great story about hunger- hunger for power and a newly discovered hunger to live out ones desires to the fullest. Even though this sacrifices time with my beloved sapphic vampires, I can dig it. Really, the lack of vampirism is my only gripe with this book and I wish we could've actually seen more of Carmilla. Instead, she acts as an agent for unravelling Lenore's carefully constructed marriage, peeling back the layers of all that she knows to see the rot underneath. I saw some of myself in Lenore and so reading this was empowering in a way that I didn't expect.
"If I am mad, it is only because they have made me so."

Carmilla, oh Carmilla. I am convinced that one of the best remedies for a severe people pleaser who does not know how to live for herself in a patriarchal society is in fact, an incredibly beguiling lesbian vampire.

What more can I say other than that if you love to read about lesbians, sizzling female rage, and a setting heavily based on historical records from the exploitative Industrial Revolution, please dive in and ✨enjoy.✨

Thank you to the author, Zando, and NetGalley for the eARC. I leave this review voluntarily.

What a brilliant book and what brilliant prose. This book is what I live for and read for.

I was mesmerized by the prose from the page one. I relished reading hungerstone slowly over a period of time even though I loved it, I didn't want to rush. I wanted to enjoy every word of it.


Said to be a compulsive feminist retelling of Carmilla by le sheridan ,the queer novella that inspired Dracula it intrigued me and left me pleasantly confused as to what was going to happen. No I didn't see what was coming and the end left me bewildered.

There are many elements at work in hungerstone, passion and desire, temptation and anger, hunger and satiety, horror set in gothic setting. Erotism on the verge of vulgarity or is it really vulgar to express your sexual desires if they are not fulfilled by your partner?

Hungerstone starts slowly building a world where women have almost no freedom. The feminist voice is subtle not too loud and yet very clear. Lenore is a bit of unreliable narrator but yet she shines. Carmilla isn't present whole time and yet her presence is felt in the shadows throughout the books. To be honest, it's not carmilla's story but Lenore's. The book surprised me, I did not expect it to go where it did, the ending was almost perfect and I loved it.

It is slow paced at times and that's the only thing that annoyed me. At some points when nothing happened in the book, I was annoyed but prose kept me going and that's why I'm rating it 1 star less or else it was definitely 5 stars read. Prosewise, this book will always standout to me. Wonderfully written if I haven't said that already. If I did, well it is brilliant so it deserves it again.

Thank you Netgalley and Zando publishing for this wonderful ARC in exchange of an honest review.

Hungerstone is a great read for those who enjoy an eerie vampire tale! It reminds me of A Dowry of Blood, although I like Hungerstone better. While the start of the story was a bit slow, it was necessary because it allowed the reader to get a sense the loneliness and despair of the main character before she comes into her true self in the end. The misogyny of the time and place in history made me feel for the desperation and lack of agency experienced by Lenore, the FMC. The pacing of the story picks up quite a bit in the second half as Lenore transforms into a woman to be reckoned with!

I absolutely loved the creepy vibes of this vampire tale! I would recommend this book, especially in the fall around Halloween.

This gothic, sapphic re-imagining of Carmilla sucked me in from the first page and didn’t let go. It’s dark, atmospheric, and dripping with tension...just about everything I crave in a story.

Deliciously dark, lush and enthralling, Hungerstone is a gloriously satisfying re-telling of Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla. Simmering with holy, unbridled female rage, it satiated my hunger for justice and gave me a home for my anger. We sink into the dense dark English moors of a Bronte novel, cushioned by delightful prose and horrors that cut deep. At the heart of it is that strange female thing of power: the cracked open bones of birds and raw, feral hunger, offset by the world of guns, steel and male ambition. Carmilla, from literature's antiquity, rises as an archetype of female resistance. (Read for: sapphic vampires and women’s wrongs.)

"To be a woman is a horror I can little comprehend."

You know what???? Hell yeah. I feel like overall this book is 4/5, but these vibes were unparalleled so I'm making it a 5 because what are ratings if not just VIBES????? If committing crimes isn't girls-just-being-girls, then why is it girls-being-girls shaped?

I loved Kat's Bitterthorn, but this is soooo much darker and grittier. Still the same beautiful prose, but much more blood. I really enjoyed it. I found myself poring over the graphic scenes with my eyes ready to pop out of my head. The sapphic Carmilla inspired pining was delicious.

I also really loved the author's note which talked about how she wrote this book in a dark time for her and she was nervous to share this story...but I can only speak for myself when I say I have also been a victim of this hunger and appreciate her putting it out there for the world. You would be hard pressed to find a woman out there who hasn't felt the need to sate her heartbreak.

Keeping my fingers and toes crossed someone makes a pretty edition of this because it deserves it.

I read this the same week I saw Nosferatu at the cinema. What a time for horny vampires.

I love the atmosphere in Hungerstone, the slow burn of the story and the tension rising between Lenore and Carmilla. Everything here happens in a span of around three weeks, but it seems like it takes months. For some it will be too slow, but I really enjoyed it. The way Lenore changes and accepts the hunger that lies in her is built up steadily, and it works so well. I didn't know what to expect from her till the very end.

The only issue I have with this book is the characters. Carmilla is basically just an idea. I understand that she's meant to be this way, to just show Lenore the different way of living and to move things forward, but she could be more. Especially when you contrast her with Lenore, who is much more fleshed out. The same goes for Lenore's husband and her best friend. They were both quite stereotypical.

Hungerstone isn't really a vampire story, it's a story of female rage, of being put down so many times that you don't even react to the abuse and then finally you allow yourself to feel everything.

This was brilliant. A Carmilla retelling by way of Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. We follow Lenore, trapped in a resentful and precarious marriage of ten years. Her husband’s booming steelworks business requires them to leave London behind to move into a countryside manor. Nethershaw is a crumbling home and Lenore is given the impossible task of bringing it back to life before an important party is held. Struggling with the new duties thrust upon her as mistress of the house, a carriage crash near the manor adds an extra responsibility to her plate: the weak and pale Carmilla. As Carmilla’s extended stay at Nethershaw progresses, she awakens an unrelenting hunger inside Lenore that turns her life on its head.

Lenore is a fascinating figure. Her entire life is driven by this intense feeling of loneliness. Desperate to survive in a world that would not miss her, she has this singleminded determination to conform into the perfect housewife. And yet, despite all her efforts, she is doomed to fail as she cannot fulfill her primary duty: to bear a child. Long married and childless, her desirability is waning. Her husband’s interest has dwindled and in its place a deep disdain has arisen. She sees this party as her final chance to reignite his affection and prove her usefulness. But as she runs herself ragged on his behalf, Carmilla’s probing remarks awakens a rage in her that has long been suppressed. Rage at her role in society as a woman. The way she is viewed as an aging woman. Rage at the cage that forces her obedience. The way men bend her to their power.

Carmilla is a figure that truly haunts the story. My favorite thing that Dunn incorporated was making Carmilla a background player. Her actual presence in the story is merely a fraction of the plot. The rest is Lenore’s continued thoughts of her. It is Carmilla’s memory that drives the entire story. Her powerful influence over Lenore is one established quickly and efficiently. She gives voice to the dark desires in Lenore’s heart, and her support is what gives Lenore the courage to act on them long after she is gone. A lingering hunger that represents many things: rage, desire, ambition. Want.

More-so in the background, there is also a lot of commentary on capitalism and the aristocracy. Henry’s steelworks company has horrific working conditions and continuously denies workers comp to those injured by the machines. Both Henry and Lenore come from more humble beginnings, and the threat of returning to obscurity drives their actions. New money vs old.

In short this is a story about power. Particularly the struggle of power between Lenore and Henry. The one informed by society, and the one driven by a shedding of those societal constraints. There were certain parts where the narrative got a little repetitive, but for the most part this was an excellently crafted story that gave me all the violent gothic vampiric vibes I wanted. As well as some lingering open-ended questions to analyze.

There is a hunger in me that will never be satiated, but living through Kat Dunn’s words and experiencing Lenore’s plight came dangerously close.

I’m giving this a neutral review, because it didn’t work out for me. I couldn’t get invested and it just didn’t hold my attention

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an early copy in exchange for an honest review.

Review: Sadly, this did not work out for me. I had a hard time getting invested and decided to DNF at 35 percent. I do feel that I read enough to write a meaningful review. I enjoyed the premise of the story, we were gearing up for a "good for her," story. However, I really struggled to connect to the character, I think that's due to the writing. Something just really fell flat for me. Something I commonly ask myself is "if this ended in a wild way would I care," the answer here is no. It also is not really the fault of the book, but I read another book similar to this which I won't name (to be fair) and I LOVED it.

You should pick this up if you like sapphic vampires (same), good for her stories (same), and gothic literature (also same). This had everything I would want, I just really did not enjoy the writing. I felt like the story lacked a lot of detail and deeper connection.

I was so into this book. It is the perfect blend of vampires and sexual tension, which is all we want in a vampire novel anyway. I did hate Henry, and I love hating the husband in novels. It was perfection.

While reading this book, I simply couldn't stop talking about it. Kat Dunn has created a world unto itself, an almost Waverley-esque universe of attraction and repulsion. It's fitting that appetite is such a massive theme, because I devoured Hungerstone. The blurb declares it a "mesmerizing reclamation of the lesbian vampire trope," which is true, but Hungerstone is much more than that, in my opinion. It's written in a way that is charmingly old-fashioned without being either pretentious or precious. Each character, while based on a well-established trope, seems to come alive on the page. Dunn has played with the familiarity of the English manor novel and the vampire novel, while creating something altogether fresh and exciting. Thank you to Zando for my eARC in exchange for my honest review!

A gothic horror told through beautiful prose. Loved the sapphic retelling of Carmilla and all of the female rage. Lenore deserved her entire spin out and vengeance that came with it.

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

Kat Dunn's Hungerstone offers a captivating Gothic tale that breathes new life into classic vampire literature while exploring themes of desire, autonomy, and societal constraints.
Set against the backdrop of Industrial Revolution England, the novel follows Lenore, a woman trapped in a loveless marriage with Henry, a husband whose ambitions have taken them from London to the isolated Nethershaw manor. Their relationship is further strained by childlessness and a mysterious hunting incident from their past that remains unspoken yet omnipresent.
When an enigmatic woman named Carmilla arrives following a carriage accident, the story truly begins to unfold. Dunn crafts Carmilla with all the classic vampire hallmarks—weak during daylight, absent at mealtimes, and vibrant after dark—yet manages to make these familiar tropes feel fresh and intriguing. As Carmilla awakens desires in Lenore that she has long suppressed, the novel explores female sexuality and agency in a time when women had little of either.
The atmospheric prose creates a palpable sense of dread and longing throughout the narrative. Dunn skillfully weaves Gothic elements with historical context, using the voracious appetite of industrialization as both setting and metaphor. The gradual unraveling of Lenore's past adds layers of psychological complexity to what might otherwise be a straightforward supernatural tale.
What makes Hungerstone particularly compelling is its reclamation of the lesbian vampire narrative. Rather than presenting female desire as monstrous or predatory, Dunn explores it as a path to self-discovery and potentially liberation.
While some plot developments follow predictable Gothic patterns, the emotional depth of Lenore's journey and the atmospheric tension make this a thoroughly engrossing read that both honors and reimagines its literary predecessors.