This is my first read from Nghi Vo, and wow what a novella, I cannot recommend this book enough. This is a fantasy retelling of The Great Gatsby, reimagining the story with queer characters and incorporating paranormal and supernatural elements. I did not read The Chosen and The Beautiful but now I will be!

We follow Nick Carraway returning to New York, and not quite himself so to speak. Nick's search for Gatsby is dark, grim, and demonic. I would have read two or three hundred more pages to stay in this world and see what else it had to offer. Creepy, interesting, not what I was expecting. Well done.

Thank you to Tor Books and NetGalley for the opportunity to review an advanced copy of this book.

Don’t Sleep with the Dead is an excellent return to the world of Nghi Vo’s delightfully queer and reimagined Great Gatbsy. Nick lives in New York and his time with Daisy, Jordan, and Gatsby still haunts him. One night in the city, the past catches back up to him...

Nghi Vo crafts a stunning world that teases at the imagination and tears down conventional rules. I loved the mysterious magic and deals with devils. Nick and Gatsby have an electric and treacherous connection. I enjoyed the cameos from Jordan and her wise advice to Nick. I couldn’t put it down! Readers who seek mysterious magic, queer reimaginings, and beautiful writing will enjoy Don’t Sleep with the Dead.

Thank you so much to Nghi Vo, Tor Publishing Group, and NetGalley for a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

For publisher: My review will be posted on Goodreads, Amazon, Storygraph, and Barnes & Noble etc.

DNF at 40%. I said in my review of The Chosen and the Beautiful that the Gatsby elements were what kept me from fully investing. But I can respect Gatsby as a product of its time and “Chosen” for how it paid homage to it. But the removal of the characters (Nick primarily) from that era resulted in a particularly unstimulating read, and supernatural elements had to be included to try to bring life into a narrative around a particularly stale character, whose narrative entirely centered around “the Great (Now-Deceased) Gatsby.”

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Publishing Group for my arc in exchange for my unbiased opinion.

I say "unbiased" but I love Nghi Vo. She has quickly become one of my favorite writers and I've read nearly everything she's published, except for "The Chosen and the Beautiful," which is a queer fantasy retelling of "The Great Gatsby." It just slipped past me, BUT this book, "Don't Sleep with the Dead" is a standalone novella that follows Nick Carraway after the events of TCATB.

I really enjoyed this! It's got that classic Vo flare for the grotesque and suspenseful. I do think that Vo really shines in shorter works and that's true here (and in her Singing Hills Cycle series). We get about a few days peek into Nick's life and Jay Gatsby has reappeared from the dead.

That's the basic premise and man does it do a good job of keeping you wondering about where the story is gonna go. It's so engaging! It's short but I stayed up quite a bit during my school week to read it and it was so worth it.

I would definitely recommend this lil romp!

This author does it again. This was so good. I couldn’t stop reading it. I love this author and I will read whatever they write. Pick this up.

Thank you Netgalley for the arc. This was a fascinating novella. Its a companion to her novel The Chosen and the Beautiful however, you can read it as a standalone.
Nick Carraway is an interesting character for late 1930s NYC. I loved following Nick and his thoughts as he was clearly pining for someone no longer with him.
There's magic, demons, ghosts and more. I was intrigued from beginning to end.

⅘ ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Don’t Sleep With The Dead
Author: Nghi Vo

Thank you so much Netgalley and Tor publishing for this ARC! I loved this book, but I did make one big mistake. It should probably be read after her other book, The Chosen and the Beautiful. However now I had to go get that book immediately. This is a blend of a Great Gatsby retelling, mixed with dark fantasy elements, romance, and demons. Also in this one Gatsby and Nick.. are love interests. Damn it was super good and packed a real punch for a short novella. The writing style is definitely for me, and I’m eager to read the previous book now. If you love Gatsby you will love this. Thank you so much for this copy!

Thank you Tordotcom for the gifted copy.

Don’t Sleep With the Dead
Nghi Vo
Publishing Date: April 8, 2025

Ok I’m going to keep this one short (shocking, I know). I was simply not the audience for this one.

This book is marketed as a standalone companion novella, to an already published book. I do feel that I order to appreciate this one, you need to have read the original book and also have a familiarity with The Great Gatsby. Of which I have neither. So I basically had no idea what was going on the entire time I was reading.

That being said, I can totally see why people love this authors writing! The dark, gothic, atmospheric setting was very cool. The prose is poetic. The love is queer. And the magic is unique. For the right audience I think this one is going to be well loved.

Well, it was intriguing. I enjoyed the mysterious quality of it- the feeling of entering a speakeasy or a fever dream. But I can’t say I necessarily feel glad I read it? I think a big component was that I hadn’t realized this book was a companion novella to The Chosen & the Beautiful. I usually catch that sort of info in a blurb, but I think the lack of cohesive elements in the covers made it less obvious. I will read that other book someday and reevaluate my thoughts!

Deeply intense and I wasn't aware this tied into a previous work from the author. But I felt the imagery was deeply beautiful and in a thematic way definitely captured what I felt was the homoerotic draw for Carraway and Gatsby.

I was excited to see Nghi Vo release a standalone companion to TCATB with the realize of DSWTD. It's dark, haunting, and Nghi will dive philosophically into heavy topics everytime. We follow along an unreliable narrator, Nick Carraway who is also not the real Nick (confusing I know) and he is haunted by Jay Gatsby and his past. Nick has this need, this hunger, this longing to make sense of not just his identity, his love, but seeking some sort of closure.

Nghi Vo has a way with writing beautiful immersive stories. Will you be confused? Yes. Am I still invested? Always.

I do recommend reading The Chosen and The Beautiful before reading Don't Sleep with the Dead of a bit of a backstory. It will make it more richer, as you read DSWTD.


Thank you Tordotcom for the e arc and the gifted copy in exchange for a honest review.

Thank you to Tor Publishing Group, Nghi Vo, and to NetGalley for this ARC. The chaos below represents my honest thoughts.

OK so this is basically what happens when The Great Gatsby gets dunked in a vat of queer longing, spooky magic, and poetic trauma and I ate it up like my cat eats plastic (serious problem).
I devoured this novella after loving City in Glass, and in my eager little book-goblin brain, I didn’t realize it was a companion to The Chosen and the Beautiful until it was too late. Do I wish I’d read that first? Yes. Did it stop me from feeling everything hard? Absolutely not.

Nick Carraway is back, pretending to be straight, human, and unbothered (he’s very much bothered). The vibes are gothic, ghostly, and so dripping with atmosphere that I could practically smell the cigarette smoke and heartbreak. And then Gatsby shows up, deadish and definitely still hot, and things get weird in the best way.

Jordan popping up like “hey boo” nearly made me drop the book. I was like WAIT A MINUTE YOU HAVE LORE??? So now I’m immediately detouring back to The Chosen and the Beautiful because clearly I missed an entire Jordan cinematic universe.

Final thoughts? It feels like an epilogue I didn’t know I needed, but now I can’t imagine being without. Just PLEASE read The Chosen and the Beautiful first, okay? Learn from my chaos.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing an early copy of this book.

Realized a little too late that this is a companion novella to a novel that I haven't read--even worse, I have not read The Great Gatsby, so I feel like I'm potentially missing a lot of context that may have made this stand out to me more.

It was still fine, because Nghi Vo's writing is beautiful and has never disappointed me, but I probably shouldn't have picked this one up without looking a little more closely at it.

Thank you so much to Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read this book early!

Nghi Vo is one of my favorite authors writing today, and this companion to one of my absolute favorites in their portfolio, The Chosen and the Beautiful, did not disappoint. I loved the glittery and gilded setting we all know and love from The Great Gatsby, but taken to new heights by Vo. The magic system and the queerness of the characters only rendered this world more exciting and heart-wrenching. Lyrical and atmospheric, Vo always manages to immerse you in each world they create and this was no exception. A fantastic fantasy.

A delightful follow up novella to The Chosen and the Dead. If you enjoy any of this author’s works this is a must read!

This was a beautifully written story and a wonderful continuation/spinoff of The Chosen and the Beautiful. Nghi Vo's voice is always so distinct and evocative and while I say the prose isn't as flowery or complex as other pieces—say Siren Queen or City in Glass—it's still delivered with stunning sharpness. Vo's world building and creativity is unmatched and that remains true in Don't Sleep with the Dead. Here, Nick's character finds himself traversing across New York City in search of answers of what happened to Gatsby. He's not quite the most reliable of narrators and that shift and realization that you get as you continue reading is a wonderful shift in perspective as everything slices together. I'll end by saying that I was personally never a fan of The Great Gatsby but the world that Vo has crafted and the ways in which she turns a theme and immerses us in a world has certainly made me a fan of her world of Gatsby.

it was such a beautiful continuation to the chose and the beautiful, it was an interesting way to add more to the ending of the great gatsby where nick finds jay at a club one night while jay should be dead, it an an amazing queer short novella

A sequel/companion novella that takes place after the first book, The Chosen and the Beautiful, a Great Gatsby retelling. This story follows Nick Carraway, or rather the paper soldier and novelist as he delves through the hellish magical New York in search of Gatsby... the very man he loves and thought dead.. back and very much alive. The story takes place after the first book and now Nick ( or rather the paper version of Nick, since the Carraway family created a paper version of Nick to send to war while real Nick stayed home only real Nick died and Paper Nick came back and inherited it all). Paper Nick is sifting through his memories and real Nick's memories as he also searches for Gatsby, who died... but is now back in Nick's life as Nick traverses throughout New York and makes deals with demons to find Gatsby. This was definitely an interesting continuation of the story and I loved the little cameo of Jordan that we got (she completely stole every scene she was in). This story is a fun take on Nick and Gatsby relationship though it can be confusing to anyone who hasn't read the initial first book. Nick is an unreliable narrator and you don't figure out what is really going on until 50% into the story. It ends on a kind of open end but I enjoyed it overall. I love the way Nghi Vo writes and their prose is just so lyrical and beautiful.

Release Date: April 8, 2025

Publication/Blog: Ash and Books (ash-and-books.tumblr.com)

*Thanks Netgalley and Tor Publishing Group | Tordotcom for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

While I didn't hate this book, I also didn't love it. Mostly, I was stuck comparing it to The Great Gatsby because I knew they were vaguely connected, but I couldn't remember much about The Great Gatsby. But I also didn't love it because while I love a good drop-in to a universe, and I know this is a companion (but a standalone companion so...), but the book needed a bit more exposition for someone who hadn't read the other book Don't Sleep with the Dead is a companion to. The mercy was that it's literally 101 pages long, so I just muddled my way through it.

Thank you, Tordotcom, for the ARC!

4.5 star

Don’t Sleep with the Dead is a spellbinding companion to The Chosen and the Beautiful, offering the closure the novel left open-ended.

Nghi Vo’s prose has always felt like magic—lush, lyrical, and immersive. She has a way of making even the ordinary feel enchanting, and in this novella, that talent truly shines. The story follows Nick Carraway years after The Great Gatsby, diving deeper into the strange and the supernatural. It doesn’t always make perfect sense, but that’s part of its charm—it’s eerie, atmospheric, and utterly captivating.

While this can be read as a standalone, I’d recommend starting with The Chosen and the Beautiful to fully appreciate the world Vo has crafted. If you love dreamlike storytelling with a touch of the uncanny, this one’s for you.