Review: Lucy Undying: A Dracula Novel by Kiersten White
Blurb:
A vampire escapes the thrall of Dracula and embarks on her own search for self-discovery and true love in this epic and seductive gothic fantasy from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hide.
Her name was written in the pages of someone else’s story: Lucy Westenra was one of Dracula’s first victims.
But her death was only the beginning. Lucy rose from the grave a vampire and has spent her immortal life trying to escape from Dracula’s clutches—and trying to discover who she really is and what she truly wants.
Her undead life takes an unexpected turn in twenty-first-century London, when she meets another woman, Iris, who is also yearning to break free from her past. Iris’s family has built a health empire based on a sinister secret, and they’ll do anything to stay in power.
Lucy has long believed she would never love again. Yet she finds herself compelled by the charming Iris while Iris is equally mesmerized by the confident and glamorous Lucy. But their intense connection and blossoming love is threatened by outside forces. Iris’s mother won’t let go of her without a fight, and Lucy’s past still has fangs: Dracula is on the prowl once more.
Lucy Westenra has been a tragically murdered teen, a lonesome adventurer, and a fearsome hunter, but happiness has always eluded her. Can she find the strength to destroy Dracula once and for all, or will her heart once again be her undoing?
Review:
Horror, sapphic, a sort of retelling but more of a spin-off? These have my name all over them. Ok maybe not horror so much but that’s because my cats don’t like when I sleep with all the lights on, but we’re in spooky season so let’s go, ghosties!
The opening glimpse is from Dracula dated January 2025 so we know he's still up to his usual skulking and hiding but the bulk of the story follows Lucy and a 25-year-old runaway of sorts named Iris.
To start, I thought this was a really interesting story about Lucy Westenra, who many of us know from the original Dracula, and how things went before, during and after her run in with Dracula. I liked the alternative take on Mina, Jonathan, the group of men that hunt Dracula and how their stories intertwine. These were all really positive things.
I didn't even mind that Iris is a bit insufferable. She's the rich heiress of a fortune she doesn't want, in a pyramid scheme/cult she hates and has generally been plagued by it all her life. At least she gives people a swish house…which I’m not sure how all that would work with UK laws and owing money but the gesture was nice. Anyway, all of that very likely means sheltered and coddled so of course she's not going to be particularly worldly. For example, how she, and Lucy who is well over 100 by this point, came to the conclusion they were in love after three days together I'll never quite be able to explain but here we are.
Also, their pet names were super cringe. Not sure I can look at butter chicken the same way. And Iris needs to keep it in her pants. Calm down, have a glass of water, take a deep breath.
I liked the shift between diary-Lucy, interview/client transcript Lucy and modern Iris. It allowed for a very full picture that pulled the timelines all together. Lucy's stories had an excellent voice and tone. You could feel the naivety in her diary and the weariness and longing in her client transcript. I enjoyed what sort of became Around the World in a Handful of Vampires. I also would be super keen to read about those characters, their lives and everything before we saw them. I’ll touch on this again below.
My issues overall come down to a few things.
As usual there is a non-UK based or experienced author telling a story set in London and getting some key things wrong. As someone living in the UK, we do not use kilometers. We don't have rabies in our wildlife (generally). We don't have Animal Care and Control.
But the biggest issue I’ll focus on was: it went on for too long. There were so many natural end points in the book and instead it. just. kept. going.
And as it went on, it dragged and became too much. Not in a good way. (More like Lucy Unending, am I right? That was a bad joke. I apologise for everything.)
Everybody returns, everyone reunites for better or worse, Lucy attacks Dracula. He's Dracula! You can't kill him in a modern kitchen! “They’re stealing my blood!” and other family problems.
The characters just became unbelievable, and unrealistic (as much as they could in a book about vampires). Everyone just seemed to deviate from their established personalities and not in a way that made sense. All of this highlighted the things that stood out, at best, as average and, more commonly, poorly: The unbelievable nature of Lucy and Iris' relationship, Iris' role in her family and their company, the vampires we meet through Lucy's POV, etc. The handful of vampires from the transcript became a quartet of single minded murderers (possibly a good band name, if not a little bit of a mouthful), instead of the more interesting side characters we glimpsed.
If it had stopped earlier, I think this would have been a much, much stronger book. So if you do want to pick this up, I would suggest stopping at the end of 71 or whatever chapter it is before ‘The Story of Alicia Del Toro’ - which actually added nothing to the book but also marks where it starts to really decline.
