I was so hyped for this book, and then my pre-order didn’t show up so I had to wait weeks to read it. It was painful. I got an ARC for Kiran Millwood-Hargrave’s adult debut in February, The Mercies, and I loved it so when I heard she’d written a Brides of Dracula retelling for a YA audience, I was so excited. I would say this is probably a mid-to-low YA novel, because while the themes are dark (this is Dracula after all), the story is fairly simplistic. That wasn’t a bad thing, ultimately, because it gave me room to fall ridiculously in love with the main character, Lil. She has a twin sister, Kizzy, but they’re anything but identical. Kizzy is beautiful and curvy, Lil is plain and boyish. In Lil’s eyes, everyone would rather pay attention to her sister and she doesn’t blame them. Lil would rather pay attention to her sister too. To me this is a story about sisterhood and loyalty, and while the sapphic romance warmed my cold dead heart it wasn’t the focus of this book.

Lil and Kizzy are taken as slaves and given to a local lord as serving girls, though they know there is much worse in store at his hands. Before he can get his hands on them, the Dragon claims Kizzy as his own. She is a bear dancer, and he has a bear. Lil knows she must go after him, even though the rumours filtering down from the Dragon’s territory speak of demons and monsters. Lil is forced to find her spine and be brave, and ultimately to decide whether her love for her sister outweighs her love for Mira, her love for herself and her love for life.

The themes this book covers are dark and if you’re looking for a sapphic HEA, you’re not going to get it here. There’s racism, slavery, rape, and that’s before you even get into Dracula’s lands. But this is a really interesting view on the usually nameless brides of Dracula, and I’m such a sucker for retellings of and ‘prequels’ to fairytales and myths that I was guaranteed to love it. I will almost certainly read this again, maybe when I’m not reeling off of the end of Gideon the Ninth (don’t read both in quick succession, it was bad for my fragile woman-loving heart) and I think I’ll be able to take in more of the beautifully described settings. I was so engaged in Lil’s story that I’m sure I missed a lot of it the first time around.