Aaaah, but I struggled to review this one properly u_u

The Deathless Girls is the YA debut of author Kiran Millwood Hargrave, an author of whom I have now read 3 books. As always, her use of language is beautiful and haunting, her ending stays open (I'm starting to think this is one of her things and I do not mind it at all!) and she focuses almost exclusively on her female cast, making all of her pivotal characters female, a touch queer, and perhaps more than a touch yearning.

Why, then, am I rating it 2 stars? Well, this has its tentative reasons; I haven't done a lot of research so please take everything I say with at least a grain of salt (and do your own research if possible! Always do that!) but I have noticed some things that either some people pointed out or that I'm unsure as to what I would think about them, so my rating went down from a solid 4 stars to 2.

First of all: The setting itself
Since this short book serves as a sort of Dracula retelling but with the focus explicitly set on the brides of Dracula, rather than Dracula himself, the book is set in what would later become Romania (Dracula, for those of you who did not know, ruled over Walachia a few while back - or at least that is part of his legend). Hargrave, however, lives in Oxford and is, from what I can tell, not descended from any Romanian family branches - which leads me to my first problem: People pointing out that she is misusing the Romanian language pieces she put into her works.
I couldn't research all of them and don't bring any further knowledge to the table, but even I could find out, through a quick google search, that Dracula does indeed NOT mean "Dragon" but rather "Devil" - and that is just a very small thing. Someone on Storygraph pointed out that she is also not using the grammar correctly. I do not mind it when authors use languages in their books that are definitely from the real world because with a bit of research and sensitivity readers/translators, all is possible! However, it does become a problem when the language is then not even somewhat correct. It's one thing to do this with a fantasy language you make up and perhaps vaguely base on about 40 different dialects from our own world, but to deliberately take one culture's language and then not use it correctly is quite frankly not right in my eyes.

Second: The Diversity
I'm not sure how I feel about the main characters being Romani when the author herself isn't? I couldn't find anything about her being so (if that is the case, I will happily delete this section and apologize!), and while it did feel like she was trying to treat the culture with a certain level of care, I'm just...not sure about this. I cannot recall a book I've read by a Romani author about their culture and I feel like people like this, who have suffered so much, deserve to write their own representation before others take their pain and make it theirs. I also cannot say how well Hargrave did here, given that I myself am not Romani. I will go on a little adventure after this to try and dig out whether someone of that descent has said anything about this book in particular - again, take all of this with a grain of salt, please!

Edit: I have read other people's opinions on the diversity, specifically when it comes to the main characters being both Romani and how they're treated and will now bump my rating down accordingly. 


Overall: while I did enjoy especially the technical aspects of this book and was fascinated by the project Beatrix (a book series written about (forgotten) female characters throughout (literary) history), these two aspects up there made me rate the book lower than I would have without them. Everything expressed in this review is based on my own opinions and nothing more.