This is a terrible book. Not only is it derivative in concept and lacking in style, but it's also incredibly lazy. If you're going to write a faux-Victorian novel then I would think it wise to do at least some very basic research first, in order that it isn't full of glaring errors. With the best will in the world, even if the book had been otherwise fantastic it would have been hard not to laugh at an Anglo-Irish Victorian lady shouting at Dracula "Quit following me!", or the sight of vultures swooping over Whitby going unremarked.

None of the characters seem even half-way believable as either Victorians or people. Plus, having waited half the novel for Dracula to appear he turns out to be an ineffectual, sulking bore. Not as anticlimactic as The Historian (Elizabeth Kostova), nor, mercifully, as long. Don't take that as a recommendation though.

Every idea in this book has been done to death elsewhere, and almost certainly done better. A rethinking of Mina Harker? Try 'The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen' (Alan Moore). Mina and Dracula's romance? Try 'Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula', if you can stomach Keanu Reeves' "acting". Victorian Mental Institutes/Prisons? Try 'Fingersmith'/'Affinity' (Sarah Waters). Limitations of a Victorian Woman's Life? Try 'The French Lieutenant's Woman' (John Fowles), or an original text like 'The Woman in White' (Wilkie Collins). That's just off the top of my head. There are so many books I would recommend that you read before this; I couldn't possibly list them all.

Summary : A careless and dull genre rip-off which is neither intelligent nor entertaining, and at times is almost embarrassingly bad.