I find this book very clever and endearing. The symbolism of the entire relationship in relation to capitalism and consumption and coming-of-age is a perfect note to me.

And yet, as with Normal People, I feel like it’s almost niche writing, considering I highly doubt the feelings and awkward interactions between the different generations of characters requires that you are also a part of that culture and how it can uniquely fuck you up, especially underlining how messed up gender roles are. What is good and nourishing and what is merely masquerading pain?

Enjoyable; it does what it says on the tin. I didn’t particularly get attached to the characters but found satisfaction in the plot and premise.

Interesting concept, good prose, likeable character. But it feels like it’s constantly spinning it’s wheels for some reason.

There are some aspects of this that I think are really clever and subversive of the genre, though it actually may not benefit from them due to the blurb text and title, which set up genre expectations it doesn’t really deliver on, and isn’t meant to.

For instance, the vampire being far more firmly rooted in privilege and the way in which marginalized communities are fall prey to bad actors, is very well done. Yet it also makes the pacing and story beats hit a lot less hard than straight up genre fiction. It also shifts loss of agency to more uncomfortable subjects, which I think is it’s purpose, but again: the reader isn’t really clued into this so there’s some dissonance.

Overall, for me, it’s a mixed bag that was alright. The subversions are clever enough that I got some enjoyment out of it despite the feeling it was dragging quite a bit at parts.