I love that Roach is fully aware she is a skeptic, but she admits when she wants to believe and she always makes the journey fun. I loved reading about the history because it was fascinating, but I would have read the book anyway just for the footnotes.

Two stars for plot; four stars for prose. I found this boring yet somehow I still enjoyed the meandering path that Jackson took me on. I loved Constance's constant presence, Julian's nattering, Mary Katherine's magical thinking and deep desperate hatred for Charles and anyone else who would keep Constance from her. I wouldn't call it a scary book, but it is disturbing in its own subtle, gentle way.

It was a slow start, but worth the time. I loved the careful reveal of the halfway world, and was thrilled and horrified to learn that all three of the sisters were, in fact, not the real sisters. Chilling.

I finished this in a day, so it was definitely engaging and a fun beach read for the Halloween season. But I hate amnesia as a plot device and the characters weren't interesting enough for me to remember this book a year from now.

Spoiler

It also bothered me not to have an answer if the ghost of Lydia was really there, but I understand this is a failing with me, not Tremayne. I choose to believe Sarah drowned herself while trying to save the ghost of Lydia.

It's not often you read a book that shakes up your entire idea of what fiction is, but Ward has done it. Perfect horror.

The original vampire novel, Carmilla predates Dracula and in my opinion fixes all of the latter's flaws. This story is sensual and frightening all at once, and lacks the boring religious and sexist attitudes that Stoker filled his book with. The dialogue is not its strong suit, but the atmosphere and introduction of the vampire into our modern lore is well crafted.

I saw a review that described this as "Sapphic Annihilation" and honestly, that's better than anything I have come up with.

Got to 32% and was just so bored. The first chapter was excellent and then it just stopped working for me. I couldn't figure out why Patrick was so angry at Dom and started to think Patrick was possessed, but it turned out to be so much less interesting.

Beautiful, haunting, important.