Vampire, Love Thyself: Lucy Undying by Kiersten White

TW: Family trauma, repressing sexuality, misogyny, and lots and lots of blood. 

Everyone knows the story of Dracula. We know how he stalks Mina, the beloved fiancée of his solicitor Jonathan Harker. In the process, the vampire turns Mina’s supposed best friend, Lucy Westenra, before turning his attentions back to her. Lucy was such a small role in the original tale. She was a whimsical, flirtatious girl, just blossoming into her own. At least, that’s what we see. 

Who was Lucy, really? What would happen if vampires were real and Dracula was not just a story from a man whose love for Walt Whitman bordered on repressed homosexuality? (Seriously, read his letters to Whitman - it makes you wonder.)

Welcome to Lucy Undying: A Dracula Story by Kiersten White.

Photo borrowed from BookTrib

Sixteen-year-old Lucy is a beautiful young girl who is still learning her own heart. She is madly in love with her former governess, Mina, but she is forced to bury those feelings. Her mother has very specific expectations for her behavior and for her future, expectations that Lucy cannot escape. It almost feels like a fate worse than death for a vibrant teenage girl but given the time she lives in, she isn’t given much of a choice. 

Iris Goldaming is trying to run from the beauty and health company that her mother built from the ground up, trying to disappear into London while she checks out the properties that were left to her. She plans on selling anything that she can from the properties and using that money to escape the cult empire that her mother has built. Her plans are upended when she runs into Elle, who saves her from accidentally walking in front of a car. 

Their stories are interwoven by journal entries and the perspective of Lucy as she moves from her teenage life into the beginnings of her afterlife and meets other women who have been afflicted by Dracula, chosen for their strength and the joy of hunting them. It isn’t quite the epistolary that the original story is, as Lucy’s journals come both from her young human self and her vampire self speaking to a therapist. 

This novel is a sapphic continuation of the Dracula story, where one of the more tragic characters is given a voice. Lucy and Iris both fight against a lifetime (or several) of expectations for who they are supposed to be. Both are trying to find who they really are outside of others. Lucy just wants someone to understand her, wants someone to just see her. Iris no longer wishes to be used by others for who she is and wants to find out who she could be without those expectations. 

Their worlds are more interconnected than they realize, by a thread that crosses from the 1890s to now. 

Two women, bound by blood and fate, dancing around the expectations of others to find love and a path that allows them to be together. 

My favorite parts of this involve Lucy’s influence on other vampires that she meets. She moves from person to person, hoping to find herself in their attention. Instead, she gains insight into what makes these women do what they do. The Lover, The Queen, and The Doctor, each dealing with their immortality in different ways, and each forced to change with the times. Lucy doubts herself so much, doubts her worth, while having a major impact on the people around her. When she finally goes to therapy, she begins to realize how much she simply reflects what others expect of her. She craves understanding and forgiveness.

Iris is lost. There is no one in her life that protects her. Her mother used her, her father refused to protect her, and the army of lawyers and sycophants stalk her no matter where she goes. She believes her mother’s empire is nothing more than a pyramid scheme and a cult, but as she digs into Lucy’s secrets, she begins to learn some of her own.

By the end of the book, I found myself feeling hopeful for a world where love is laced with understanding and acceptance. Where love can bring forgiveness for our faults and even the ageless and timeless can grow and change. 

Remember, when the tomb is finally closed and the darkness descends, I will be here with another recommendation, should you need it.