A review by bucketsjen
Carmilla and Laura by S.D. Simper

emotional hopeful medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character

4.0

A retelling of Carmilla, following the events of the original fairly closely until around the midway point where it decides "

ok but what if this really was a love story

". This novel poses two new questions as it changes the story -

what if Laura returned Camilla's ardor and had to grapple with her identity, and what if Carmilla's love was true and she opened up to Laura about her own truth

? It also offers up an answer which the original lacked:

who was Carmilla's mother, anyways

? 

The resolution for the climax is a bit too contrived for me -

a vampire witch shows up, tells Laura that killing herself will save Carmilla, and then it saves them both through magic

. It knocked half a star off for me. But I did very much like the final few pages of the epilogue, when we returned to the framing of the story.