alexiisnnguyen 's review for:

Dracula by Bram Stoker

4.0

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came for the vampires, stayed for the gothic vibes. the vampires in and of themselves aren’t really the Big Bad like a lot of pop culture portrays but more as a plot device or a metaphor of the times? i mean, the female vampires were obviously commentary on victorian repression and purity culture, and a lot of the plot had me confused as to whether stoker was trying to take a feminist or anti-feminist approach. maybe he wasn’t trying to do either!! but that was definitely the lens that i read a lot of this through considering that he repeated the word voluptuous at least 6x everytime he talked about a woman vampire and had his female characters preach about the braveness and worthiness of men at least 2x each time they switched to their own pov. it’s a product of the times, though, and i actually do think it was quite enjoyable for that. classic gallantry and honestly, beautiful representations of human relationships and love, romantic or platonic. i think my favorite portion of the book was when the audience knew that dracula was the culprit behind lucy’s illness, but the main characters (save van helsing) did not. it really added to the all-encompassing nature of him that the characters described. i think that was diluted in later parts of the book but it served it’s purpose.

read 2 reviews talking about gung ho manliness and the presence of evil being noticed because people got sexy and i feel like that really does take up a lot of the book…fun, interesting read though, it was definitely a little slow at times and maybe i just wasn’t immersed enough, but this being an epistolary novel meant that sometimes i would imagine shit happening and the characters taking their time to sit down and write about it and then i got taken out of it