A review by brackenmacleod
Running Home by Julie Hutchings

5.0

Julie Hutchings has taken the familiar vampire romance trope and introduced new life into it by reimagining blood suckers as avatars of the Japanese gods of death (shinigami), giving them a interesting set of new abilities and burdens while still designed to please fans of Stephanie Meyer and Charlaine Harris. Where she really succeeds, however, is confronting the reader with the concept of powerlessness in the face of fate. Hutchings' vamps are less about death-dealing than they are about serving an established order that, like it or not, does not always end with a fairy-tale happy endings and a wedding in the big castle. Without giving too much away, Hutchings subtly imbues her main character, Ellie/Eliza, with a growing acceptance of her unavoidable fate as embodied by the stunningly beautiful man she loves. Even her ability to love Nicholas freely is called into question as she is swept along by the vicissitudes of his designs on her present and future. It's a wonderfully insinuated and well-realized subtext that I think both reveals and subverts a reader's expectation of speculative romance in the post-Twilight era.