A review by mmccombs
Lucy Undying by Kiersten White

dark funny slow-paced

3.5

This was two books! Which is disappointing because I really loved one book (a queer Dracula retelling) and mostly didn’t care for the other (romance and a cult). I loved Lucy’s story, it was sweeping and historical and tackled interesting themes about bodily autonomy, desire, and queerness. She was a fun character to follow, she definitely read as a person who had been 19 for probably too long, which is always hard to capture. And I do think the modern romance worked, love that for her! 

But the layering of the modern storyline on top made for an overly long, complicated, and significantly less fun story. Iris was fine,
a vampire cult in Utah is a funny idea (though I think it could have been executed better with more space)
, and I think the match between Iris and Lucy was sweet enough if kind of cheesy. But the constant POV shifts made it difficult to settle into either narrative fully, I was much more invested in Lucy and always felt mildly annoyed when we left. And then the Dracula storyline is also there, which I think would have made more sense to have explored more deeply to contrast against Lucy and the themes her story brings up, rather than making up a new conflict. Whatever happened, I do think I would have wanted Lucy to find herself and a great sapphic love, but I’m unsure if adding such a big storyline on top of another made sense. Despite it feeling pretty bloated, I still enjoyed reading this and thought the writing was engaging, the character work for Lucy well rounded, and the retelling worth the read.
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