Review by Booklist Review
This is an entrancing tale of three lesbian vampires spanning five centuries, including how their lives and deaths intersect and their different approaches to their vampiric afterlives. Maria, who died in 1532, craved more and found a Spanish viscount to marry, landing herself in a miserable marriage and desperately avoiding pregnancy. When her husband forbids her to associate with the local herbalist, Maria flees to the apothecary, accidentally slays her creator as she is turned into a vampire, then gleefully slaughters her husband and his family. A decade later, now known as Sabine, she meets other vampires willing to teach her. But when they become sloppy in their slaughter, Sabine barely escapes as the other two are killed. Her story alternates with that of modern-day Alice, who brought Lottie home from a college party and woke up as a vampire. When Alice tracks Lottie down, Lottie tells her her history, and how Sabine, almost a century after their parting, still stalks her and the women she feeds from. The vampires' intertwined stories explore the centuries between them, ultimately reaching an unexpected yet satisfying conclusion. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Schwab's fantasies are always a big draw, and this enticing tale of lesbian vampires that crosses centuries will be irresistible to her many readers.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Bestseller Schwab (The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue) unfolds an epic and emotionally resonant tale about three lesbian vampires connected through the centuries. In 16th-century Spain, wild Maria avoids pregnancy and eventually escapes her lonely marriage with the help of a mysterious herbalist widow, but poorly rewards the woman's offer of the gift of eternal life by killing her and taking on her name, Sabine. After centuries of wandering, only rarely finding others of her own kind, Sabine hunts and then turns Charlotte in 19th-century London--but Charlotte flees when their loving connection sours under mercurial Sabine's jealousy. In 21st-century Boston, Scottish Harvard student Alice seeks novelty and reminisces about her sister, but after a postparty hookup with Lottie leaves her as a vampire, she is determined to find Lottie again and get some answers. Schwab crafts intricate backstories for her leads, beautifully balancing the humanity and monstrosity of all three women while chronicling their transformations over time. The result is a haunting and worthwhile story about cruelty, grace, love, and what it means to live forever. (June)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Schwab follows The Fragile Threads of Power with a genre-blending vampire novel. Part history, part fantasy, and part romance, the story unfolds through the perspectives of three women: María, a Spanish woman from the 1500s dreaming of escaping her rural life; Alice, who is starting a new chapter in college in 2019 Boston; and Charlotte, who sets Alice's life on a new track while hiding her own mysterious past. The three women are exceptionally voiced by Julia Whelan as María (who later takes the name Sabine), Katie Leung as a grieving and lonely Alice, and Marisa Calin as a cloistered yet yearning Charlotte. Schwab's stylistic flair shines through with grand metaphors and pulse-quickening descriptions of love and death. However, the plot is overcrowded with its three protagonists, sometimes surging through time with a seemingly endless series of grisly murders that quickly lose their bite, and other times dragging as it treads and retreads familiar vampire tropes. Schwab's fans will likely flock to this novel, but new readers might be disappointed by uneven pacing, somewhat shallow characters, and a lack of fresh vampire ideas. VERDICT Buy where Schwab is already popular or where all things vampire are sure to circulate.--Collin Stephenson
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Three women deal very differently with vampirism in Schwab's era-spanning follow-up toThe Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (2020). In 16th-century Spain, Maria seduces a wealthy viscount in an attempt to seize whatever control she can over her own life. It turns out that being a wife--even a wealthy one--is just another cage, but then a mysterious widow offers Maria a surprising escape route. In the 19th century, Charlotte is sent from her home in the English countryside to live with an aunt in London when she's found trying to kiss her best friend. She's despondent at the idea of marrying a man, but another mysterious widow--who has a secret connection to Maria's widow from centuries earlier--appears and teaches Charlotte that she can be free to love whomever she chooses, if she's brave enough. In 2019, Alice's memories of growing up in Scotland with her mercurial older sister, Catty, pull her mind away from her first days at Harvard University. And though she doesn't meet any mysterious widows, Alice wakes up alone after a one-night stand unable to tolerate sunlight, sporting two new fangs, and desperate to drink blood. Horrified at her transformation, she searches Boston for her hookup, who was the last person she remembers seeing before she woke up as a vampire. Schwab delicately intertwines the three storylines, which are compelling individually even before the reader knows how they will connect. Maria, Charlotte, and Alice are queer women searching for love, recognition, and wholeness, growing fangs and defying mortality in a world that would deny them their very existence. Alice's flashbacks to Catty are particularly moving, and subtly play off themes of grief and loneliness laid out in the historical timelines. A beautiful meditation on queer identity against a supernatural backdrop. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
