When Mia was ten years old, her mother died and then came back to life. Mia’s mother Izzy has been infected by a disease known as Saratov’s syndrome, and she’s now something a little different than your baseline human. Those infected with Saratov’s syndrome (known as Sara’s) need to drink blood to live, don’t age, are super fast, can’t be easily killed, but sunlight will do the job when it comes to killing them. Since the word vampire is not used in the book, I’m going to say that this book takes place in a world where vampires don’t exist. But since Sara’s do, and it is a known thing, steps have been taken to try and keep the human population safe, and well, human.
Mia has to hide what her mother is, the book moves back and forth between Mia at age ten, having her life crashing down around her, and Mia at age twenty-three who is having a “life” so to speak. She’s growing up and is now closer to the age that her mother was when she became a Sara (Izzy was thirty-one). For the last thirteen years, Mia has been serving as her mother’s source of food, so her mom can avoid going out and hunting down other humans. This means Mia needs to be there when her mother wakes up as the sun goes down, and she can’t let other people into her life lest they find out about her mother. The general populace’s response to Sara’s is to call the police and have the person rounded up and brought to one of the special Sara institutes where – well people go in and never come out. So keeping Izzy’s status hidden is a must. Then Mia meets a musician named Jade and starts to realize what she might be able to have, and what her life might be able to be….
This novel features characters who need to drink blood to survive, and who at times hunt humans. There is bloodshed. There is violence inflicted on people. Characters are stalked and physically threatened. The book has some vampire-like scary scenes and some really vampire-like action. But the part that got to me the most in this book was the emotional tension. Mia and her mother have an intense relationship, they are parent and child but they are also very codependent on each other, with Mia being Izzy’s child but also feeling like she needs to step up like an adult as well. Mia is growing older, but her mother is an eternal thirty-one, and also, a kind of a monster.
The book even lays it out early on: “A rude awakening can definitely set her off, especially if she wakes up hungry. I can’t forget what she is. What she could do to me.”
Today in the here and now I have a good relationship with my parents, but growing up one of my parents was sometimes emotionally volatile, and man this book made me flashback to that at times. Granted the parent in question wasn’t for all intents and purposes a vampire, who could have ripped out my throat, but I got some anxiety about Mia trying to appease her mother in the name of keeping the peace and staying alive. I felt that tension and it caused me some feelings of anxiety while reading it. Mia also really functions as a kind of adult in her relationship with her mom, and while I don’t have a history of that in my familial relations, reading about that was also giving me reader anxiety.
Saratov’s syndrome is a disease, and the book talking about there being lockdowns, and there being screenings put in place to get into business (you can only get in if you’re human) did give some COVID-19 pandemic feelings. Mia and Izzy also live a pretty isolated life as they try and keep what Izzy is under wraps, so the book feels very timely in a way. I think I could read that part more easily now because I have more distance between the lockdown and now.
The jump between vampire-style horror and emotional fraughtness kept me reading, and this was one of those books that I hit pause on everything I could so I could get some resolution by getting to the end. I am here for vampire fiction, and I am also here for complicated mother-and-daughter relationships in fiction – so this book was an amazing blend of both those things. The book does have a sequel (and right now is listed as a duology, so I think the sequel will be it as far as this series goes) and I am anxiously awaiting for my hold on it at the library to come up.