V.E. Schwab is one of those authors whose books are always intriguing but sometimes I don’t quite get that emotional connection from them and feel slightly at a distance. This novel was one of the ones where I think I was more intellectually engaged than emotionally, especially in the later half. I’m sure I read the summary/synopsis when I ordered the book but all I really remembered/knew by the time I started this one was sapphic and vampires.
The novel alternates view points and time lines – most of the modern day is told from Alice’s perspective, an 18 year old Scottish woman, who is attending Harvard as a fresh start from home. Alice is sad, lost, a bit insecure, and on the night the novel begins, she goes to a party with her roommates and meets a mysterious woman, taking her home for a one night stand. When Alice wakes up, the woman is gone but hours later, Alice realizes she isn’t quite human anymore.
We get one POV chapter from the mystery woman, Lottie, as she leaves Alice’s room but for the first half of the novel, María (later renamed to Sabine) is the main perspective as the novel introduces her as a 10 year old girl in early 16th century Spain. María is strong willed, animated and curious, and at the age where gender expectations are starting to restrict her freedoms. Her desire for more, established early on, leads her to a confining marriage to a nobleman and then, finally, she finds her escape to freedom through a vampire (given the setting of Spain, I kept thinking of Leigh Bardugo’s novel The Familiar during this section even though Spain and vampires are the only thing they have in common, the stories themselves are quite different).
Schwab’s take on vampirism follows the idea that becoming a vampire exaggerates one’s original personality and character traits (so the Captain America super human serum version it) so Sabine, as she calls herself once turned, is focused on the moment and fulfilling her urges (which include the hunger).
Sabine was in many ways the most fleshed out character with the most time devoted to her – with her long life and travels, the novel was strongest for me when we were following her around Europe and seeing how she interacted with other vampires and her attitudes towards humans. We don’t get into Lottie’s mind until much later in the novel but Sabine and Lottie’s approaches (as well as some other supporting characters) set up some points that would make for a great discussion – which approach is the most moral, assuming morality can exist for a vampire; ideas of complicity and indirect vs direct accountability as well as explorations of loneliness, toxic relationships and humanity.
Overall, I read this one pretty quickly and did enjoy quite a few things about it. There were points where I also quite enjoyed the language and metaphors, with the vampires as the roses that grow from the midnight soil. Alice was the one I was least interested in – her insecurity etc made her scenes initially feel a bit flat/not very dynamic but it all came together by the end; I also think a lot of the themes would be interesting to discuss, especially from the later part of the novel … but, I think I was also left wanting something slightly more as far as emotional pay off (tends to be common for me with this author) though I can’t quite put my finger on any specifics or details I would have changed.