This is the story of a family of women (the Evans) in Southeast Texas whose family business is running the only funeral parlour in town. Well, that is their main business, but their side hustle is killing the restless dead (vampires) who end up in their funeral home. The Evans are standing between their town and the Strigoi, who occasionally show up. But the latest round of undead really puts the family to the test, and unearths some family secrets rising up from the grave.
The Good
I love vampire stories, and I love stories that feature badass women. This book has both! The vampires in this are of a more… brutal and kind of gross type. They are not a suave Count Dracula (for the most part) lurking around in a castle but are more ghoul-like and prone to not sucking on the neck of a pretty young woman in a white nightgown, but using clawed-like hands to rip into their victims. I also liked the vampire mythology at play here, although the concept that a person could die and then come back not via vampire bite but just because they are restless is kind of haunting to me.
Set in 1999, one of the protagonists is a teenage girl, and this book nails what that was like in a lot of ways. Or maybe nailed what it was like in a lot of ways for me, even if I grew up in a small city in Atlantic Canada. I just really identified a lot with Luna, even when I, with a lot of years between me and being a teenager, wanted to shake her. “Listen to your mother,” I found myself yelling at the pages. I mean, I wouldn’t have when I was her age, but I also wasn’t dealing with the undead!
I also enjoyed the interplay between the Evans women and the fact that they are all dealing with some family secrets and grief over some of the men in the family. They are all very distinct in the ways they handle everything, even while all of them are handling the vampire business going on around them.
The Kind of Ick
This is a personal preference, but the body horror in this (in the sense that there is rotting flesh and a lot of characters vomiting, like a lot of characters vomit) made me have to pause reading. I like to snack when I read, but not with this book! I like horror novels a lot, I like vampire novels, I know things often get … messy in these kinds of books, but there is a lot of mess in this. Still enjoyed the book, but I wasn’t prepared going in how descriptive the vampire attacks would be.
The Why Was This Choice Made?
I know from hanging out online and following authors’ social media that they often don’t have a whole lot of say in book covers. And I get that this book cover seems very on trend right now, but – wow. Between that and the cover quote that promised a blend of banter and dread, I just find a lot of disconnect between the cover and the book. I flat-out hated this cover and thought I was getting something a lot lighter than I was. (I still very much enjoyed this book, but I hate the cover. I hate it. Anyways, that is just some personal preference there, and just me venting on the biggest cover art beef I’ve had with a book in a while.)
The Random
I guess it was the family of women with secrets, a lot of dead men in the family, and a nice guy police deputy poking around said secrets that kept making my brain go Practical Magic. Or maybe it was something else that I was picking up through the text, as I was rewarded near the end of the book where one of the characters made a joke about making some midnight margaritas.
Also, I didn’t realize this book was the first in a series when I started it. The story ends in a way that leaves a lot of loose ends, and I’m so in for a second book, but things start to escalate near the end, and when reading, I felt like I was running out and pages. So, just wanted to give a heads up to anyone who might pick this one up – there will be (hopefully) more to come.