Boris Krischel

Man, I really love Elizabeth Bedlam’s writing. There’s just something so fascinating about her characters and the way she writes them. This was the first full-length novel by her that I’ve read, and I loved getting to spend more time with the main character and really sit with all her struggles.

Like in Bedlam’s other work, mental illness plays a huge role here, but it’s written with a lot of care and honesty. The main character feels messy and real, and it’s genuinely sad seeing how hard normal relationships and everyday life can be for her. The whole book has this uncomfortable, intimate atmosphere that really got under my skin.

Because it’s self-published, the edition I read had some formatting and editing issues here and there, but honestly I didn’t care much because the actual writing and character work were so strong.

I seriously can’t recommend Bedlam’s work enough.

This was my first Poppy Z. Brite book, and you can immediately tell there’s real talent here. Compared to a lot of horror books I’ve read lately, this actually feels well written. The pacing is strong, the atmosphere is great, and the character/world building at the start really pulled me in. It has this depressing, dreamy road-trip vibe where a bunch of lost people and vampires are all searching for meaning, connection, and somewhere they belong. You can definitely see why this became such a cult classic in gothic horror circles.

The characters are interesting and memorable, even if the whole thing feels very edgy at times in that 90s goth way. The biggest issue for me though was how normalized the incest and underage sex felt throughout the story. Horror obviously pushes boundaries, and I can handle disturbing content, but here it rarely even felt framed as wrong or uncomfortable. It was just kind of... there, woven into the relationships like it was normal, and that made parts of the book genuinely weird to get through.

Also, despite being a vampire novel, the horror mostly came from the bleak atmosphere and broken characters rather than the vampires themselves. By the final stretch it became a bit of a slog for me, but I’m still glad I finished it.