Carmilla

Honestly, this book was kind of a letdown.

Maybe it was just too hyped up for me, but I expected a lot more than what I got. I think the biggest problem was that this book was genuinely just too short. We didn't get enough time to build up the tension of Carmilla being revealed as a vampire, we didn't get enough time to build practically ANY romantic tension between Carmilla and Laura at ALL, and we got basically no time to build up the tension of Carmilla's execution.

Which was honestly pretty anticlimactic, by the way. There wasn't even a big fight between anyone; they just found out she was a vampire and killed her in her coffin. All the buildup (what little of it there was) and then they just easily staked her while she was sleeping.

The description of the book says it's “the foundation of the lesbian vampire myth” and while I understand queer relationships were written very subtly in that time for a reason...there just isn't one in this book. There are maybe 3 or 4 lines that can come across as romantic between Laura and Carmilla but the book was just so short that composing any type of romantic relationship between the two of them is just impossible.

Definitely a disappointment that doesn't live up to the hype.