Now that I've finally read it, I can't believe it took me this long to read it! I've read so many re-tellings of Carmilla (many of them are good and are my favorite books), I'm so happy that the OG vampire book is just as good! It's super readable despite the time when it was written AND SO MUCH MORE SEXUAL AND SO MUCH MORE LONGING than I imagined. It was honestly delightful to read it, although that might not be the best word to describe the full reading experience. There are so many amazing quotes from our dear Carmilla as well:

“But to die as lovers may... to die together, so that they may live together.”

“If your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours.”

“You must come with me, loving me, to death; or else hate me, and still come with me.”

LIKEEEEE come on! my goshhhhhh, the longing?! This is definitely going on my list of favorite vampire books.

I'm a bit conflicted on how I feel overall. The first half of the book I would give 3 stars and then the last portion I would give 4 stars. To start with the good... this author is an AMAZING writer. She writes a sentence like no other. It's beautiful and lush and I could picture the Alamba scenery in my head with her descriptions. Truly I can't wait to read anything else she comes out with just for that alone. The Author's Note at the end also brought the story to a new perspective and it shows how much love and attention she gave to the story. It also helped me to understand some of the characters a bit more.

However, I will say I struggled quite a bit with Junie's character. Which after reading the Author's Note, I understand that the author wanted to write a very human character. But I couldn't get over how naive Junie was over her "friendship" with Violet. I kept rolling my eyes anytime they would interact. I was finally happy that Junie finally let her have it at the end and told her like it is. Junie had to go through a lot of growth to get to the point. Which is all we can say for anyone in their teen years. Also, and here is a bit of a spoiler YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED...

The end was exciting and tense and I was reading so fast to see how everything would wrap up but my gosh Junie why the hell did you have to run into that burning building. Those white people did not deserve any of her kindness or her guilt for anything that happened. So I was a bit annoyed at that. Especially when she finds out what actually happened to her sister, and mother and her family's hair (gosh that scene is horriyfing) I hate when someone who is abused and tormented by an opressor and then once the opressor dies they feel sorry for them?!?!?!? I can't. It just never seems believable to me. So I think that's why I couldn't give a book a full five stars but it's mostly for that.