Thanks to NetGalley and Creature Publishing for providing me with this ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review!

This one was just okay.

My biggest issue was the writing style. The constant flowery similes/metaphors felt overdone and unearned, to the point that I was rolling my eyes at some points. If the protagonist was characterized as dramatic and poetic, then I might find it believable and even charming, but that wasn't the impression that I got from Mel. Because of this discrepancy, I just couldn't immerse myself in her POV.

That being said, the writing style worked very well during the seance scenes! They weren't particularly scary, but it was very fun to picture the horrors being described. Creative, compelling, and dare I say juicy. If the poeticism of the prose had been toned down for the more mundane scenes, then I think the horror scenes would have been even more effective.

Because this is a novella based on a classic work, I don't have any real complaints about the pacing. The author needed to balance telling the story she wanted to tell while also unobtrusively reminding readers what happened in The Great Gatsy. I imagine that was pretty tricky!

As for the characters, they served their roles well but I wasn't particularly attached to any of them. Since this is such a short novella, and I haven't read The Great Gatsby recently (though I remember it surprisingly well, since it was one of my favorites in high school), I don't really blame the book for this.

I recommend this to people looking for a quick, queer, horror-tinged twist on a classic.