A sexy dark and glittering jewel of a novel featuring Sapphic vampires and crumbling old Victorian estates with a cast of believable and enjoyable characters. You will want to get drawn into this one, but you may not be able to stop!
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Genre: Fiction, Historic Fiction, Horror, Vampire, Feminist, Sapphic Erotica.
Publisher: Zando New York.
Review in one word: Mouth-watering
This is a richly drawn feminist and sapphic vampire novel set in the 19th Century in England. Loosely based on the classic vampire tale Carmilla, the heroine of the story is Lenore, a young woman barely surviving in a stifling marriage to a wealthy steel magnate Henry.
Lenore married to escape from a suffocating and abusive aunt who tormented her throughout her childhood. Henry is a man of little aristocratic pedigree but a ruthless drive to make money and he married Lenore for her money and good name. The resulting marriage is one of deep coldness and no genuine love. They move to a crumbling old mansion called Nethershaw (Hungerstone) with a view to restoring to its former splendour.
On a stormy night the pair witness a terrifying horse and carriage accident near their mansion. A mysterious woman named Carmilla survives the crash and takes to the bed in Nethershaw to recover. Yet Carmilla resists leaving their home and draws Lenore into her magnetic orbit, the two become inseparable and a hungry attraction grows between them. In the meantime, a cloying, voracious hunger overtakes all who come into contact with Carmilla on the estate.
If this sounds a bit silly, it most certainly isn’t, this is a tightly woven and compelling narrative filled with unexpected twists and turns. There’s a strong feminist bent to the storytelling. About emancipation from violent and unpredictable men and about instead turning towards women for sexual and emotional comfort.
I am a woman woken from thirty years slumber, and I would eat the world should it satisfy this empty, keening void where my heart should be. I would cry with grief over my life so unfulfilled, and drink down the salty tears, eat my worthless tongue and impotent fingers, skin this carcass and pick the bones clean.
Oh God.
There is something wrong with me.
I am so, so hungry.
Book Review: Hungerstone by Kat Dunn
The storytelling is compelling and magnetic and draws you in, much like the darkly glittering jewel of Carmilla. I highly recommend this book – a solid five stars for an immersive dark and stormy evening read.
A darker stretch of shadow detaches itself from the inky corners, and begins to pace before the window overlooking the moor. The shutters are still open, but there is only a blank, black view like a stage set.
The cat paces closer, eyes flashing with some strange, dark light. She is monstrously long, and I know this is the creature that has sat upon my chest when I have woken before.
Am I awake?
I cannot be sure. I am cold, so unbearably cold, save where Henry brushes against me.
The creature bounds upon the bed, and I am terribly afraid. Surely Henry will wake.
But he does not. The closer the cat comes, the more indistinct it is, only the sense of weight on my breastbone, and then that hot tongue rasping at my neck. Twin pricks of pain pierce my skin, and it is too much. I cannot bear it, not again.
Against my paralysis, I force out a cry, and the weight vanishes from my chest in an instant. There is a shifting in the air, and the shadows are replaced by a vision of Carmilla at the foot of my bed.
An excerpt from Hungerstone by Kat Dunn
Content Catnip 