She’s out for adventure. He’s out for blood.

The world of your favorite fantasy novels is real, and you’re invited to visit. The only catch? It’s filled with thirsty vampires. Devour this page-turning romance from the bestselling author of One to Watch.

Tess Rosenbloom is no stranger to the dark. An assault survivor and grad school dropout, she spends her nights managing a chic Brooklyn hotel and her days curled up with her favorite vampire novels, Blood Feud. Tess even dabbles in online conspiracies that Blood Feud is real—it’s fun to hunt for clues! But deep down, Tess doesn’t believe vampires actually exist…

Until one walks through her door.

It turns out Blood Feud is real, and the sexy villain of the novels is trapped. Eager to escape her life, Tess agrees to help rescue him, and soon she’s in a fantasia of lavish palaces and enchanted forests, on a secret island where the sun never shines and she’s surrounded by deadly vampires—and against her better judgment, she’s falling in love with one of them. (And unbeknownst to Tess, her estranged best friend is having a sapphic affair with a beautiful vampire of her own back in New York.)

Visiting the world of your favorite story is any fan’s dream, but will Tess be able to outrun the demons of her past (and vampires of her present) before it becomes a nightmare? In this darkly glamorous rom-com, Tess will find out whether it’s worth risking her neck—and her heart—for a chance to reclaim her future.

I received an advance galley of this book courtesy of the publisher via Penguin-Random House Audio. All thoughts are my own.

I have always loved vampires. If there’s a vampire book, I will likely read it; if it’s a vampire movie, I will watch it. I’m not a huge romantasy fan, but when I read the synopsis of this book on the Penguin Randomhouse Audiobook app, I knew I needed to give it a try, and I’m happy I did!

The story is told from the POV of Tess Rosenbloom. Tess loves literature, and until recently, she was a grad student at Columbia University, but after surviving an assault by a colleague, she dropped out and now manages a hotel in Brooklyn. Tess mostly keeps to herself, working the night shift at the hotel and losing herself in her favorite vampire book series. She even participates in online forums where people speculate that the novels’ vampires are real.

Tess doesn’t necessarily believe they’re real, but then one evening, while hosting a party at the hotel where she works, a woman who bears a striking resemblance to Octavia – one of the vampire characters in the novel – introduces herself. Tess doesn’t believe her at first, but then she shows her fangs and Tess’s world is turned upside down. When Octavia asks Tess to deliver a message to her brother, who is stuck in the vampire realm, Tess is skeptical but excited to have a chance to see if this fictional world is real. Tess soon learns that Octavia is telling the truth, and when she gets trapped in Vampire purgatory, she is afraid she may never make it out alive. Will Tess end up being someone’s dinner, or will she manage to win over the clan of vampires and avoid falling for Callum, Octavia’s sexy, mercurial, bad-boy brother?

I loved the characters in the novel. Tess is strong and relatable, and her best friend, Joni, is also a lot of fun. I also really liked Flora, a witch who helps Tess get to the Vampire island. The vampires were also great in that they were your typical vampires who can be dangerous, drink blood, burn up in the dark, etc. The author doesn’t try to make them her own, and they didn’t sparkle, which was perfect, in my opinion. I especially enjoyed Callum and Octavia – the vampire siblings that Tess was trying to reunite before everything went downhill.

While there’s not much to it, the novel is a fun read and uses elements of mystery, romance, and humor to create a fun and exciting storyline. Tess’s love for vampire novels is relatable, and the fact that she finds out the novels are based on actual vampires adds a fun twist to the familiar genre.

While the overall story is fun, there were a few things that annoyed me – mainly the podcast transcripts that came from a podcast focused on the “Blood Feud” series of books that Tess and Joni are obsessed with (the same series that Callum and Octavia are a part of). I felt the transcripts did nothing to further the story and were merely filler. The book didn’t need it. Also, while I enjoyed the overall story and the characters, I felt it was a bit long. Removing the podcast pieces and the chapters from the “Blood Feud” book could have helped tighten up the pace.

As I mentioned earlier, I listened to this one, and the narrator did a great job. There are a ton of characters to voice, and the narrator captures each one perfectly. She gave each of them a distinct voice/accent, making it easy to tell who was speaking.

If you’re a romantasy fan, this is one you’ll want to check out – especially if you are a fan of Ali Hazelwood’s “Bride.” While it didn’t hold many surprises and reads like fan fiction, it works, and I had a good time listening to this one. If you’re looking for a lighter type of paranormal book for Halloween, this will be a good one to add to your TBR.