Women bite back in this queer gothic thriller, perfect for fans of Interview with the Vampire and Plain Bad Heroines.

It wasn’t easy for Angela Bell growing up on Possession island, the remote Pacific Northwest setting of her late mother’s wildly popular vampire novel. When she returns home from college and her estranged best friend, Mo, is murdered, she’s forced to reckon with yet another loss—and finds herself in the crosshairs of the bungled police investigation.

Sally Raleigh has longed to leave the island for years, but she’s trapped by her father’s declining health and her devotion to her charismatic twin brother Adrian. The last thing she needs is her high-school nemesis Angela back in town. But Sally is also devastated by Mo’s death, and finds herself forging an unlikely alliance with her former enemy to find Mo’s killer.

As Angie and Sally delve deeper into the island’s sinister underbelly, they must confront just how far they’re willing to go to protect the people they love. And they’ll soon find that the secrets they’ve been keeping from each other won’t stay buried for long…

I received an advance copy of this book courtesy of the publisher. All thoughts are my own.

I’ll be honest. I saw Interview with the Vampire in the synopsis and immediately decided I had to read this one, because that book is one of my favorites from my emo teen years. Sadly, this didn’t come close to reaching those heights for me.

The book focuses on a group of friends in a small PNW town known as Possession Island. This island was also the setting for Angela Bell’s mother’s hugely popular vampire novel. Living there was never easy for her and she couldn’t wait to leave. When she comes home from college, she learns that Mo, her best friend from before they drifted apart, has been murdered. The police investigation is a mess, and Angela ends up under suspicion. Meanwhile, Sally Raleigh has wanted off the island for years, but her dad’s health and her loyalty to her twin brother Adrian kept her stuck. Angela is the last person she wants around, since the two have history from high school. But Mo’s death hits Sally hard too, and the two of them team up to find out who did it. The deeper they dig, the more they have to face what they’d do to protect the people they love, and the secrets they’ve been keeping from each other start to surface.

I will admit that I was intrigued at the beginning. The characters were all engaging, and the narration was unreliable, which I love. There’s a good amount of tension early on, too. I also liked that the story bounces back and forth in time, so we get a good look at who these characters were as teens and who they are now. I also thought the setting was great. I definitely felt the small-town isolation. And to top it off, the alleged murder was pretty gnarly, and I was looking forward to seeing where it would lead.

Sadly, the destination was a massive flop for me. The reveal of what happened to Mo felt extremely uninspired. I’m all about female rage and women getting revenge, so I wanted to be on board. But this just felt lazy, and after all that buildup, I expected something with more bite. I was also disappointed with the vampires, or really the lack of them. The only vampires in the book come from the novel that one of the characters’ mothers wrote. We do get a few chapters from the book sprinkled throughout, but honestly, they didn’t add much to the story. They felt more like a way to pad the page count. With Interview with the Vampire sitting right there in the synopsis, I’d hoped for more bloodsucking and a lot less filler.

Overall, this one was just okay for me. I was into it until I wasn’t, and once I wasn’t, I was completely checked out. If you’re a fan of queer gothic thrillers and you care more about atmosphere and unreliable narrators than about a satisfying payoff, you might get more out of it than I did, but I wouldn’t go in expecting vampires or anything mind-blowing.