Read for the Vampire Reading Challenge.
Victoria Grantworth is a typical eighteen-year old member of the aristocracy in 19th-century England – concerned with making her debut, and finding a husband. However, she’s also a member of the Gardella family, where one member in every generation is called upon to fight vampires. Victoria answers the calling gladly, but quickly finds that fighting vampires by night, and landing a husband by day isn’t nearly as easy it she thought it would be.
I really wanted to like this book. A number of people whose reading tastes I normally respect wrote gushing reviews of it. I can’t say I loathed it, but I found it just a bit too arch. It was completely predictable, and Victoria kept getting herself into situations out of willful obliviousness. I just couldn’t buy that this was possibly the most powerful vampire fighter of all.
I found myself wondering if I would have liked this book better had I not read it after Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I really feel like the book was trying to be as clever as a Jane Austen novel, but it definitely fell flat of that objective. Having witnesses PP&Z, and how surprisingly well it translated into genre probably didn’t help my overall perceptions of the story. I don’t believe I’ll be following Victoria’s further exploits.