This hovered at a 3 for too long to make it out of the category, though I liked the last five minutes quite a bit; they finally made me understand the point of the book. This is a book about alienation; Lydia is struggling with her mother's neglect, the equivalent of an eating disorder, social isolation, her purpose in life and as an artist, being mixed-race and never knowing her father, and also she is a vampire. This book is often described as a "sad girl" book; yeah. She's in her early 20s and has no pronounced sense of self, stuck in liminality in her work and identity on more than one axis. The book proceeds in this vein for 220 pages.

It could have been a short story, but at no point was I exhausted by the book or inclined to stop reading; suspense was adequate to keep me returning to it, even though I also felt no strong urge to read it. I was an ardent watcher of Buffy as a teen, and ever since vampire stories tend to fall flat for me; I got my fill. This was a nice enough reinvention, and I'm glad I wasn't bored of it. But I think it is less interesting to read about a character whose main traits are disordered eating and not knowing where they stand than the book wants it to be, and though it was reasonably well executed, I'm not sure I ultimately enjoyed the project of the book.