Hello everyone!
P. S: Warning! There are spoilers in this review.
I am back with another book review. It has been a month since I posted my last review and with work and my mental health, I had to take a break. Daylight Savings Happened last Sunday and i took alot out of me and my sleep took a while to get used too. Today I decided to get back on here and finally review the book I was so excited to post. So here it is.
For this book review i decided to read Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu. I switched from both the physical copy and my ebook version. I have also downloaded the audiobook from Scribd. Narrated by Karen Cass.
Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu is a story written that predates Dracula by Bram Stoker by 26 years. This story is based in Styria. Laura is our main protagonist and she’s the daughter of an English widower who is retired from service in the Austrian Empire. All her life, she is haunted and has many visions of a beautiful woman and is tormented by her at night. Now reading this, I was a bit creeped out and i guess this is what Sheridan wanted people to feel when reading Carmilla. This is discussed at the beginning of Laura’s story, and from there she thinks she’s lost her mind.
Now, 12 years later, she meets Carmilla and there’s an instant connection and friendship, and the reader is told of how they become friends so fast. Laura is heartbroken from the loss of someone she knows; she thinks it’s faith Carmilla came when she did. Her mother whose carriage breaks down, wants Carmilla to stay with Laura and her father for 3 months, and they agree . That’s when sinister events happen as Carmilla wont disclose who she is and what her past is. Now as things happen, Me being me, I felt as though I was watching Scooby Do and we all get a glimpse of the monster and everyone wants to know whose at fault for the deaths of young women in the story.
The women in the village start to die and slowly we get POV from her father who states that Laura is slowly declining and Carmilla is acting strange. Now I love how Sheridan writes this novel and his use of detail, and imagery and dialog. It’s like we were there seeing things unfold right in front of us. Now her father wanting answers for his daughter’s decline, travels to Karnstein, and his friend tells the tale of his daughter meeting Millarca and her mother at the time of her death.
Millarca is then discovered as being a vampire and she attacks his daughter and Bertha gone once the sun rises. With that discovery, Laura’s father, member of the clergy, and Baran Vordenburg who’s Van Hellsing ( Thats my nick name for him) goes to Millarca’s Tomb (She dies decades ago) and they see that Carmilla is indeed Millarca. This moment is when the gang in Scooby Do find out who was committing the crime and he’s put in jail. Baran is then in a battle with Millarca, and she is then killed and burned, and Laura is safe and alive. Laura and her father travel so she can get better, and the story ends on a good note.
Now, after reading this story, I loved that it had a happy ending but wished that Sheridan went in detail on Carmilla and what she did throughout the book. I would have like Millarca’s back story and how she became a vampire. I have seen so many reviews of people calling the way Carmilla attached herself to Laura her falling in love, but thats not how i see it. It’s just Sheridan sharing the haunting instincts of vampires and vampires do have a seductive, straight-forward and intense way of luring their victims to them to feed on. I gave this story 3 and half stars. It was good, but just not the best vampire story I have read. If you have read this book, leave a comment, I would love to know your opinion. Thank you for reading!
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