Vampire novels are not really my favourite kind, probably due to the oversaturation of the trope after the release of Twilight. Yet if Rachel Harrison writes it, I’ll read it, and so I was excited to sink my teeth into this novel. As my friend Beth suggested, maybe Rachel Harrison could turn me.

Warning, this review will contain really cheesy vampire puns! Sorry, not sorry.

[Ed: There’ve been two already deep sigh]

So Thirsty by Rachel Harrison takes a classic vampire tale, gives it a feminist twist and delivers a gory feast I easily devoured.

“Here I am, alone in the dark, with my sour breath and my chattering teeth and my life on the precipice of catastrophe. The night keeps the snow under its tongue, but the cold wind persists in its tapping at my window, loud and gloomy as a prophet.

Just the wind. Only the wind.”

Our narrator is Sloane; now approaching her thirty-sixth birthday, Sloane is somewhat stuck in a rut. She’s in a toxic marriage, her job is not satisfying and her social life is almost non-existent. So when her husband organises a weekend away for Sloane and her childhood best friend Naomi, the pair head off to the Waterfront in Auburn. Naomi is determined for Sloane to let her hair down, to take some risks, to experience new things, and she doesn’t think twice when accepting an invitation from a tall dark stranger to a party at their rented home. Even knowing how dangerous this is, Sloane can’t let Naomi go alone, especially knowing what a loose cannon Naomi is. Yet the horrors which unfold at this party are unimaginable and will change their lives for eternity. 

I always love the way Harrison creates friendships and flawed female characters in such relatable ways. Sloane is a woman who suspects her husband Joel is cheating on her, again, and is so afraid of change and upheaving her life that she will not confront him. She is also such a people-pleaser that she goes along with whatever her best friend, Naomi, wants. She has always taken the back-seat in every aspect of life because in her youth she made one too many wrong choices that haunt her even now. Whereas Naomi is more a free spirit, a trouble-maker, a woman who has no inhibitions or thinks of the consequences of her actions. The pair on the surface make such polar opposite friends but I soon began to realise they were more alike than they appeared. Both women lived a life that revolved around the men in them and both were lesser because of it. They were both afraid, albeit of different things, but that fear drove them to run away, or become passive, rather than face their issues. Sloane and Naomi felt like real women, with real life problems, who then go on to experience the unreal together, in order for them to re-evaluate their lives.

“We gift each other the freedom to gnash our teeth, to growl and gnaw. Behave badly. Be terrible. Because we’ll love each other through it and no one else will. Because this ugliness is not permitted anywhere else. At least, not without consequence.”

Once at the party, Sloane and Naomi meet Henry, Ilie, Tatiana, and Elisa, and they enter their lives with an orgy, drink and drugs. (This is only the beginning of how wild their antics get!) So Thirsty is very clearly stated as a vampire novel and so it won’t surprise anyone that these strangers are all vampires and it’s also very clear how this night will end. I did find the vampires portrayal a touch too cliché for my personal preference, with Henry being the brooding, silently mysterious one and Ilie being the carefree foolish one. We’ve seen this portrayal in many TV shows and I had hoped Harrison would present their characters in fresh ways, but given how much vampire content is out there, I think this may be an impossible task. However, they did all grow on me by the end and I actually ended up enjoying the found family they all become when welcoming Naomi and Sloane under their bat-wing. Kidding, they unfortunately cannot actually turn into bats. Boo!

In the mix of Sloane and Naomi dealing with letting go of all their previous baggage, for Sloane it’s  confronting Joel and for Naomi, it’s breaking up with her rockstar boyfriend Lee, Harrison then juxtaposes this with pure gory vampire horror. Harrison does not shy away from detailing bloodlust and the violent ways vampires will satisfy their hunger. These are dangerous predators, they are not to be mistaken as human, and they will kill. Shame, guilt and self-loathing are all emotions that need to be buried, they are the demons Sloane has carried all her life and now in her afterlife it is time to let that go. By the end of this novel Sloane and Naomi are two forces not to be trifled with. They grow fangs and know how and when to use them. 

“Maybe the world makes you callous. The longer you live, the less you care. I wonder if that’s a good thing, or if it’s tragic. I wonder if it’s possible to ever know for sure.”

So Thirsty by Rachel Harrison is a fantastic little feminist vampire novel centred on two women who finally start living after they’ve died. With atmospheric prose and a pulse-racing plot, you’ll be compelled to read this in just one or two dark nights. 

ARC provided by Kabriya at Titan Books in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for the copy!

So Thirsty is out now – you can order your copy on Bookshop.org