Queer reimagining of Dracula’s brides, ft. sapphic yearning at the opera and tangled polyamorous relationships
One of the best books I’ve ever read. A dark vampire romance, spanning centuries with polyamory.
For someone who loves polyamory as much as I do, I sure haven’t read all that many books with it. I’m so so glad I read this one.
I’ve never actually read Dracula, so I can’t say all that much about it. What I CAN talk about is this book, and boy do I have a lot to say about it.
The writing style is super unique. It’s written, sort of, like a letter from the narrator to her lover. So, first and second person. We never actually find out the name of Constanta’s, the narrator’s, lover, but since Goodreads uses Dracula, let’s go with that.
“This is my last love letter to you, though some would call it a confession. I suppose both are a sort of gentle violence, putting down in ink what scorches the air when spoken aloud.”
The writing is lyrical, absolutely phenomenal, stunning, flows like a river and is just as beautiful. I binge read this book in two days.
The start itself is intriguing. We go into the story with the knowledge of how it ends, and that makes it so much better.
“If you can still hear me wherever you are, my love, my tormentor, hear this: It was never my intention to murder you. Not in the beginning, anyway.”
When Dracula is first introduced, he’s a savior to Constanta, and he’s the perfect gentleman. And us, the readers, would’ve been charmed by him if it weren’t for the way Constanta talks about him. There’s something wrong, and it’s not exactly about secrets. It’s about something rotten hidden behind charms and false love. We know it’s there but we can’t pinpoint it. It leaves you uneasy and eager to read more, read quickly. Find out what’s up.
Constanta’s character is brilliantly three dimensional. At the start she’s just a girl, so new to everything, naive and trusting and angry. A sharp contrast to the ruthless, calculating, experienced Dracula. The way her character develops, how she becomes more aware, a little more ruthless, yet still managing to retain her morals, her better sides. How she struggles between their lifestyle, and Dracula’s non existent morals, set against her own sense of right and wrong.
The introduction of the other two lovers is something to behold, Constanta’s struggles with having to share her husband, and then coming to love them. And how they’re all different from each other, contrasting yet fitting each other. How they all love Dracula too, and how they understand that maybe he isn’t as great as they thought of him as.
That this eternal life isn’t what they’d expected.
People aren’t meant to live forever. I know that now.
I loved how Constanta slowly becomes more and more aware of things around her, the way she loved Dracula yet understands what’s wrong with the situation. How Dracula deteriorates, showing more and more of his true colors.
The way Dracula manipulates and controls them is horrifying. The only reason I was able to read through some of the worst bits of how he treated his consorts was because I knew the ending.
And that ending.
I have so many things to say about it, such a deliciously dark ending, with justice served. Tragic and empowering. It’s not a sad ending, I firmly believe it was a happy ending. But you can see the conflict that Constanta feels throughout the book, and that’s the heartbreaking part.
There’s also a little epilogue short story, called An Encore of Roses. A slightly spicy look into their lives after the ending events of the first book.
Soul soothing is what it was.
There were so many lines from the book that I wanted to quote here, but I’m just gonna let you all read them by yourself, savor the magnificence that this book is.
A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson
A lyrical and dreamy reimagining of Dracula’s brides, A Dowry of Blood is a story of desire, obsession, and emancipation.
Saved from the brink of death by a mysterious stranger, Constanta is transformed from a medieval peasant into a bride fit for an undying king. But when Dracula draws a cunning aristocrat and a starving artist into his web of passion and deceit, Constanta realizes that her beloved is capable of terrible things. Finding comfort in the arms of her rival consorts, she begins to unravel their husband’s dark secrets.
With the lives of everyone she loves on the line, Constanta will have to choose between her own freedom and her love for her husband. But bonds forged by blood can only be broken by death.
Do you like vampire books? Or polyamory? What’s the last book you read with either?
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