Lucy Undying

Lucy Westenra was one of Dracula's victims, and in this sapphic retelling she survives him. She is tired of being a footnote in someone else's story, and she wants her own account on record.

The book runs on three timelines. In 1890, Lucy writes in her journals. In the present day, she sits in therapy sessions and talks through what Dracula did to her and what she has done in the years since.

In London, Iris Goldaming has inherited her late mother's mansion, Hillingham. Her mother also left a family business built on a multilevel marketing scheme, and Iris wants no part of it. While she goes through the house with an appraiser named Elle, she finds Lucy's diary and sees something of her own life in its pages.

As the timelines draw together, Lucy's story and Iris's collide. The result is a gothic romance about controlling families and self-discovery, with a darker, more adult tone than the author's young adult novels. The question it turns on is who each woman chooses to become once she is free of the people who shaped her.