A Review by Zoe Boulton
When I first saw this novel in the teenage section here at Warwick Books I thought it would be another Twilight style book, it was first published 6 years ago and has recently been reissued playing up the vampire theme. After reading this novel, however, I can say that it is quite different to Twilight and other such teen vampire romances.
It is written in the style of a journal kept by an unnamed teenaged boarder at an exclusive girl’s school in 1970s USA. She becomes obsessed with the behaviour of a new student- Ernessa, believing that something is unusual about her, and is infuriated to find that her best friend Lucy has fallen under the new girl’s spell. As the journal unfolds the narrator becomes convinced that Ernessa is a vampire and her writing as she tries to find out the truth takes on a dangerously obsessive tone.
This was actually quite a frightening read for me; I found it to be unsettling and more than a little disturbing at times, especially given that this is marketed at teenagers. There is quite a bit of strong language, drug taking, self-harm, a lot of eating disorders and some psycho-babble about 19th century German philosophers. A dark, psychological thriller about obsession and adolescence.
