As somewhat of a connoisseur of vampire stories, I was incredibly excited to pick this book up when I first heard about it. Whilst I can definitely see a trend to change this, particularly as we are having a vampire renaissance at the moment, a lot of vampire stories seem to be sorely lacking in diversity and the richness that we get when a story taps into a wider breadth of influences. I don’t know enough about Ethiopian folktales to speculate on how much of the vampire mythos is unique to Girma’s imagination versus drawing on traditional stories however there is definitely a wonderful sense of African diaspora woven throughout this story which adds a beautiful dimension to an already incredible story.

I was talking to a group of new friends earlier about this book and I think the best way to describe this book is to say expect the unexpected and also Yos 🥵 I really loved the fact that this book has so many layers to the story but manages them with an expert hand so that the story never feels as though it has too much going-on. For a thoroughly surprising book, it also didn’t feel contrived during any of the twists and turns. This may be Girma’s debut but it is abundantly clear that she has been writing and honing her craft for a very long time.

I can’t wait to read the rest of this series because I generally have no idea where this story might take me but I do know that I am going to enjoy every moment of the ride to get there.