Are vampire novels finally back in vogue? 6 new and upcoming vampire books on my TBR
I was a teenager and a voracious reader during the height of the vampire YA craze. It was the best time to be in that world and that feeling of getting lost in books and other worlds has never really left me. Reading for me at the moment, even as someone who is nearly 30 (!!), I am constantly looking for that feeling again.
That sweet spot between 2005-2013 (I was 13-21 during this time) was a dream for vamp lovers. We had the books, the TV shows, and the movie adaptations.
I devoured ‘Vampire Academy’, ‘The Morganville Vampires’, ‘Twilight’ (obvs), dipped my toes into ‘Blue Bloods’, ‘The Vampire Diaries’ and ‘House of Night’, and went back in time to ‘Dracula’ and ‘Carmilla’. And then pop culture just moved on from vamps, but I never did.
I’ve rediscovered a lot of 2010s urban fantasy in the past few years and fallen back into the trappings of wanting to read only vampire novels…
Luckily for me, it looks like they’re having a bit of a revival! But not just in YA… They’re even showing up in literary fiction!
These six novels are a few that have popped up and stayed on my radar in the last few years, making their way to my bookshelf and TBR.
‘Woman, Eating’ by Claire Kodha - full disclosure, I’m about 20% of the way into this literary, millenial, sad girl vampire novel and it’s not living up to my expectations so far, but I have hope! 23-yea-old Lydia is living away from her mother for the first time and she is hungry, struggling to obtain pigs’ blood to feed herself and unable to to feed on humans, she must grapple with her new life.
‘Certain Dark Things’ by Silvia Moreno-Garcia - this vampire thriller set in Mexico City sounds so beautiful and lyrical that even though I didn’t get on with an earlier novel of Moreno-Garcia’s, I’m so excited to give this a go.
‘Crave’ by Tracy Wolff - Sarah is reading this TikTok fave at the moment and really enjoying it, so I had to add it to my TBR. It’s giving full classic ‘Twilight’ vibes and I’m here for it.
‘Mina and the Slayers’ by Amy McCaw - set in 1995 New Orleans, Mina is settling into her new life, but during her work experience with a detective she gets swept up in investigating a series of ‘animal attacks’ around Halloween. I loveeee this series, it’s so fun.
‘Empire of the Vampire’ by Jay Kristoff - this is probably the most popular recent vampire novel, but I’m so intimidated by it’s 700 pages length… But I know I’m in for an intense, brutal, bloody vampire story in Kristoff’s hands.
‘The Reluctant Vampire Queen’ by Jo Simmons - this story of a girl ambushed on her way home from school and convinced to be the Vampire Queen of Great Britain sounds like the best type of funny UKYA and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.
Are you back on the vampire train? Or should it be left in the 2010s?
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Written by Sophie
