Dracula & Daughters by Emma Carroll
Dracula & Daughters brings all the thrills of vampire literature to middle grade readers, with none of the gore.
Gothic galore!
Packed with girl power, Dracula & Daughters launches a new middle grade vampire adventure series. This time, the damsel-in-distress is a stable boy, the menacing blood-sucker is a young woman, and the only heroes brave and smart enough to resolve the chaos are three overlooked red-haired girls who find their true strengths when they work together.
Their names? Mina, Buffy, and Bella. Ha ha.
It all begins with Mina. Determined to become Temstown’s first female doctor, she sneaks into the cemetery one night to steal a corpse - in the name of science and study, of course. But she doesn’t get far. The grave she has her eye on has been forced open from the inside.
A vampire is on the loose. And things only get more complicated when Mina discovers vampire blood running through her own veins.
As a bookworm, I loved all the gothic literary references. There’s a Helsing, a Renfield, an Otranto, a Northanger, a Stoker, a Westenra, a talking raven called Poe, and a room numbered 1897. Can you spot others?
The scenes with Carmilla Blakelock were unexpectedly sweet and I was moved by the graveyard flowers at the end. I thought the male baddies capitulated quite easily, but the constantly evolving mission keeps the plot pacy. My children were wide-eyed throughout the finale and asked at the end whether vampire healers are real. Of course I said yes…
Many thanks to Faber & Faber, Emma Carroll, and NetGalley for my advance reader copy. Wish I had my own Poe.
Dracula & Daughters is out this September and will appeal to fans of Alex Foulkes’ Rules for Vampires and Polly Ho-Yen’s How I Saved the World in a Week.
WHAT TO READ NEXT
The Night Raven by Johan Rundberg
How I Saved the World in a Week by Polly Ho-Yen
