Sonia Hartl

A Vampire Revenge Story

The Lost Girls

❓ #QOTD Who is your favorite fictional vampire? ❓

🦇 Give me a feminist girl gang of vampires thirsting for revenge any day. When Elton Irving turned Holly Liddell into a vampire in 1987, he promised her eternal love. But 34 years later, Elton has left her, her hair will be crimped for the rest of immortality, and the only job she can get as a forever-sixteen-year-old is the midnight shift at Taco Bell. Holly’s afterlife takes an interesting turn when she meets Rose McKay and Ida Ripley. Having also been turned and discarded by Elton, they want to kill Elton before he turns another girl. Holly almost says no...that is, until she meets Parker Kerr—the new girl Elton has set his sights on—and feels a quick, and nerve-wracking attraction to her. 

💜 When I heard this was the equivalent of "John Tucker Must Die, but with vampires," I was pretty much sold. I mean, an exhausted vamp squad eager to get revenge on the lame guy who dumped them all? Yes please. Unfortunately, that exciting, perfect-for-fall horror premise isn't enough to keep your attention page after page for a story that's all tell, no show. The dialogue is choppy, the pacing drags, and none of the characters really stand out from one another. The phrase "lost girls" (I phrase I automatically connected to an empathized with) is used WAY too often. Unfortunately, this reads like a first draft; so much promise with such lackluster execution.

🦇 Recommended to fans of Squad, Carmilla, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, John Tucker Must Die, and The Vampire Diaries.

Jazelle H

🦇 The Lost Girls Book Review 🦇

Rating: ⭐⭐

❓ #QOTD Who is your favorite fictional vampire? ❓
 
🦇 Give me a feminist girl gang of vampires thirsting for revenge any day. When Elton Irving turned Holly Liddell into a vampire in 1987, he promised her eternal love. But 34 years later, Elton has left her, her hair will be crimped for the rest of immortality, and the only job she can get as a forever-sixteen-year-old is the midnight shift at Taco Bell. Holly’s afterlife takes an interesting turn when she meets Rose McKay and Ida Ripley. Having also been turned and discarded by Elton, they want to kill Elton before he turns another girl. Holly almost says no...that is, until she meets Parker Kerr—the new girl Elton has set his sights on—and feels a quick, and nerve-wracking attraction to her. 

💜 When I heard this was the equivalent of "John Tucker Must Die, but with vampires," I was pretty much sold. I mean, an exhausted vamp squad eager to get revenge on the lame guy who dumped them all? Yes please. Unfortunately, that exciting, perfect-for-fall horror premise isn't enough to keep your attention page after page for a story that's all tell, no show. The dialogue is choppy, the pacing drags, and none of the characters really stand out from one another. The phrase "lost girls" (I phrase I automatically connected to an empathized with) is used WAY too often. Unfortunately, this reads like a first draft; so much promise with such lackluster execution.

🦇 Recommended to fans of Squad, Carmilla, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, John Tucker Must Die, and The Vampire Diaries.

✨ The Vibes ✨
🦇 Vampires
🩸 Found Family
🦇 Bisexual FMC
🩸 Single POV
🦇 Sapphic
🩸 Young Adult
🦇 Fantasy Fiction

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The Lost Girls
Sonia Hartl
★★★☆☆

“We were all hurting in different ways when Elton found us, and we wanted so badly to believe the pretty lies of a pretty boy, but that didn’t make us any less deserving of having a full life.”

This one is dedicated to all the lost girls. A powerful element in Hartl's beautiful short novel "The Lost Girls" is the vampire revenge story. From the very first page, you are thrown into Holly's world and experience life through the perspective of a sixteen-year-old with a sixty-year-old brain. Ultimately, the narrative presents a heartbreaking experience that encompasses trauma, abuse, and pain in a variety of ways. Despite the fact that the prose is difficult to understand at first, you become engrossed in the plot by the third chapter. The characters are well-developed, with enough depth for two hundred pages, and everything in terms of the central plot is fully explored.

With such a low word count, it does falter in a few areas that require additional explanation. This is either going to work for you or not. I felt that certain aspects of the central plot could have been given more attention; there could have been more details about the three girls (Ida, Stacey, and Rose), the queer romance could have been developed more, and the conclusion may have been a bit quick for my taste. Generally, I felt too many plots were tried here, and too much was being considered to make these two hundred pages work. Several things were vying for center stage, which led to many being left behind. As the story revolves around trauma, grief, and pain, it excels at making it digestible for YA audiences. This is a very gut-wrenching story about verbal abuse, sexual assault, being a female entangled in a male's charm, and the ability to move beyond what you've known and been taught. On this note, I commend it. You will undoubtedly feel whole after having experienced this if you have ever had anything similar happen to you. The prose is profoundly elegant, and I am incredibly impressed with the way history is woven into the story, with each girl representing a distinct time period.

Abi Baker

holly, ida, rose, and stacey are the epitome of the 'of course i support men's rights' meme

The Lost Girls A Vampire Revenge Story

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