Dracula, My Love
By Syrie James
HarperCollins
Release Date: July 20, 2010
Paperback | Paperback (discount*) | Kindle

If when you read Dracula by Bram Stoker you wished you could get into the head of one of the characters and get an intimate first-person account, then you’re in luck. Dracula, My Love is a revisionist novel that retells Stoker’s novel from the point of view of Mina Harker (neé Murray). The author, Syrie James, is no stranger to this subset of the historical fiction subgenre, having produced such novels as The Lost Memoirs of Charlotte Brontë and The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen. Through beautifully written prose, she tackles the chain of events in Dracula from Mina’s mind and presents what happened in a highly defined manner that gives new context to the original.

Thankfully, it’s not told in the epistolary format, through diary entries, or through newspaper clippings. Instead, the reader gets Mina’s recollections after the fact. Although there are some changes and additions to Mina and to her history, as well as the sequence of events, James hasn’t made too many departures from Stoker’s tale and she has, for the most part, lent a sense of discovery that fans will gobble up. She presents a fresh new look that considers many different angles.

Lucy’s sleepwalking problems are more drawn out in this novel, and a focal point of the plot. But if you’re expecting a lesbian makeout scene a la Francis Ford Coppola’s 1993 interpretation of Dracula, you won’t find it in this book.