Reluctant Immortals

Written by Gwendolyn Kiste

Narrated by Carlotta Brentan

2023 Lambda Literary Award Winner
2023 Bram Stoker Award Finalist for Superior Achievement in a Novel

For fans of Mexican Gothic, from three-time Bram Stoker Award–winning author Gwendolyn Kiste comes a novel inspired by the untold stories of forgotten women in classic literature—from Lucy Westnera, a victim of Stoker’s Dracula, and Bertha Mason, Mr. Rochester’s attic-bound wife in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre—as they band together to combat the toxic men bent on destroying their lives, set against the backdrop of the Summer of Love, Haight-Ashbury, 1967.

Reluctant Immortals is a historical horror novel that looks at two men of classic literature, Dracula and Mr. Rochester, and the two women who survived them, Bertha and Lucy, who are now undead immortals residing in Los Angeles in 1967 when Dracula and Rochester make a shocking return in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco.

Combining elements of historical and gothic fiction with a modern perspective, in a tale of love and betrayal and coercion, Reluctant Immortals is the lyrical and harrowing journey of two women from classic literature as they bravely claim their own destiny in a man’s world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
• Release date: Aug 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781797145433

Gwendolyn Kiste

Gwendolyn Kiste is the three-time Bram Stoker Award–winning author of The Rust Maidens, Reluctant Immortals, Boneset & Feathers, Pretty Marys All in a Row, and The Haunting of Velkwood. Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in outlets including LitHub, Nightmare Magazine, Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, Vastarien, Tor’s Nightfire, The Lineup, and The Dark. She’s a Lambda Literary Award winner, and her fiction has also received the This Is Horror Award for Novel of the Year as well as nominations for the Premios Kelvin, Ignotus, and Dragon Awards. Originally from Ohio, she now resides on an abandoned horse farm outside of Pittsburgh with her husband, their excitable calico cat, and not nearly enough ghosts. Find her online at GwendolynKiste.com.

[jamey oneal · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

aAudiobook. Decent narration, but relied on an annoying voice for too many characters. This is the second book I've read from this author (The Haunting of Velkwood being the first) and I don't think I'll read another. This was fanfiction gone way too far, with Bertha, the wife from Jane Eyre (who we are to believe dies from her own insanity in the classic novel and later we do meet Jane herself) and Lucy, the friend of Mina from Dracula, and she does a hack job of both characters. They don't make any sense. It's set in the 60's for absolutely no reason and the era is also done dirty by the author. The premise is SO good, yet she wastes everything about them, including Dracula and Rochester, turning everyone and the setting into a whiney, quarterlife crisis that feels extremely 2015 millenial schlock. It all feels very tired and boring and it's hard to well up much sympathy for the main characters and even less for the side characters-except for the poor kid Lucy basically turns into a sex slave-and then complains about that too. The bad guys are so one-dimensional they don't inspire the kind of existential terror that makes the tension believable. I finished the book, and darned if i can remember how it ended because I just stopped caring. The writing isn't great, and the language and attitudes don't reflect the 60's at all or ancient beings who have "survived" to the 60's and seems to be set in the modern era with some occasional nods to the era for no reason I can discern.
Who is the book for? It's a very "hurt people hurt people" premise and a treatise on how fu*kboys ruin lives and a bit of testament on female friendship (sometimes), but it handles them all so poorly, it just isn't satisfying. It's not horror, despite some horror elements. It's not for people who are looking for horror, vampire stories, stories set in the 60's. It's not for anyone who is looking for a feminist novel despite it being classified as such, nor for strong female leads or female friendships. It's almost as if the book was written by a man about how he thinks a woman would feel about all of this. It's DEFINITELY not for fans of either novel or who are looking for fan fic. I dont recommend this book.

[Carmen · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was amazing. I had never flown this fast through an audiobook. 100% would recommend.