Hungerstone was one of my most-anticipated books of 2025, but it ended up being a disappointment. I love Carmilla and queer Carmilla retellings, not to mention sapphic vampire stories in general, so I thought this would be an easy win. Instead, I ended up feeling like this was a novel split in two, where the halves didn’t quite come together.
The first half of Hungerstone is a slow-moving portrait of an unhappy marriage during the Industrial Revolution. When Lenore was a child, she was orphaned in a traumatic carriage accident. She was raised by a cold and controlling aunt, and marriage offered her a chance for some power and independence. Lenore carefully planned her chance to marry a wealthy man, molding herself into the perfect wife. And it worked: she married steel magnate Henry. Ten years later, Lenore has failed to produce an heir, which has cast a pall over their marriage. When he moves them into a crumbling estate and begins to spend more time with a female friend, Lenore feels like the life she planned for is slipping away from her. And that’s when she meets Carmilla.
Henry and Lenore find Carmilla on the side of the road, a victim in a carriage accident. They take her while she recovers, but Carmilla is off-putting, even rude. The servant girls act strangely in her presence. But despite Lenore’s initial disgust with Carmilla, she’s also drawn to her, and soon, Carmilla helps her to finally get in touch with her own desires.
I like the premise of this story, with Carmilla acting as the id to Lenore’s ultra-repressed character. In practice, though, it’s hard to read about such a closed-off character. For the first half of the book, Lenore is so out of touch with her own emotions that it’s hard to connect with her. At this point, it feels like a gothic, with slowly building dread about what’s really happening with Henry. By the time the intensity picks up and Lenore finds her hunger, it feels like a completely different book, shifting from subtle dread to over-the-top scenes.
There are also threads that I felt like were dropped. Class is touched on several times, with Henry being self-conscious about his “new money” status, but the subplot about his mistreatment of his employees doesn’t seem to go anywhere. Carmilla disappears during convenient points in the story, and we don’t get to know much about her—she’s more of a plot device than a fleshed-out character. Carmilla also seems to have dramatic effects on servants and other minor characters, but not the main characters, with no explanation.
Many readers loved Hungerstone, though, so don’t let me scare you off: it has appeared on several year-end best of lists and has gotten plenty of glowing reviews. For me, it felt like it needed some more editing to come together as a cohesive whole. But I’m always happy to see more sapphic vampire novels getting attention!
