My Five Word TL:DR Review: Cosy Urban Fantasy. With Vampires?

Yes, Vivian Shaw succeeds at writing cosy urban fantasy populated by caring vampires. Now there’s a sentence I never thought I’d put together. 

Firstly, if you haven’t read the previous three Dr Greta Helsing books then I recommend you do so. Although, I’m fairly confident that you could pick this up and read without having read the other stories you would miss a lot of character development and world building. 

Speaking of which, this is a contemporary world inhabited both by humans and supernatural creatures  (although not necessarily with the humans being fully aware of that fact). It’s sometimes easy to think this has a historical setting, particularly when the central character is residing at her husband’s country estate and then it gives you a jolt when mention of aeroplanes and other modern affairs are mentioned. I think the writing feeds into this notion a little, not to mention the characters, such as the introduction of Dracula into this episode. But, this isn’t a criticism, I think Shaw has nailed a winning style here, it feels cosy, easy to fall into the story and comfortable. 

The plot for this one is a little thin. A young girl is attacked by a vampire and in the process turned. She is brought to Dr Helsing and from there comes an investigation to discover who committed this heinous crime. In actual fact, the investigation takes something of a backseat and is mostly played out off page whilst the central thread involves the search for a home for this newly turned young girl. 

What I enjoyed. 

I liked returning to this world and characters. That being said I couldn’t help feeling that things were changing, almost like this is a bridging novel to something new?  I don’t know why I felt like that. I just have this notion and I can’t shake it. 

This really does have a very character led cosy, found family feel. You can see how Greta has found her new family and how comfortable she is, I think this may have led me to think that something new is in the offing, that Greta is now so comfortable. Actually, thinking about it, the author could be going in a completely different direction, showing us Greta so happy before throwing everything into chaos?

Okay, so I’m rambling now so time to conclude. This is a fairly short easy to read cosy urban fantasy. I hope it’s the start of something more as I like the author’s style very much and I do enjoy UF. The only negative for me – I wanted more (my constant refrain when it comes to novellas).

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher, for which my thanks. The above is my own opinion. 

My rating 3.5 of 5 stars