BR: Tale of the Vampire Bride – Rhiannon Frater

A few days ago I started to listen to the audiobook. This is the first time I have listened to or read one of the books by this author. Now lets see what I think of it, but thread carefully, as there may be a bit of a spoiler ahead.

Lady Glynis and her family were invited by the Count Dracula himself to his castle in Transylvania. She was of the age ready to be married and her parents were desperate to find her a husband despite her many protests. So much so, that when Count Dracula extended his invitation to them and had made known of his interest to court Lady Glynis, both the parents were excited to meet him. Little did they know what were in store for them.

I have to admit that the Bram Stoker vibe really kept me on the edge of my seat, and it was engaging from the beginning till end. It indeed kept me coming back and wanting to know what is going to happen to Lady Glynis.

I read that it was supposed to be a Gothic horror but being a historical romance fan I appreciate that it has a touch of romance in it as well, with not only one but two love interests for Lady Glynis – Vlad Dracula and Father Ignatius.

I like that it doesn’t stray away from folklore like many vampire novels do – the vampires in this book can’t walk in broad daylight, nor they sparkle, and they are afraid of crucifixes – The one of a few reasons I never read any of the Twilight series nor watched any of the movies.

The author didn’t waste too much time going into details about the architecture and deco. Good Lord, how many a times I had simply skipped through those lines in some other books. But I am glad we are spared of that in this one. A bit of a detail is good, but not too much in my case.

Now that what I like about the book is out of the way, I will share my opinion about what I dislike about it. I must say that I do not have many bad things to say about this book considering that I gave it 4 stars on Goodreads.

But like people, books are not perfect and so here I state what I thought was some of the imperfections I felt.

The heroine, Lady Glynis just ‘stomps her foot’ way too may times in this entire book that it got a bit irritating. I want to think that this heroine is a mature and strong woman with a will of her own. But honestly, every time she ‘stomped her foot’ to show her indignance I just felt like slapping her silly. All I could imagine is a spoilt brat.

Something about the storyline didn’t make sense to me. Vlad Dracula was depicted as an ancient, formidable, strong vampire yet why did he need to find an English bride in order to move to England? He had an English solicitor who, I am sure could have easily paved the way for him, introduce him to those who can help him get into the aristocrat society of England. He was a Count after all.

Now, a little bit about the narrating of the audiobook. It was narrated by Carol Hendrickson. Overall, her style was engaging and she did make the effort to try to change the accents and tones. But the accent was a bit too exaggerated sometimes. Why in the world she pronounced “Andrew” which is an English name, that in the book belonged to an English guy, as “Ándru’ – the ‘A’ as the ‘A’ in Father. I am not English, yet I don’t think an English person would pronounce that name that way. It was a wee bit disturbing to me. 🙂

If you can overlook the flaws, I would say that you may enjoy this book as much as I did if not more. In fact, I enjoyed the audiobook enough to look for audiobook 2 of the trilogy. So another review will come up soon.