This book spoke to me and understood me in a way that few books have. It also upset me and depressed me. I guess it was too real. I loved it but at times I hated it and my rating won't do it justice no matter what I do. I don't know if I'll ever be able to read it again. This was a good book. Florence is the absolute worst. I think the reason this book hurt me so much at times is because in so many ways I am Sol. I'm also Elsie and it just feels so profoundly unfair that their lives aren't perfect. It's hard not to take things personally in a book like this and I don't know if that makes it better or worse that it was able to get to me so deeply... ( )

An eccentric, heartfelt exploration of the paraphernalia people hold dear, the bodies we create for ourselves, and the different ways it’s possible to love both these things. ( )

I wasn't at all sure I was going to like this, but by about a third of the way through I realized that I really, really cared about these characters. Quotable, smart, messy, all over the place, but in like a tight neat well packaged way (I am a sucker for that kind of story). There are a lot of thoughts I want to return to here.

A few reviews bring up that it doesn't make sense to have both the metaphor (vampires) and the things it's representing (death, disability, transness---less so Jewishness, I agree that wasn't as well incorporated) in the same story, but I would argue that they're not metaphors, they're riffing on each other. What Fellman is trying to get at are instead the things that are common to all of them (and ultimately all of us human beings) in different ways and at different moments: contagion, rot, fear/disgust/desire, limitation, anxiety and coping with risk, legacy. ( )

Spooky trans vampire archivist queer romance mystery written by a trans archivist! With niche archives references! Probably not for everyone but definitely exactly for this trans archivist :D ( )

Really struggling to not give this two stars. Like others have said, some of this is just beautiful. And like others, I should have LOVED this: I am an archivist, I have a history of being trans, and I am obsessed with the Anne Rice vampires…

Here’s what I loved: The nuance of transgender and lesbian identities, the wisdom that obviously comes from actually *living* in queer spaces away from the internet, and the sex scenes (the best part of the whole thing imo). The author should write some erotica, not joking. Also, the discussion about gay women writing gay men was brilliant!!! “Reading slash is a drug.” Just brilliant. Writing women as a woman is scary, but it is just so much heartier.

Here’s what I found meh: AO3 inclusion, fandoms in general, sci-fi, the decaying archive metaphor, the vampire metaphor, and the jewish inclusion were all underdeveloped. Perhaps a bit more passé was the baby-trans (modern online) obsession with labels and identity and… meh. I get it, it’s super personal for the author, but I am exhausted.

Here’s what I hated: Elsie’s trans identity was so tenuous!!!It reminded me so much of my conception of my masculinity while I identified as trans/man that I can’t see her doing anything but detransitioning in a few years. She basically has a textbook detrans story I hear time and time again so…

Anyways, this was spoon-fed to me by my archives master program cohort so I had to try it. Meh? ( )