Odyssey Book BloG

TLDR; This book was so beautiful, and everyone should read it. THIS is what is so fantastic about reading.

Spoiler free sum-up:

This novel is a slow burn- rich in prose and description, and heavily focused on character reflection and internal monologues. If you’re looking for fast paced, plot heavy fantasy I’d skip this one. But if you want to feel your way through a story, letting a book sink it’s teeth in slowly and never quite let go until all of the blood has left your body then you’re in for something special, Schwab’s writing is beautiful and poetic. This story tastes like grief 😉

The author herself has defined this book as the “toxic lesbian vampire” story and while that’s not really wrong it’s a wildly reductive statement! This book explores loneliness, literal and metaphysical loneliness, and hunger. Not just the bottomless hunger for blood that follows the vampires but the hunger that is desire: for freedom, for understanding, for more. For something beyond what the world tells you to want or expect.

Okay, getting into spoiler territory now while I discuss some of these amazing characters:

🩸Sabine

Sabine is obviously morally grey. She kind of goes from morally white to straight up black but the spiral is the point. Her arc is one of suffocation and resistance. Although I didn’t resonate with her often psychotic behavior, I felt her the whole time. I understood her feelings of being stuffed into a box that she just couldn’t quite seem to fit into and frankly, despised. Her marriage, the expectation of motherhood, and the submission of it all is suffocating for her. Her hunger to be more and to be seen more, is something that I personally, and maybe many other women can grasp onto.

💔Charlotte

Charlotte was equally as compelling: certain of who she is and what she didn’t want but still needing to flush out what that meant for what she does want. And although I adore her and relate to her, I have to acknowledge that her devotion and loyalty to Sabine serves an example of how dangerous love can be when it becomes all consuming, and one’s sole purpose. And also, what happens when you can’t be alone. Charlotte’s desperation for companionship left a trail of bodies in her wake because of her unresolved issues! Dramatic metaphor, but very on point.

Ultimately, her manipulation and potential planned murder of Alice was the most tragic ending. It gave us a glimpse into her fading humanity and how she was becoming much like her abuser, Sabine. Her vanquish of Penny was good foreshadowing to this happening because Penny didn’t need to die (a second time) just because Charlotte didn’t want to “repeat history.” Whether it was because she didn’t want Penny to bear witness to her spiral or didn’t want to witness Penny’s, it was arguably self-serving to kill her. Seeing that she was potentially going to do that to Alice as well made it clear that our beloved Charlotte was lost to us at last, and that was a hard pill to swallow.

🌸 → 🌹Alice

Alice was the perfect vessel to bind this love story together (while having her own identity as well) and was a magical addition. I have to give our wallflower that blossomed into a (thorn’d) rose her flowers as well. Although her ending was tragic, I like to tell myself she’s doing well.

🕯️ Final Thoughts:

What I loved most about this novel is that every character is both villain and victim, lover and monster. It’s an excerpt on how people hurt when being hurt, and how hunger and desire can become both salvation and damnation.

It’s a love story wrapped in rot, like so many. And somehow, it made me feel seen.

Even if I’m straight. 💀🖤

…so go read it…

“To the ones who hunger—
for love, for time, or simply to be free”