Dracula, My Love

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 21 JUN 2010

James (The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen) tepidly reboots the Dracula story, reimagining the classic from the point of view of Mina Harker, a minor victim. Here, Mina is torn between two men dependable Jonathan Harker and darkly enigmatic Nicolae Dracula. While the men of the story enact the plot from the original, Mina secretly meets her lover, Dracula, and conspires to have the best of both worlds keep Jonathan as a husband for the term of her mortal life and keep Dracula as a lover for eternity. The mood and material may put readers in mind of Coppola's Dracula movie, though James does the narrative a disservice by waiting until too late to force Mina to make a choice the buildup isn't exactly riveting, and the hurried decision comes across as contrived. A few unexpected twists along the way offer pleasant surprises (Van Helsing, for instance, recast as a comically inept buffoon), but otherwise, this will have a hard time standing out on the increasingly packed vampire romance shelf.