Title: Thrall
Authors: Avon Gale and Roan Parrish
Publisher: Self-Published
Length: 529 Pages
Category: Contemporary, Mystery/Suspense
At a Glance: My personal beef with the ending and what amounted to a supernatural cocktease in the earlier parts of the book aside, overall Thrall can be a fun read and deserves kudos for how well it tackled the epistolary format of Dracula in a modern way.
Reviewed By: Jovan
Blurb: Dating Sucks & Love Bites
Happy couple Mina Murray and Lucy Westenra have begun to garner national attention for their quirky New Orleans true-crime podcast, Shadowcast. When Lucy’s brother Harker disappears while researching the popular new dating app Thrall, they’re thrown into a real-life mystery. Aided by their social media expert, Arthur, and Harker’s professor, Van Helsing, they follow the trail, hoping to find Harker before it’s too late.
When their investigation crosses the path of a possible serial killer, the line between fantasy and reality begins to blur. And as they race against the app’s countdown clock, so does the line between friendship and love. What starts as a flirtatious rivalry between computer-savvy Arthur and techno-averse Van Helsing becomes much more, and Mina and Lucy’s relationship is tested in the fires of social media.
As they get down to the wire, the group discovers that nothing on their screens is as it seems—including their enemy.
A modern retelling of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Review: Thrall is a mixed bag for me, that in the hands of less talented writers would have just fallen flat on its face. As a fan of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, I was stoked to hear about Roan Parrish and Avon Gail’s modern take on vampirism with nary a vamp and written in the same epistolary format. For sheer scope of vision alone, Parrish and Gail deserve credit; moreover, they took this letter-writing, episodic format and enthusiastically ran with it into the modern age, incorporating tweets, texts and chats among other formats. I found the idea of Mina Murray and Lucy Westenra being hosts of a true-crime podcast a wonderful way to not only incorporate another new avenue for presenting information, but as a way to illustrate the connection, engagement and sometimes soul (blood)-sucking and intrusive “nearness” social media creates.
There is a lot to like about Thrall . . . and a few things that left me feeling a bit “meh”. The first part of the blurb is spot on: Mina and Lucy, who went from friends to lovers before the time period in the book, become worried about Lucy’s brother, Harker Westenra, when he seems to vanish. As Harker has no real life outside of his dissertation, as far as Lucy knows, his absence, his browser-search history and his complete lack of response to her texts sends her spiraling and latching on to the one person in Harker’s life that she knows of, his advisor August Van Helsing, and the one clue she has—the dating app Thrall. As for the rest of the blurb. . . that seems to be a bit of what Van Helsing deems “strategic presentation”. For me, there was no real rivalry between Arthur and Van Helsing (yes, I just like using that name ;)). There was flirting from the first email, lots of blunt and awkward honesty and sometimes, “hey, aren’t we supposed to be worried about Lucy’s missing brother?” comments to assure readers they weren’t completely self-involved a-holes, flirting when they should be finding a missing person, but rivalry, not so much. Van Helsing’s lack of tech-savvy is actually attractive to Arthur, among MANY things, and he admittedly plays up his luddite persona for him.
Additionally, Lucy and Mina’s relationship wasn’t really “tested in the fires of social media” as far as I could tell. As tweets are used and they are public figures, there were of course examples of misogyny, general nastiness and trolling, but nothing that actually put a strain on them/affected them as a couple. There were some extremely ugly SM interactions late in the story that were horrible and scary for them, but existed outside of their relationship. That being said, I did enjoy all the relationships in the book; the characters were interesting in their own ways and worked well together; I just went in expecting something a little bit different in terms of relationship development, based on the blurb.
In general, there were a few instances where the writing/tone didn’t click for me. While I do like the epistolary format, one of its shortcomings is that there are a few instances where a phone call may have been warranted. Especially times in which Van Helsing, who is new to chatting and texting with such regularity, would have DEFINITELY picked up the phone to call Arthur because of the importance of the moment, so, for me, I was pulled out of the story in those moments because it seemed incongruous to the character and made me focus on the format rather than the scene. Additionally, as someone who likes social/historical/political or other societal angles in books I read, I have a high tolerance for current affairs or social issue discussions in my romance, but even for me, Thrall came across a bit too in your face with it. It makes sense given the context of the story as a “meditation on what vampirism looks like in the twenty-first century” and the SM environment in which the MCs interact, but the book was pretty heavy-handed in its incorporation. On the one hand, I enjoy when books shine a light on important issues; on the other, it became its own presence in the story. Another issue for me was how often a seemingly important element/topic was established, but then the authors did nothing with it; this was done with a supernatural aspect, something in Lucy/Harker’s history and a storyline incorporated into and related to the search for Harker. The screen/page time these topics took up just to be dropped, especially since they were written so well and captured my attention, was somewhat of a letdown. These components when combined with the ending, was when my general sense of “meh, okay” arose. To keep it short and only slightly spoiler-y, let’s just say my take-aways were: “People are assholes” and “Everyone should read ‘Weapons of Math Destruction’”.
All that being said, the book was enjoyable. Mina and Lucy are adorable and flirty together, and I would totally listen to their podcast. I also liked how Van Helsing’s honesty and the letter-writing format was used to strip out the elements of Arthur’s persona that he hid behind to get to the man beneath more quickly, something that usually takes more time because of the level of vulnerability it involves, the increased distractions from interactions in social settings, and the greater ability to hide under superficiality. Moreover, I particularly liked how Van Helsing’s character is so formal because his manner of speech is the only one similar to that found in Dracula, so it was nice to have a character voice that channeled an aspect I adored from the source material. My personal beef with the ending and what amounted to a supernatural cocktease in the earlier parts of the book aside, overall Thrall can be a fun read and deserves kudos for how well it tackled the epistolary format of Dracula in a modern way.
You can buy Thrall here:
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