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Book Summary and Reviews of Dracula in Love by Karen Essex

Dracula in Love by Karen Essex

Dracula in Love

by Karen Essex

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  • Aug 2010, 384 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

From the shadowy banks of the river Thames to the wild and windswept Yorkshire coast, Dracula’s eternal muse, Mina Murray, vividly recounts the intimate details of what really transpired between her and the Count—the joys and terrors of a passionate affair that has linked them through the centuries, and her rebellion against her own frightening preternatural powers.
 
Mina’s version of this gothic vampire tale is a visceral journey into Victorian England’s dimly lit bedrooms, mist-filled cemeteries, and asylum chambers, revealing the dark secrets and mysteries locked within. Time falls away as she is swept into a mythical journey far beyond mortal comprehension, where she must finally make the decision she has been avoiding for almost a millennium. 
 
Bram Stoker’s classic novel offered one side of the story, in which Mina had no past and bore no responsibility for the unfolding events. Now, for the first time, the truth of Mina’s personal voyage, and of vampirism itself, is revealed. What this flesh and blood woman has to say is more sensual, more devious, and more enthralling than the Victorians could have expressed or perhaps even have imagined.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Dark, gothic, and utterly sensual, Dracula in Love is the novel for Twilight's grownup fans. The character of Mina Murray leaps from the pages in an extraordinary confession of what truly happened between her and Count Dracula. In this novel of forbidden desires and secrecy, purity is an overrated virtue." -Michelle Moran, bestselling author of Nefertiti: A Novel

"The King of the Undead in all his manifestations confronts Victorian society, reclaiming his throne as the ultimate vampire, before whom all other paltry vampires in literature wither away.  Dracula in Love is a sensual fantasy feast, a flight of the imagination, a darkly rich pleasure.  Like The French Lieutenant's Woman, the novel explores and exposes the stifling confines of Victorian society, especially upon women.  But the means of deliverance is altogether different." - Margaret George, bestselling author of The Memoirs of Cleopatra

"Karen Essex turns the legendary tale of immortal love into a seductive, blood-tingling celebration of the senses; Mina Harker is a heroine for the ages -- bold, intrepid, and in love with one of the most dangerous, irresistible men in history. If you read only one more vampire novel, let it be this one." - C.W. Gortner, author of The Last Queen and The Confessions of Catherine de Medici

This information about Dracula in Love was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

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Melissa (Books R Us)

A Great Book
I have never read Bram Stoker's Dracula, so I cannot compare Ms. Essex's novel to the original. I felt that the beginning of the novel was a little hard to sink my teeth into maybe because I was not familiar with the characters in the original Dracula story. As the story progressed, I could feel Mina's emotions and her dreams about the Count were vivid. I wish Dracula would have appeared earlier in the story not halfway through. When Mina was forced into the insane asylum and the Count took her away from that dreadful place, I was hooked and I could not put the book down. I was drawn into a world of reincarnation, deceit, Victorian life and romance. There were quite a few erotic scenes that were very distasteful and did not add to the storyline. The book was an interesting read and I learned a little about the history and how people lived in the late 1800's.

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Author Information

Karen Essex Author Biography

Karen Essex is an award-winning novelist and journalist and a screenwriter. She is the author of the national and international best-selling novel, Leonardo’s Swans (Doubleday 2006), about the rivalries among the powerful women painted by the great master when he was employed by the Duke of Milan. She has also written two acclaimed biographical novels about the queen of Egypt, Kleopatra and Pharaoh, published in 2001 and 2002, which she adapted into a screenplay for Warner Bros. Essex also adapted Anne Rice’s novel The Mummy or Ramses the Damned into a screenplay for Titanic director James Cameron and 20th Century Fox, and has written a screenplay about Kamehameha, the first king of Hawaii, for Columbia/Tristar.

Essex’s articles, essays and profiles have ...

... Full Biography
Author Interview
Link to Karen Essex's Website

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