Gen Z still watches “Twilight,” and publishing companies have finally picked up on our unironic love of the vampire and werewolf love triangle. Over the past three years, vampire novels have hit the shelves with a bang. The usual heterosexual love triangle has been set aside for new twists on the vampire trope in recent blood-sucking books. Listed here are four recent favorites of mine that I hope you sink your teeth into.
"The Coldest Touch" by Isabel Sterling
Sterling gave the vampire-loving community a sapphic vampire romance, and I am living for it. With just the right amount of slow-burn romance and drama, “The Coldest Touch” was everything I expected it to be. The plot centers around two main characters, Elise, who can predict how someone will die based on touch, and Claire, who is a vampire. The two are thrown together when Elise predicts the murder of their teacher. The mystery swept me away along with both Elise and Claire. The novel was a fast-paced read that combined paranormal elements with a murder mystery.
"The Beautiful" by Renée Ahdieh
To even begin to describe how much I adored this novel would take pages. Ahdieh’s luscious take on New Orleans and a secret underworld had me hooked from the first chapter. “The Beautiful” was my gateway drug to reentering the vampire genre. In 1872, the lead character, Celine Rousseau, escaped Paris to live the rest of her life in a New Orleans convent. Charmed by the city, Celine finds herself enchanted by the dark underworld known as La Cour des Lions, as the leader of this underworld, Sébastien Saint Germain, finds himself enamored by Celine. How could Celine resist the charms of a hot vampire? Soon, though, a girl from Celine’s convent is found dead within Sebastian’s underworld, and Celine begins to doubt who she can trust. A serial killer is on the loose as murders are racking up, and Celine wants to find out who is responsible. I swear, Ahdeih woke up one day and decided that she wanted to write the fantasy novel of my dreams. Packed into approximately 450 pages, Ahdieh created a world so luxurious and dark that I couldn’t help but binge-read the book in one sitting.
“The Lost Girls: A Vampire Revenge Story” by Sonia Hartl
There is one reason why I love country music, and that is because women write songs about killing cheating and lying men. This novel took that classic country music trope and made it 10 times better. Holly Liddell's vampiric immortality has not been as lavish as she assumed it would be. She is compelled to follow her ex, Elton, from town to town, and she is tired of her boring shifts at Taco Bell and the nasty motels she sleeps in. When Holly meets Elton’s other exes, she learns that she was not the only girl who was tricked into a life of eternity by Elton’s good looks. So, Holly and two other vampires, Ida and Rose, take on the task of stopping Elton before he tricks another girl. The three go on an adventure filled with heists to stop Elton from turning his newest victim, Parker, into a vampire. This new blood-sucking take on “John Tucker Must Die” was the perfect pick me up during the days of long lectures and Canvas assignments.
"Crave" by Tracy Wolff
“Crave” was the exact book I needed to read after watching “The Vampire Diaries'' for the fourth time. It perfectly combines my love of a boarding school setting, a protagonist who is “not like other girls” and a quiet bad boy who everyone loves. The novel isn’t groundbreaking and has similar tropes to “The Vampire Diaries'' and “Vampire Academy,'' but I was not looking for a Pulitzer Prize winner. I wanted to devour a book where a girl finds herself entangled in a vampire drama, and “Crave” gave me that. Our protagonist, Grace, didn’t realize she was walking into a den of monsters when she arrived at Katmere Academy. On her first day on campus, she meets Jaxon Vega, the bad boy. She is drawn to him, but he only gives her mixed signals with his negative and brooding attitude. Grace falls down the rabbit hole of discovering his secrets, and soon she learns that there is more to this academy than what she expected. I want you to go into this book hoping to have a good time, not aiming to find a deeper meaning in life. This six-book series will provide you with the nostalgic feeling you had when you read “Twilight” for the first time.
These four books indulged all of my favorite tropes. From enemies-to-lovers to brooding, sassy male characters, each novel gave me some part of the classic vampire trope that I love. Hopefully, one of these books will satisfy your thirst for bloodsuckers.