Review & Blog Tour. The Deathless Girls

Welcome to The Deathless Girls Blog Tour. I'm so but so very excited to be part of this blog tour. I could not put down this darkly Gothic tale inspired by Dracula by Bram Stoker. The eerie settings, the strong female protagonists and the cruelty of this world stole my heart. If you need more reasons why you should pick this book, take a long peek at my review.

Title: The Deathless Girls

Author: Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Publisher: Hachette Children’s Group

Published: 19th September 2019
Pages: 304 pages 

From an award-winning author a haunting re-imagining of one of the most celebrated gothic tales ever written. This is the untold story of the brides of Dracula.

Seventeen-year-old Lil and her twin sister Kizzy are brutally snatched one night, taken far from the travelling community they so love. Their abductor is the cruel Boyar Valcar who sells them to a castle kitchen where they are forced to work as slaves.

Lil befriends fellow slave Mira, a girl she’s inexplicably drawn to, and the pair comfort each other, drawing strength from their friendship to help cope with the awful situation they have been put into. She learns of the mythical Dragon – a creature which is rumoured to accept young girls as gifts.

The second book in the new Bellatrix collection – a creatively curated list of empowering, diverse YA novels by leading female

I've no words to explain how excited I'm to have had the chance to be part of The Deathless Girls Blog Tour. This darkly Gothic tale inspired by Dracula by Bram Stoker is an imaginative and heart-wrenching tale of his brides, whose background is surrounded by a veil of mystery. 

Storytelling: This was the first time I read a novel written by Kiran Millwood Hargrave (I do own a copy of The Girl of Ink and Stars, but it's been gathering dust on my bookshelves for a very long time *hides in shame*). I quite enjoyed the writing and the slow narrative that captivated me from the first page until the very last one. I wish the ending was a little longer - I felt it was slightly rushed, but it did wrap everything up perfectly. I also wish I could have learned more about the third bride (I'm keeping my fingers crossed that her story gets to be told in another book). In the end, this is a beautiful tale about sisterly love and discovering one's inner strength; it's a novel about the darkness that inhabits the human heart and the search for hope and love in the darkest places. 

Characters: Lil and Kizzy are Traveller twins who couldn't be more different from each other if yet so alike. After their camp is attacked by a Boyar's men, Lil and Kizzy and enslaved and taken to his castle to serve him and his court as he wishes them to. In this journey, Lil and Kizzy go through imaginable horrors and there's so much suffering, but they have each other to get them through the darkness. One of my favourite things about this tale was the featuring of a strong sisterly bond. I always find so refreshing to read about two sisters who love each other unconditionally, with no hint of sibling rivalry (even when Lil saw herself as a shadow of her sister, she did not hate Kizzy).    

Maybe I shouldn't have a favourite twin, but I do: Lillai. Everyone always saw her as the weakest twin; as a shadow to the strong-willed and beautiful Kizzy. However, while everything withers in the darkness and evilness of the Boyar Valcar's castle, Lil blooms. She finds her voice. She discovers how strong she is. She finds love.

World Building: I loved the Gothic atmosphere of the castle and the woods. There was always an eerie and mysterious aura surrounding this story that engulfed me from the first page and made me love this twisted dark and vicious world. I quite loved the historical details included in the story - from the evil doing of the Dragon to the discrimination that the Travellers suffered at the hands of the Settlers (I would like to share this quick fact: "Gypsy" is not a slur in Portugal. In my country, Gypsies do not use the word "Romanov" to describe themselves). I wish there was a little more vampire mythology or the looming presence of Dracula (or that these might have been addressed sooner), but I still adored the Gothic settings crafted by Kiran Millwood Hargrave. 

Trigger Warning! Violence and murder; discrimination; battering; attempted rape. 

Thank you Hachette Children’s Group and Ed Public Relations for providing me with a review copy in exchange for an honest review.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR


KIRAN MILLWOOD HARGRAVE is an award-winning poet, playwright and bestselling novelist. Her debut novel for children, The Girl of Ink and Stars, won the Waterstones Book Prize and the Children’s Book of the Year at the British Book Awards. Her work has been long and short-listed for several other major prizes, including the Costa Award and the CILIP Carnegie Award. The Deathless Girls is her first novel for Young Adults. Kiran Millwood Hargrave is a graduate of both Oxford and Cambridge universities and lives by the river in Oxford with her husband and cat.