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Dracula

Dracula by Bram Stoker is truly horrifying and a classic EVERYONE should read. 

Summary

Johnathan Harker is off on business. He always has a plan, Except, this time he doesn't. His mysterious business associate has not given him any direction. Johnathan Harker travels to Transylvania to meet his host. Instead of a professional, businessman, Harker is greeted by a seemingly mythical, ghastly white-haired and skinned man. Count Dracula, or the Count for short, terrorizes the town below the cliffs of his lair. Throughout Harker's time at the castle, he is almost killed from scaling the castle windows' ledges, three ghost women who cackle and try to suck the blood out of the veins in his neck, and the Count himself. 

Meanwhile, Harker's fiance, Mina Murray, is with her beloved friend, Lucy Westenra, in Whitby. Lucy starts having dreams and sleepwalking. One night, Lucy sleepwalks to a misty churchyard where Mina spots a ghostly figure on a bench next to an extremely pale Lucy. Mina enlists the help of Doctor Seward, a physician who deals with the mentally insane. Even Dr. Seward is in over his head with this case. He cannot explain Lucy waking up every morning pale, sickly, and extremely weak. Dr. Seward begins to notice tiny holes on the sides of Lucy's neck. Dr. Seward pays a call to his friend and expert in the mentally insane, Dr. Abraham Van Helsing. Van Helsing takes the case. 

Van Helsing, Seward, and the Harkers (Mina and Johnathan marry) form a team to find, figure, and destroy the Count and his schemes before its too late and before Dracula strikes...again. 


Review

Bram Stoker's Dracula is truly very good. Honestly, I was extremely skeptical. 

I am not a huge fan of horror/fantasy. I do not like a lot of blood, guts, cuts, veins, and supernatural occurrences - I am shivering as I type this.

This classic horror novel blew me away. As a person who does not like the genre of which Dracula is an integral part, I love Stoker's tale. It is a little longer than it needs to be, but other than that, I have no complaints. I especially recommend listening to this book on an audiobook app or with one of my previously mentioned favorites, Pheobe Reads a Mystery podcast.

All in all, the story is well developed, the settings are explained extremely well, and the team of Dracula/vampire hunters is a dynamic group who will stop at nothing to get what they desire: to capture and kill Count Dracula.




Audience: 13+
Publisher: Dover Publications
Date Published: this version - 2000; orginally - 1897
ISBN: 9780486454016
Format: paperback
Genre: Horror/Classics/Fantasy/Mystery


*sensitive material* - blood (heavy), death, and assault



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