Book Review: A Dowry of Blood by ST Gibson

A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

CW: Depression, Unhealthy & abusive relationship, blood & gore (please take care of yourselves after reading this book, please)

You liked me best when I was like an oil painting; perfectly arranged and silent.

First off, I really didn't know what I was going into when I picked up this book. All I knew is that is was a vampire novel about a reimaging of Dracula's Brides. But when I finally read it, it blew me away. It is a story about Constanta, the first of his brides who is in a relationship with Dracula-and fun fact, he's not even named in the book, which I thought was good-he is known as "you" and nothing else. In the beginning, it's just them, Constanta and Dracula, living their best lives. Then you see him being a total dick, which made me want to punch this man in face, because he started to become obsessive, making sure she stayed in the house, telling her everything he could to make her stay inside the house, like he had this fear that someone was after him, and this family they were building was going to die because of the humans and all of that. Then it became poly when they went to Spain to meet Magdalena, and it was the three of them.

I loved the relationship between Constanta and Maggie, because they always protected each other and always tried to please said arsehole who had force them to basically shut them out of society, and Magdalena went into a depression (yop she did, and I felt sorry for her). Dracula tried to bring her back to life with all his lies and trying to coax her out of her depression, but that didn't work, so they went to Russia, when they met Alexi, who became their last and final bride, and that's when thine shit hit the fan.

Because it was Alexi that got so sick and damn tired of being cooped up in the house all the time, so he did something shocking-he brought people in the house. Of course, Magdalena was fucking happy that the house was lively, but oh no, Mr. "Y'all can't have humans in the house, they'll expose us and shit" couldn't take it and downright expose them, pissing Alexi off, telling him that they were his friends, "so why can't we have friends over?"

Nooope. Mr. Dracula wasn't havin' that, so he put his hands on him (actually, he just slapped Alexi) and that was the tip of the fucking iceburg (if you can't tell, I really hate Dracula in this book SO SO MUCH). Constanta then started to have an idea: why don't we kill Dracula? We're sick and tired of his shit, so let's kill him. Of course, at first, Alexi and Madgelena didn't agree, but then after thinking about it, they came together and said sure let's kill him.

So how did they do it, you ask?

Well one, they waited till he was gone to go down to his precious basement that they can't go down in, to look for information on how to kill him. When they find out, they (meaning Alexi and Constanta) came back up and decided to kill him the next day-which was when the mob came and tried to burn the house down. So they coaxed him from his basement, tricked him into bed, and then Constanta staked the hell out of him, even when the dick begged her not to do it.

This book does have sex scenes (not that much of it, tbh), gore and a meditative look into a terrible, horrible relationship, and seeing one woman taking it upon herself to free the three of them, because if they kept him alive, he'll keep doing this for the rest of their lives, and they weren't havin' it. It does have bisexual rep and also polyam rep, and honestly, I loved this book so much (while hating Dracula all the same at the same time) that I wished I could give this book a ten star. But please, if you can, take care of yourselves after reading this book...even though it's really, really good.

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