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The Dead Travel Fast (2010)

by Deanna Raybourn(Favorite Author)

3.57 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0778327655 (ISBN13: 9780778327653)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Mira

review 1: I really enjoy a good Gothic tale and this book was just perfect!After the death of her grandfather leaves her at the mercy of her sister and brother-in-law, Theodora Lestrange decides to visit her school friend, Cosmina, in Transylvania instead of succumbing to her family´s pressure to marry and lead a peaceful and uneventful life. Theodora wants to be a writer like the Brontë sisters and a decaying castle in the Carpathians seems just like the good spot to seek inspiration. She is completely fascinated by the local beliefs of werewolves and vampires roaming the country, but dismisses the tales as folklore… until a servant at the castle is found dead, bloodless and with two punctures near her heart. The castle dwellers believe it is the recently dead master, who has ... morecome to claim his family and everyone close to him. But many also believe the current lord, Count Andrei Dragulescu, is not really who he seems to be…Although everything lines up to make you think there are supernatural powers lurking about, just like Theodora, I kept on trying to find a logical explanation for all the strange things that happened in the castle. I enjoyed learning more about Rumanian folklore and traditions and I must say the author did a very good job in creating a very eerie environment. For those who love “Jane Eyre”, the Count Andrei Dragulescu has a lot of Edward Rochester in him – dark, haunted, secretive and completely fascinated by a free thinking independent woman. In the end, although everything seems to come into place, you are left with a feeling that there is still more to uncover… And this kind of ending, which makes me wonder, is my kind of thing!
review 2: Story: 4 starsNarrator: 4.5 starsI originally listened to this book back in 2010, and enjoyed it. It was my first (and remains to date only) exposure to Deanna Raybourn, and I love Charlotte Parry as a narrator.In this story, DR takes the Dracula story and turns it into a Gothic romance, complete with first-person narrator---a young woman in an unfamiliar setting, which just so happens to be a moldering castle in Transylvania populated by strange, suspicious characters. Here, even in the late 19th-century, the residents of the castle and the village at the base of the mountain on which the castle sits, believe in the "old ways"---the ways which say that vampires and werewolves are real.This is such a fun book. The first-person narrator structure allows the reader to get sucked into the heroine's world and into the questions of whether or not vampires are real and, if they are, who in the castle is one. The ending is a bit fantastic, but, frankly, with the amount of suspension of disbelief the whole story requires, it isn't that far of a stretch. This is definitely one for the relisten-eventually shelf! less

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